
Two Maps - wglb
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2011/09/10/Old-School
======
bootload
_"... I have grave doubts about whether the “book”, I mean in its paper form,
has or even deserves a future. ..."_

Map nerd here. Bray is really talking about a subset of what you use maps for.
If by book Bray means printed, this isn't true for navigation or traversing
land, sea and air. When I go to places I don't know, I carry a printed
topographic/thematic map. A digital map is no use

* when I have to access terrain to work out time & distance (do I have enough time, food, how do I get out?) ~ [http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/246924231/in/set-72157...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/246924231/in/set-72157616056945713)

* is slightly less useful for nav when it's out of date, but still useful (where is the road?) ~ <http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/243481085/>

* when I need to know the terrain or vegetation (how tired am I going to be going up this hill?) ~ [http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3432835303/in/set-7215...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3432835303/in/set-72157623478985429)

* or show me the big picture covering a large area (how many hills do I need to climb to get to the top?) ~ [http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5308817363/in/set-7215...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5308817363/in/set-72157625712635020)

However digital maps are far superior in scenarios where information is
changing for a given terrain. A digital map is superior when:

* showing bushfire coverage over specific area. It allowed you to ask, _"what if"_ questions ~ [http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3298613958/in/set-7215...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3298613958/in/set-72157614354760776)

* shows there's a big fire (hotspot) at this point & smoke going this way, now! ~ <http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3302263039>

* showing bushfire coverage over a large area ~ [http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3305597012/in/set-7215...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3305597012/in/set-72157614354760776)

* shows freak country wide weather pattern & quickly indicates today will not be a good day (comparison with past, indicates severity) ~ [http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3307836768/in/set-7215...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3307836768/in/set-72157614354760776)

And the last case. Where am I at the moment in the city? ~
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5309444952/in/set-7215...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5309444952/in/set-72157625712635020)
This is what I think Bray is trying to say. Map coverage of urban areas is
being disrupted. This I would agree with but I don't have his faith in the hi-
tech approach. I always carry a printed description of the street names & a
Melway page ~ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melway>. I simply don't trust tech
to get me to a particular spot at a particular time, 100% of the time. Don't
even get me started on GPS.

~~~
Groxx
I'm quite confused by your examples.

* terrain data: if that map were scanned into digital form, would it be less useful? If it were in digital form to begin with, you could probably overlay others' data / have it calculate time for you. Is this worse?

* digital maps are _far_ more likely to be up to date.

* terrain / vegetation: what if it were in an overlay? Or, going the Flickr route, how about geotagged photos appearing where they were taken? If a paper map has the info, so can a digital one.

* big 3D object: Google Earth? Though, granted, it's a 2D projection - there are intrinsic disadvantages there.

* GPS / guided routes: well yeah, route-finding is hard, building numbers aren't 1:1 with their location, and GPS often isn't high-enough resolution to really know where you are. But what about the map aspect in a city? My iThing shows me road and structure data that's _far_ more detailed and up-to-date than any map you can purchase and reasonably keep with you, and tells me about accidents / construction in bigger cities, accurate to the hour or better.

So, the only real reasons being... bigger is better, and 3D is great (but
immobile)? And battery life and durability, of course, though they weren't
listed.

I would find it _extremely_ likely that you can't find digital maps with the
same information as paper ones you can buy - I still need to go to the DMV to
do some things, for no real, rational reason. Such is the world. But that's
not intrinsic to the medium, it's merely a consequence of it being newer. Less
_available_ doesn't count, that attribute will reverse itself in time. What is
it about _digital_ that you find less _effective_?

~~~
bootload
_"... What is it about digital that you find less effective? ..."_

@Groxx simple, KISS.

I'm not sure you go the kind of places I do. I need reliability not
technology. _'Carry nothing new'_ is a motto that saves you from potential
equipment failure. The argument you are giving is about ideal format. Mine is
about reliability of use in the field. I'm more concerned about that hill I
have to traverse on foot than finding _"Joe's diner"_ or the cheapest
alternative place to eat while driving a car.

 _"... digital maps are far more likely to be up to date. ..."_

Agreed here cf: the digital examples I gave. Digital maps for display (phones,
pda's, GPS) are really suited for showing directions from A to B &
_"thematic"_ layers of information that changes often, using the the cadastre
& topography to define location. Thematic information changes often. The
cadastre less often. The topography very little.

------
feral
I'm not fully sure what the author is trying to say here.

Is it that a small screen isn't as good for looking at geographic information?
If so, then I completely agree. But large tablet screens, touch surfaces,
pico-projectors, etc will all come, and be cheap in time.

Is it that there's a high density of information on an atlas? Well, yes, there
is - but this isn't necessarily a good thing. It can be hard to focus on the
information that you want. A large LCD surface, where you can choose which
layers you do and don't want, is surely better: maybe I just want to see
contour and topo information, and don't want to see political boundaries.

Maps are awesome, and were great technology. But we're starting to see digital
versions that will far exceed the paper ones in almost every way.

~~~
blahedo
At least in the short- to medium-term, it seems unlikely that we'll get
tablet-like machines that are of a size to compare favorably even to a travel-
size road atlas, much less a bookshelf or library atlas like in the OP. The
physical size of it is useful because it can take up a larger portion of your
field of vision, which better helps you get a sense of place within the mapped
region. Even in a large browser on my 24" iMac I have a somewhat frustrating
sense of looking through a too-small window that is blocking some of what I
want to see. If I zoom out, I lose resolution.

So maybe eventually, but I don't think we're "starting to see" electronic
atlases that uniformly exceed the paper variety. They are better in some ways
and worse in some ways, and that will remain true for at least another couple
decades, I think.

~~~
feral
The Microsoft Surface is 107cm x 56cm. I haven't done it, but I'd say the
experience of looking at at atlas on it, with multitouch zooming, and the
ability to turn on and off layers, compares favorably to using a library
atlas, like in the OP.

Is it compact and portable? No - but neither is a library atlas. How long
before this sort of technology is common place? Or a wall projector and
multitouch setup?

I don't know - but I strongly doubt it'll take decades. Decades is an awfully
long time these days.

~~~
gjm11
AIUI the display resolution of the Surface is 1024x768. That's not going to be
even slightly like using a large atlas, no matter how big it is.

(A display that large with substantially more pixels, plus all the wonderful
interactive things you can't do with paper, would be a fine thing indeed. But
the Surface isn't it, at least not yet. Maybe there'll be a Surface 2 with
much higher resolution?)

------
burgerbrain
Atlases certainly contain a staggering amount of information, but with their
usual size I would be hesitant to say that they are without equal in terms of
information _density_. Unless perhaps we mean bits/page, but that seems like
it's cheating a little.

This said, I do love my old atlas.

------
missy
I think question here is if Paper or Digital Format is better. The majority of
arguements we know, but there is also one more interesting question. Online
and Offline?

No matter currently how good digital copies of a map are, items like mobiles
have technical issues and if i m stuck somewhere without signal or the battery
is dead, a paper map is all we can use. Thinking of being stuck in the middle
of nowhere with a potentially default phone , i would still always have a
paper map in the car cause the pain of being without one when something like
that happens is worse then the convience of it being on my phone all other
times.

~~~
jleader
On the other hand, digital maps have a huge advantage in the level of detail
they can provide over a much wider area.

I still carry a Thomas Brothers street atlas of Los Angeles in my car as a
backup. If you haven't seen the old Thomas Guides, they're a wire-bound book
of a couple hundred or so pages; mostly a grid of detailed map pages, each
covering something like a 5x5 mile square of the city. They also have index
maps, freeway maps that just show freeways and their off-ramps, dozens of
pages of street-name indices, etc.

If I take a few hours drive (say, to Phoenix, or San Diego, or Las Vegas, or
the SF Bay area), I probably won't have such detailed paper maps with me, but
digital devices would be able to provide a similar level of detail in any of
those places.

------
protomyth
At least with computer map pages, I don't have to worry about the atlas
company (Rand McNally) leaving out some states due to space limitations.

------
orenmazor
information expressed in physical form is always better than digital.

especially if it's aged.

maybe this is me getting old, but I feel like younger people dont see this
anymore, unfortunately.

~~~
Groxx
You're just conflating utility with pleasure. Whether or not such behavior
increases with age is a different debate, but I will pose the question: is
that a good thing? For _your_ happiness, quite possibly. For _everyone's_...?

------
shithead
<http://bigthink.com/blogs/strange-maps>

[http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Maps-Atlas-Cartographic-
Curios...](http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Maps-Atlas-Cartographic-
Curiosities/dp/0142005258)

~~~
aw3c2
<http://www.bigmapblog.com/>

------
borism
why nobody has managed to create digital cartography as beautiful as this yet?

I mean, ability to pinch zoom into satellite photo of my neighborhood is
awesome and such, but I'd change it any day for beautiful (and correct!)
offline cartography like Times Atlas.

~~~
celoyd
The kind of information packing that you see in a good map (like the _Times
Atlas_ ) is nontrivial. Deciding which features to show, how to label them,
and how to arrange the labels is a knapsack problem. Plus, it often involves
hard-to-quantify local constraints about what’s most important in a given
area. (As a trivial example, a pond is a lot more important in the middle of
the Sahara than it would be in Bangladesh. There are many more subtle versions
of this.)

While it’s certainly possible to come up with good algorithms, and outfits
like Google Maps and Bing Maps have, maps are judged by esthetics and
practical usability as well as quantitative criteria[0], so the best results
are likely to be hand-tuned.

0\. Maps as opposed to the underlying GIS data, which is easier to judge
solely by whether it’s complete, precise, and accurate.

~~~
njharman
I can't remember / find the artcle (proly on HN) that explained how google
maps does (some of) the information packing, and visual display/emphasis of
what's important.

~~~
celoyd
I thought I remembered something like that but I couldn’t find it. Since you
mentioned it I looked a little further and found
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1311136> . This links to a page which has
rotted away; here’s a Wayback Machine version:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20101223025250/http://www.41latit...](http://web.archive.org/web/20101223025250/http://www.41latitude.com/post/557224600/map-
comparison) .

Thanks for the push!

