The Ghost Map

by Steven Johnson

  page 240 But we don’t have that option One “third-way” solution to this problem would be to adopt the medieval system of distributed density, still visible in hill towns of northern Italy: a network of tightly packed mixed-use nodes of finite size, separated by large stretches of low-density vineyards and farms. This is not the decentralized approach of edge-of-city sprawl; the towns in the medieval system were not as dense and economically diverse as most modern city centers, but they had a ceiling on their overall growth, usually defined by the walls that outlined the town limits. A post-9/11 city could be built along similar lines: the density of traditional metropolitan space in distributed nodes limited to 50,000 to 100,000 people each, separated by expanses of low-density development: parkland, nature preserves, sports facilites, even vineyards where the climate allows. Such a model would reverse the Olmsted vision of urban greenery: rather than carve out a park in the middle of an immense city, the new model builds a space for nature on the edges of the city center—Peripheral Park, instead of Central. In medieval times, the walls protected the town population. In these theoretical settlements, the open spaces separating the nodes would keep the city safe. Imagine a city of 2 million people, built out of twenty nodes. In a worst-case scenario, a terrorist with a backpack full of smallpox might well be able to do extensive damage to a single node, perhaps killing tens of thousands in the process—not millions. The remaining nodes would be largely unaffected, not unlike the Arpanet and its now folkloric skills at routing around damage. An attack like those on the Twin Towers could still do a lot of damage, but there wouldn’t be a centralized, symbolic node to target. Life in such a metropolitan complex would not feel suburban, by any means: the generative force of sidewalk culture and urban density would be preserved, possibly even enhanced.

  page 243 In September 2004, health officials in Thailand “Asian Shots Are Proposed as Flu Fighter,” New York Times, October 13, 2005.

  page 246 It needs the CTX phage to switch over Mekalanos et al., pp. 241–48.

  page 253 but detection is hardly a fail-safe option I described some of the latest advances in radiation detection—and speculated on how they might be employed to defend large metropolitan areas from nuclear terrorism—in the essay “Stopping Loose Nukes,” published in Wired, November 2002.

  page 254 But if the trends of asymmetric warfare continue The one thing we can do now to prevent such a dark future is to radically reduce, if not eliminate, the current stockpiles of nuclear weapons in the world. The United States alone has around 10,000 weapons in its active arsenal. This is madness in an age of asymmetric warfare, where mutually assured destruction is meaningless. (It was madness in the cold war too, but for different reasons.) If all the nuclear powers agreed to limit their stockpiles to no more than ten weapons per country—thereby reducing the total number of weapons in the world from 20,000 to less than a hundred—we would reduce by more than an order of magnitude the risk that a weapon would fall into the wrong hands. We would still retain the ability to kill 100 million people and do untold environmental damage with those ten nukes, but at least we would be making significant progress against the growing menace of proliferation. It would be an epic undertaking, yet history shows we are capable of projects on this scale, if we apply ourselves. We eliminated smallpox from the wild, after all. If we can rid the world of a microscopic virus, we can eliminate weapons the size of tractor-trailers. We hear a lot of war-on-terror rhetoric cajoling us to be realistic about the threats that face us, to confront those threats without pity or foolish idealism. That’s why we have elective wars and unauthorized wiretapping: because we’re realists now, or so we’re told. But wherever each of us stands on the wars and the wiretaps, we need to agree that maintaining a stockpile of 10,000 nuclear weapons is the very opposite of realism. It is, in fact, an idealism of the most starry-eyed sort: the ideal that says we’re better off spending billions of dollars maintaining devices that would, were they all detonated, potentially end life as we know it on planet Earth. We are, as a species, sleeping with a gun under our pillow. It may make us feel safe to know that we have all that firepower so close at hand, but someday it’s going to go off.

  page 255 Angola is suffering through the worst outbreak “Angola is suffering its worst outbreak of cholera in more than a decade, recording 554 deaths and 12,052 cases in just over two months, according to Doctors Without Borders. The disease has spread unusually fast, even for Africa, where cholera epidemics are common and often hard to control, said Stephan Goetghebuer, an operational coordinator for the organization. It has set up eight clinics in Angola to treat the sick and plans to open more.” “Angola Is Hit by Outbreak of Cholera,” New York Times, April 20, 2006.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Ackroyd, Peter. London: The Biography. Anchor, New York: 2000.

  Barry, John M. The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. New York: Penguin, 2005.

  Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Schocken, 1986.

  Bingham, P., N. O. Verlander, and M. J. Cheal. “John Snow, William Farr and the 1849 Outbreak of Cholera That Affected London: A Reworking of the Data Highlights the Importance of the Water Supply.” Public Health 118 (2004): 387–94.

  Brand, Stewart. “City Planet.” http://www.strategy-business.com/press/16635507/06109.

  Brody, H., et al. “John Snow Revisited: Getting a Handle on the Broad Street Pump.” Pharos Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Med. Soc. 62 (1999): 2–8.

  Buechner, Jay S., Herbert Constantine, and Annie Gjelsvik. “John Snow and the Broad Street Pump: 150 Years of Epidemiology.” Medicine & Health Rhode Island 87 (2004): 314–15.

  Cadbury, Deborah. Dreams of Iron and Steel: Seven Wonders of the Nineteenth Century, from the Building of the London Sewers to the Panama Canal. New York: Fourth Estate, 2004.

  Chadwick, Edwin. Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain: A Supplementary Report on the Results of a Special Inquiry into the Practice of Interment in Towns. London, 1843.

  The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements, 2003. Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2003.

  Cholera Inquiry Committee. Report on the Cholera Outbreak in the Parish of St. James, Westminster, during the Autumn of 1854. London, 1855.

  Committee for Scientific Inquiries. Report of the Committee for Scientific Inquiries in Relation to the Cholera-Epidemic of 1854. London: HMSO, 1855.

  Cooper, Edmund. “Report on an Enquiry and Examination into the State of the Drainage of the Houses Situate in That Part of the Parish of St. James, Westminster…” September 22, 1854.

  Creaton, Heather. Victorian Diaries: The Daily Lives of Victorian Men and Women. London: Mitchell Beazley, 2001.

  De Landa, Manuel. A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. New York: Zone, 1997.

  Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. London: Penguin, 1996.

  ——. Our Mutual Friend. New York: Penguin, 1997.

  Engels, Friedrich. The Condition of the Working Class in England. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968.

  Eyler, J. M., “The Changing Assessments of John Snow’s and William Farr’s Cholera Studies,” Sozial- und Präventivmedizin 46 (2001), pp. 225–32.

  Farr, William. “Report on the Cholera Epidemic of 1866 in England.” In U.K. Parliament, Sessional Papers, 1867–1868, vol. 37.

  Faruque, S. M., M. J. Albert, and J. J. Mekalanos. “Epidemiology, Genetics, and Ecology of Toxigenic Vibrio cholerae.” Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews 62 (1998): 1301–14.

  Faruque, Shah M., et al. “Self-Limiting Nature of Seasonal Cholera Epidemics: Role of Host-Mediated Amplification of Phage.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science U.S.A. 102 (2005): 6119–24.

  Finer, S. E. The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1970.

  Garrett, Laurie. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994.

  ——. Betrayal of Trust: The Co
llapse of Global Health. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

  Gould, Stephen Jay. Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin. New York: Harmony, 1996.

  Halliday, Stephen. The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis. Phoenix Mill, England: Sutton, 1999.

  ——. “William Farr: Campaigning Statistician.” Journal of Medical Biography 8 (2000): 220–27.

  Häse, C. C., and J. J. Mekalanos. “TcpP Protein Is a Positive Regulator of Virulence Gene Expression in Vibrio cholerae.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science U.S.A. 95 (1998): 730–34.

  Hippocrates. Hippocrates on Airs, Waters, and Places. Translated by Emile Littré and Janus Cornarius and Johannes Antonides van der Linden and Francis Adams. London, 1881.

  Hohenberg, Paul M., and Lynn Hollen Lees. The Making of Urban Europe, 1000–1994. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.

  Iberall, Arthur S. “A Physics for Studies of Civilization.” Self-Organizing Systems: The Emergence of Order, ed. F. Eugene Yates. New York and London: Plenum Press, 1987.

  Jacobs, Jane. The Economy of Cities. New York: Random House, 1969.

  ——. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage, 1992.

  ——. The Nature of Economies. New York: Modern Library, 2000.

  Kelly, John. The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

  Koch, Tom. Cartographies of Disease: Maps, Mapping, and Medicine. Redlands, CA: ESRI Press, 2005.

  Kostof, Spiro. The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History. Boston: Little, Brown, 1991.

  Lilienfeld, A. M., and D. E. Lilienfeld. “John Snow, the Broad Street Pump and Modern Epidemiology.” International Journal of Epidemiology, 1984.

  Lilienfeld, D. E. “John Snow: The First Hired Gun?” American Journal of Epidemiology 152 (2000): 4–9.

  McLeod, K. S. “Our Sense of Snow: The Myth of John Snow in Medical Geography.” Social Science in Medicine 50 (2000): 923–35.

  McNeill, William Hardy. Plagues and Peoples. New York: Anchor Press, 1976.

  Marcus, Steven. Engels, Manchester, and the Working Class. New York: Norton, 1985.

  Margulis, Lynn, with Dorion Sagan. Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

  Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor. New York: Penguin, 1985.

  Mekalanos, J. J., E. J. Rubin, and M. K. Waldor. “Cholera: Molecular Basis for Emergence and Pathogenesis.” FEMS Immunol. Med. Microbiol. 18 (1997): 241–48.

  Mumford, Lewis. The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations and Its Prospects. New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1961.

  Neuwirth, Robert. Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World. New York: Routledge, 2005.

  Nightingale, Florence. Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1992.

  Owen, David. “Green Manhattan.” The New Yorker, October 18, 2004.

  Paneth, Nigel. “Assessing the Contributions of John Snow to Epidemiology: 150 Years After Removal of the Broad Street Pump Handle.” Epidemiology 15 (2004): 514–16.

  Picard, Liza. Victorian London: The Life of a City, 1840–1870. New York: St. Martin’s, 2006.

  Porter, Roy. London: A Social History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.

  Rathje, William L., and Cullen Murphy. Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001.

  Rawnsley, Hardwicke D. Henry Whitehead. 1825–1896: A Memorial Sketch. Glasgow, 1898.

  Richardson, Benjamin W. “The Life of John Snow.” In John Snow, On Chloroform and Other Anaesthetics, ed. B. W. Richardson. London, 1858.

  Ridley, Matt. Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.

  Rogers, Richard. Cities for a Small Planet. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998.

  Rosenberg, Charles E. The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

  ——. Explaining Epidemics and Other Studies in the History of Medicine. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

  Royet, Jean-P., et al. “fMRI of Emotional Responses to Odors: Influence of Hedonic Valence and Judgment, Handedness, and Gender.” Neuroimage 20 (2003): 713–28.

  Schonfeld, Erick. “Segway Creator Unveils His Next Act.” Business 2.0, February 16, 2006.

  Sedgwick, W. T. Principles of Sanitary Science and the Public Health with Special Reference to the Causation and Prevention of Infectious Diseases. New York, 1902.

  Shephard, David A. E. John Snow: Anaesthetist to a Queen and Epidemiologist to a Nation: A Biography. Cornwall, Prince Edward Island: York Point, 1995.

  Smith, George Davey. “Commentary: Behind the Broad Street Pump: Aetiology, Epidemiology and Prevention of Cholera in Mid-19th Century Britain.” International Journal of Epidemiology 31 (2002): 920–32.

  Snow, John. “The Principles on Which the Treatment of Cholera Should Be Based.” Medical Times and Gazette 8 (1854a): 180–82.

  ——. “Communication of Cholera by Thames Water.” Medical Times and Gazette 9 (1854b): 247–48.

  ——. “The Cholera Near Golden-square, and at Deptford.” Medical Times and Gazette 9 (1854c): 321–22.

  ——. “On the Communication of Cholera by Impure Thames Water.” Medical Times and Gazette 9 (1854d): 365–66.

  ——. On the Mode of Communication of Cholera. 2nd ed. London: Churchill; 1855a.

  ——. “Further Remarks on the Mode of Communication of Cholera; Including Some Comments on the Recent Reports on Cholera by the General Board of Health.” Medical Times and Gazette 11 (1855b): 31–35, 84–88.

  ——. “On the Supposed Influence of Offensive Trades on Mortality.” Lancet 2 (1856): 95–97.

  ——. “On Continuous Molecular Changes, More Particularly in Their Relation to Epidemic Diseases.” London: Churchill, 1853. In Snow on Cholera, ed. Wade Hampton Frost. New York: Hafner, 1965.

  Snow, John, and Richard H. Ellis. The Case Books of Dr. John Snow. London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1994.

  Snow, John, Wade Hampton Frost, and Benjamin Ward Richardson. Snow on Cholera: Being a Reprint of Two Papers. New York: The Commonwealth Fund, 1965.

  Specter, Michael. “Nature’s Bioterrorist.” The New Yorker, February 28, 2005: 50–62.

  Standage, Tom. A History of the World in Six Glasses. New York: Holtzbrinck, 2005.

  Stanwell-Smith, R. “The Making of an Epidemiologist.” Communicable Disease and Public Health, 2002: 269–70.

  Sullivan, John. “Surgery Before Anesthesia.” ASA Newsletter 60.

  Summers, Judith. Soho: A History of London’s Most Colourful Neighbourhood. London: Bloomsbury, 1989.

  Tufte, Edward R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, 1983.

  ——. Envisioning Information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, 1990.

  ——. Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, 1997.

  United Kingdom General Board of Health. “Report of the Committee for Scientific Inquiries in Relation to the Cholera-Epidemic of 1854.” London: HMSO, 1855.

  Vandenbroucke, J. P. “Snow and the Broad Street Pump: A Rediscovery.” Lancet, November 11, 2000, pp. 64–68.

  Vandenbroucke, J. P., H. M. Eelkman Rooda, and H. Beukers. “Who Made John Snow a Hero?” American Journal of Epidemiology 133, no. 10 (1991): 967–73.

  Vinten-Johansen, Peter, et al. Cholera, Chloroform, and the Science of Medicine: A Life of John Snow. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

  White, G. L. “Epidemiologic Adventure: The Broad Street Pump.” South. Med. J. 92 (1999): 961–62.

  Whitehead, Henry. The Cholera in Berwick Street, 2nd ed. London: Hope & Co., 1854.

  —
—. “The Broad Street Pump: An Episode in the Cholera Epidemic of 1854.” Macmillan’s Magazine, 1865: 113–22.

  ——. “The Influence of Impure Water on the Spread of Cholera.” Macmillan’s Magazine, 1866: 182–90.

  Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

  Zimmer, Carl. Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature’s Most Dangerous Creatures. New York: Free Press, 2000.

  Zinsser, Hans. Rats, Lice, and History. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 1996 (orig. pub. 1934).

  INDEX

  Italicized page numbers indicate illustrations.

  Advertising, 46–47

  Agrarian capitalism, 92

  Agrarian peoples, and alcohol, 103–4

  Agricultural societies, 92