
Mourning the End of Paper Maps - elorant
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2019/oct/20/the-perfect-combination-of-art-and-science-mourning-the-end-of-paper-maps
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blackbrokkoli
Paper maps will prevail as long as not-rich people are interested in (real)
outdoor activities.

Paper maps have a consistency and security no digital navigation device I ever
owned or saw ever had.

I realize this is a kind of "get off my lawn" argument one could also make
about digital vs analog newspapers, or books.

The key is: If my Kindle decides to do some weird updating and requires re-
downloading all my books, well I guess I won't read on my subway ride home. If
my _map_ does that in northern Scandinavia, well now I am fucked.

Just print 5 maps and laminate them and you're pretty safe against weather and
time. Not so much with a digital map.

Print something and it will show that print as long as it is not physically
destructed. Not so much with a digital map ("oh, our services don't work in
this country ha ha. Did you not read the t&c?")

Sun glare. Off the grid for three weeks. Weight. None of this is a problem
with analog maps.

I guess you can solve most of these problems by throwing lots of money at god
knows what military/navy device, thus I specified non-rich people. Or you
know, just use a paper map.

~~~
jcadam
As far as I know, the US Army still teaches land navigation using a paper map,
protractor, pencil, and compass. At least they did when I was in (early
2000s).

Getting caught with a GPS-capable device on the land nav course was considered
cheating.

~~~
nwallin
Similarly, the Navy still teaches celestial navigation. Officially it's the
primary means of navigation, but I suspect a lot of navigators cheat.

~~~
jki275
Celestial navigation has not been a primary means of navigation at any time
since I was on active duty from 1995-2018. It has only recently begun to be
taught again at all -- maybe in the last 3-4 years IIRC.

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rbritton
I actually print and use paper maps a lot, specifically topographic maps. We
do a decent amount of backcountry riding, and while not completely accurate,
the USFS and USGS maps have various trails marked on them that are useful.

USGS publishes nicely formatted quadrangle-sized PDFs when smaller areas are
enough, and CalTopo provides custom PDF generation when it’s more useful to
specify a range. These I print at home on a 24” Epson 7800 and some paper I
really like for the purpose (iGage Weatherproof Paper).

~~~
arethuza
In the Scottish hills I carry an iPhone with OS mapping app with a backup
external battery pack, and usually a 'proper' OS paper map and a backup
printout of my route overlaid on an OS map. The idea that paper maps were
obsolete is news to me!

More than once I've had to give people my backup paper map copy because they
had no idea where they were, usually as their phone has run out of charge!

~~~
ghaff
The Ordinance Survey digital maps are great. But, yeah, I carry an external
battery pack, often even a spare smartphone, _and_ a paper map. The paper is
mostly just a backup but I don't want to be in a situation hiking where a dead
phone puts me in a bad position.

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oldandcold
I knew some folks that worked for Natural Resources Canada. They were part of
the "press team" who printed all sorts of wonderful maps. The press room held
an enormous high-speed press... I loved the smell of the place. Ink, oil,
machinery and reams of paper. These guys... so highly skilled, as much art as
technology. The maps were beautiful...even the ones with mistakes. They would
cut them up and make scratch pads out of them. All this was shut down years
ago... they knew the end was coming. It makes me sad just thinking about it.

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chrisseaton
There is no way that digital maps are anywhere near as practical, let alone
_more_ practical, yet.

Digital maps:

* rely on precious battery charge and weight

* aren't very robust

* are extremely hard to use in the dark or with night vision

* can't be cut and folded into something small and light enough to hold in a hand

* when portable aren't large enough for displaying on a table or wall for people to gather around

~~~
marcosdumay
Paper maps:

* weight a lot more than digital

* aren't robust to water, dirty, or even manipulation

* require extra equipment to read on the dark

* can be cut and folded, but lose usefulness on the process (I really don't get your claim that cell phones can't be hold in a hand)

But that last point is spot on. Ditto for the people talking about writing on
the map (digital could improve on this front).

Anyway navigating a paper map requires some careful folding and unfolding that
is quite slow, and you must carefully select what maps you'll bring every
time, while for digital maps you just bring the entire continent.

I don't see how one can declare any of them a clear win. The answer depends
too much on your use case.

~~~
chrisseaton
> aren't robust to water, dirty, or even manipulation

You just laminate them.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
And while they're at it, they should laminate their phone because it's not
robust to water, dirt or even manipulation either.

I know, I know, IP ratings. Okay... good luck.

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devicetray0
There's a beautiful map store in London that I visited. If I recall,
everything in there are contemporary "originals" \-- meaning printed in that
year, no re-printing. So a 1973 map of the Underground was from 1973. They
also had very old, beautiful maps. I wanted them all!

After 20 minutes, I began to realize my wife was casually leafing through
dozens of poster-size maps with £30,000 price stickers on them. My jaw nearly
dropped. Her hands held "art" that they valued at close to £500,000++. I also
realized I couldn't afford the map I wanted and left empty-handed

~~~
bazzargh
You can also visit the National Library of Scotland Map Room in Edinburgh -
they have a mindboggling 1.5 million sheet maps.
[https://www.nls.uk/collections/maps](https://www.nls.uk/collections/maps)

While they don't sell originals, they do reproductions on demand for a lot
less than 500k. I was just looking at a 1934 sheet for my wall, £27. Tho
mainly I go to their site to jump back and forth in time, they have a great
georeferenced map browser that lets you see how places have changed.

~~~
devicetray0
Great news! I'll have to check that out, thanks!

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cneurotic
One advantage of paper maps, for me, is that they're much better at installing
a 'model' for a city in your head.

With digital maps, I can navigate from place to place to place pretty easily.
But then I retain virtually no information. I end up with no 'nose' for how to
find my own way home.

But if I study a map on paper, laboriously plan my route in advance, and then
follow it IRL — it's like magic. That route is installed there forever.

Do that enough times, and navigating even really crazy big cities starts to
become instinctual. No GPS required.

~~~
xeromal
Yup, that's basically what I do on my motorcycle. I map out a route in my head
and try to memorize it. Even if I miss a road, I have a pretty good mental
model for alternative routes.

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newnewpdro
Paper charts are still alive and well in sailing

~~~
nicwolff
Well, they're alive. The USCG made paper charts optional for US-flagged
vessels in 2017. Most cruisers use chartplotters at the helm, and chart apps
on phones or tablets for route planning.

At this point, I tend to use my iPhone at the helm as well. The charts are
updated more often, and the location and tracking are very accurate (with an
external Bluetooth GPS).

[https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/07/18/2017-15...](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/07/18/2017-15056/equivalency-
determination-for-marine-charts-charts-or-maps-publications-and-navigation)

[https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/DCO%20Documents/5p/5ps/NV...](https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/DCO%20Documents/5p/5ps/NVIC/2016/NVIC_01-16_electronic_charts_and_publications.pdf)

~~~
newnewpdro
Obviously sailors are using modern navigational aids, they're a huge
improvement when they're operational.

But I sure hope you still keep your sextant and charts dry and safe below deck
somewhere if you spend any time at sea.

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Aloha
I'm convinced that learning how to navigate with a map book, made me less
likely to get lost.

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eldenbishop
I own a few Butler motorcycle maps. Phones kind of being impossibly
inconvenient on a bike. My riding suit even has a giant back pocket
specifically for easy access to a map.

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oldmapgallery
We come at this from a strange perspective, as we dealt in old maps for the
last thirty years or so, mostly paper, but on occasion things on silk, cotton
or rayon.

It's an amazing non-proprietary technology, paper. Even things that are water
damaged over the centuries, or obscured by foxing (a kind of staining), many
times can be reversed and brought back to a clean state(we've worked some near
miracles ourselves on some 18th century maps just recently). Without
vulnerability to bit-flip, or cosmic rays compromising the data and rendering
a work useless and corrupt, paper is lo-tech and easily enduring.

The paper map also enables a comprehensive view of the subject at many
different scales, without having to move a cursor, pinch or expand... none of
that, your eyes just take in and adjust. The benefit is an understanding of
context and relationship. When we do presentations at schools it always
interests us that there is a fragmented understanding of how things relate for
some students, which almost feels like an artifact of digital cartography. In
a digital world the constant zooming in an out, first to find the greater
region, and then to reach down into the detail of a street or land feature.
The problem is at that tight detailed scale, it's hard to see how it relates
to much of its surroundings. You can push around at that detailed level and
form some understanding, but it feels abstract, especially for those that
don't have the best visual memory. The paper map affords a certain level of
pattern recognition at different scales of detail without constant enlarging
and reorienting.

We have maps going as far back as the late 15th century with the matrix of the
paper being made of nothing more than cotton fiber, not gold or titanium, just
simple cotton. When we read of the challenge of preserving the digital world
and the technological progress of our species, it does concern us that even
the best storage technologies available might reach 100 years or so.

Timothy O'Reilly in a talk a few years ago mentioned the danger of how
technology can be lost. He mentioned how the great church, Hagia Sophia was
the largest building on earth for about 1000 years, but then there was a long
pause before anything came close to its stature again, almost as if the
technical understanding of how to build at that scale was lost. In an era
where almost everything is developed, distributed and saved in a digital
format, perhaps we should print more hard copies, not just for backup
purposes, but maybe for the unique perspective that that simple 2 dimensional
surface can supply.

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pflenker
It might be an unpopular opinion, but in my experience a sizable amount of
paper maps is just bad. I have more than once regretted buying hiking maps
which where missing trails or roads. These will die first (if they haven’t
already), and I can’t say I am sorry.

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bookofjoe
Screens are a transitional display medium: ubiquitous holographic projection
will make them as paper is to screens today.

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costcopizza
When we break up Big Tech, should we make them subsidize all these neat and
skilled professions they've effectively replaced?

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LifeLiverTransp
My brother new by profession alot of the paper cartographing crowd. They where
absolutly blown away by google maps. The concept, that somebody would freely
give away satellite images, the gold coins of cartography, was beyond
imagination for them.

Sometimes i think, this was the plan behind the piracy support by some
companys for some time. Disrupt the media companys and then take over.

Supply what others depend on for free - and wait until the industry collapses,
then rule the wastelands.

