About – MANHATTAN OUTERNET

Intelligence, not so Artificial

THE OUTERNET IS THE WORLD’S FIRST SEARCH ENGINE OF PLACE. Designed to expand perspectives by removing the boundary between encounter and engagement—and with nearly a quarter-million primary-sourced hits on the island of Manhattan already—it is changing the way people experience the world around them.

The Outernet is a 100% primary-sourced database mined from a thousand individual books—many of them singular editions and last-remaining copies, including biographies, memoirs, merchant logs, city-planning ledgers, textbooks, histories, journals, newspapers, guidebooks, maps and atlases spanning three centuries—that make it a source for information that quite literally cannot be reproduced.

But it’s more than just a search engine: The Outernet provides the groundwork for an unprecedented anthological endeavor, compiling any and all relevant data with the highest standard for accuracy and detail achievable. Rather than relying on crowd sourcing and un-reviewed citations, the database is compiled entirely from information derived from only the most authoritative sources, and screened for quality. This makes it unique both as a search engine and as a reservoir for knowledge, and opens worlds of additional applications.

UNLIMITED POTENTIAL

The Outernet’s unparalleled scope, informational resolution and potential for scalability make it a robust and versatile tool:

-As a resource for historians, biographers, architects and city-planners;

-As a learning platform for educators to provide context to students;

-As a framework for content creators including game designers, tour guides, filmmakers and artists;

-As a foundation for AR interfaces and AI learning;

-As a communications and social networking matrix;

-As a library for obscure records and the preservation of knowledge for posterity.

Researchers and academics will find endless inspiration combing the database for information about where and when certain individuals traveled or various events transpired; cartographers will gain invaluable insight into the geographical iterations of a place through time; filmmakers focusing on historical settings will have unparalleled access to accuracy and authenticity; game designers exploring the world of AR will find enough material to boggle their minds.

But beyond these specialized applications there is also the casual user: The commuter, the wanderer, the curious. Through the Outernet’s nodular GPS system, users can engage with the dimensionality of their surroundings merely by stepping outside.

THE OMNISCIENT TOUR GUIDE

Currently in partnership with VoiceMap, the Outernet provides comprehensive guided tours of Manhattan and, soon, the entirety of New York City. Employing a system of overlapping nodes, the user will never step outside of the Outernet’s range as they travel along whatever route they choose, ferried by an abundance of information about everything they pass, either at the discretion of a curated tour or by their own selection of a specific topic or time period. The Outernet transforms a person’s whole world into a museum of art and history, enriching even a stroll to the corner store or a wait at the bus stop with troves of knowledge.

THE MUSEUM IS ALL AROUND YOU

Choose any point in New York City. Every building in sight, from the foreground to the skyline, explodes with history: maps, photographs, stories told through time. There is no corner, no street, no city block impervious to the Outernet’s unprecedented insight.

ACCESSIBILITY, AUTHENTICITY and AMALGAMATION

What makes the Outernet unique? Simply put, it prioritizes user accessibility to a dataset that would otherwise be off limits by sheer virtue of its quantity. It would take you a lifetime to read everything written about even a single block in New York City—let alone determine the authenticity or accuracy of each source—so the Outernet has done that work for you.

Now, all you have to do is walk down the street.

But the Outernet is more than just a collection of individual information points on every address. It is an amalgamation, a harmonizing of these points into a new, multivalent dimensionality. It isn’t just about a series of specific events at specific locations, but about the stories that these events come together to tell.

The Outernet is the mixing bowl for its handpicked sources—the countless testimonies given and records kept about a location through time—to coalesce, united by place, to generate new stories, and a new way of storytelling. The Outernet encourages its users to be part of these stories, to experience things differently by seeing what came before and what lies beyond. It is a narrator for the stories hidden all around us, borne of an ambition to fill the gaps in space and unite the regions of time. It is a remedy to the misperception of empty space, pulling back the curtain on the secret truths of our world.

LOOKING OUTWARD

The current trend in immersive digital experiences is to shut out our surroundings in exchange for virtual facsimile, to treat our streets, our towns and our cities with passivity, as mere scenery, to close our eyes and plug our ears. But the Outernet is determined to enhance the here and now by providing a tactile approach to a staggering wealth of information and reveal the world as it is, was and will be with more clarity than ever before. It is a new lens through which to look outward.

The Outernet contains data on countless historical, academic and biographical subjects pertaining to the island of Manhattan, which serves as the Outernet’s flagship location. Membership is required for access to the complete reports. If unlimited access to this information is of value to you or your organization, please contact us.