

The End of the Map - prostoalex
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324461604578191471150162626.html

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mc32
I see this piece suffers from dramaticism and romaticisim.

>On our computers and phones, we plot a route not from A to B but from
ourselves ("Allow current location") to anywhere of our choosing.

And we did the same with paper maps, except we had to locate ourselves on the
map. That the tiles are "off the screen" or another fold in the map is
irrelevant. But it makes for nice romanticism.

>But satellites know nothing of the beauty of hand-drawn maps, with their
Spanish galleons and sea monsters, and they cannot comprehend wanderlust and
the desire for discovery.

Both 'hand drawn' maps and satellite maps only have as much embellishment as
the cartographers and publishers find appropriate. Digital maps could have
embellishment (and do in the form of easter eggs); regardless, they could have
monsters and sea serpents just as well as their paper/vellum versions.

>Digital maps are the enemies of wonder.

Huh? Really? I feel they allow me to wander even more than with traditional
maps. I can take a trip down Asakusa or Tallinn and see what it might be like
if I went there in person, albeit more realistically with less imperfection
(erroneous imagination).

The whole article is about personal projection, which is fine, but it should
not pretend to be insightful.

~~~
stephengillie
I think the author's nostalgia and romance are somewhat unimaginative. Hasn't
he ever wanted to cruise down a random Norwegian coastal highway, just to see
what it's like there? Cruise around South Africa? See the sights from the
Chilean highlands or explore Tierra Del Fuego?

Just get on Google maps, choose a road, street view, and keep clicking
forward. It's a kind-of "stay-cation road-trip" and is an incredibly cheap way
of seeing great views in different parts of the world.

~~~
dredmorbius
Google Earth is a bit better for long-distance tourism of that sort.
Streetview with an auto-navigation option would be pretty cool for checking
out places on the neighborhood level. And if you're in Google Maps, don't
forget to check out photos at landmarks.

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tokenadult
Thanks for submitting this. This is a great essay about the history of mapping
in the Western world. I especially like the comments about the "solution"
Apple briefly had for the territorial dispute between China and Japan
regarding the island group known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyutai in China:
show the islands on the map twice, with one showing attributed to the national
territory of each country. Oops.

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ajanuary
"They suppress our urge to experiment and (usually) steer us from error—but
what could be more irrepressibly human than those very things?"

With a map in my phone I'm way more likely to go off piece on a ramble through
backstreets, trying to loose myself and find my way back, safe in the
knowledge that if my feet get too tired I can whip out my phone and instantly
find the route home.

No, I'm not naustalgic for getting hopelessly lost at 1am after already
strolling for hours.

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contingencies
An interesting article but nothing revelatory.

Incidentally I am currently mid-way through 'The Mapmakers'
([http://www.amazon.com/Mapmakers-Revised-John-Noble-
Wilford/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Mapmakers-Revised-John-Noble-
Wilford/dp/0375409297)), love maps, collect maps, donate maps to UT Austin's
great online Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
(<http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/>), and generally find geography fascinating.
Martin Dodge's <http://cybergeography.org/> is also a great resource.

In terms of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) theory, humans have the greatest
'bandwidth' in perceiving spatially (visually). This means that as we grow to
deal with ever larger quantities of information, in ever more complex systems,
we will find ourselves more often utilizing spatial reasoning ... whether we
like it or not. The history of mapmaking and maps in general is a fascinating
area of human endeavour that can inform us moving forward.

~~~
zem
it's nice as a brief history of inexact cartography (something that, as the
author notes, is coming to an end, at least as far as earth's surface goes)

