Friends, Fellow Travellers & Bloggists whom I admire
Adnan Khan : Arkworld
David Byrne
Clive Thompson : Collision Detection
Ronald J. Diebert of Citizen Lab
Hossein Derakhshan : Editor Myself
Nick Storring : End of World Music
Chris Turner : Geography of Hope
Lawrence Lessig - Lessig 2.0
Carl Wilson : Zoilus

Photographers and Image Accomplices
For a daily dose check out Toronto-based photog and journalist Tyler Stiem’s blog Strange Shores, and then shuffle over to his worksite to encounter image essays on Bolivia’s Potosi silver mine, post-election Liberia and Africa’s demographic challenge. It was with big Donald Weber that I travelled to Chornobyl in 2006; since then he’s garnered two armfuls of awards for his work. Fortunately he wears a coat with many pockets. Go to his virtual cubby hole to glimpse the pictorials Genocide in Slow Motion (Eastern Chad), The Underclass and its Bosses (Ukraine), Welcome to My Country (southeast Turkey)

Lorne Bridgman is a dear friend, mountain biking buddy and one of my favourite portraitists. Russell Monk is mad, not so bad, and a charming man to know. He’s also one of the best shooters around.

Artists
Artists and designers have played an important part in helping develop some of the ideas behind Broken Atlas—those scenarios I’ve encountered for which words just can’t do justice, when the tensions being worked out are best captured visually. Here are a few of those who’ve figured so far:
South African born, Australian-reared, now Istanbul-based Mike Mike documents the Face of Tomorrow. I first discovered the work of Chinese artist Xing Danwen at a landmark exhibition in Buffalo (The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art) and Torontonians were later favoured with a visit during a Contact Photography Festival. See her ongoing series Urban Fiction, image stories based on real estate maquettes.

Organizations (Research, Activism)
In the course of my travels I’ve bumped into many research or advocacy groups involved in the issues that Broken Atlas tries to poke at with its writing stick. These links are not intended as personal endorsements (except in the case of the Citizen Lab and its related entities), merely as indicators of the kind of politics, critiques and activist groups I’ve been swimming in as part of the book’s research.
CitizenLab is an interdisciplinary hive based at the University of Toronto that studies the intersection of digital media and civic politics. The Halifax Initiative is dedicated to transforming the international monetary system in order to eradicate poverty and redress global inequities. Mining Watch watchdogs the industry in which Canadian companies play a leading role.

Active in over 100 countries, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) protects migrants’ rights, conducts research and advises government on policy.

Useful Resources and Indexes
Open Net Initiative (ONI) — tracking internet censorship and surveillance
Information Warfare Monitor — research project examining how states and non-state actors seek to exploit information and information systems to pursue political objectives through non-political means
Transparency International — measuring economic and political corruption worldwide
CIA World Factbook — the old stand-by for basic info and country profiles
Perry-Casteñeda Library Map Collection — online map database