Thursday, October 18, 2012

Why modern maps put everyone at the centre of the world

BBC 12 October 2012

From top left, clockwise: Person using GPS in car, antique map of the world, map of the British Isles, portrait of Louis XVI looking at a map, stack of ordnance survey maps


With new GPS technology, it is almost impossible to get lost nowadays. So how will the death of paper maps change the way we live, asks Simon Garfield.
Got truly and outstandingly lost recently? Enjoy the feeling while you can, for it's becoming an increasingly difficult task.
As a curious race we have always liked to know where we are, but it is now almost impossible not to know - our phones, computers and sat navs keep us continually co-ordinated, and through them we are involuntarily tracked ourselves. Once the preserve and privilege of the rich and influential, maps and accurate wayfinding have suddenly come to feel like a birthright, to the point where if things don't meet our expectations (good afternoon Apple Maps), we feel worse than deprived, we feel truly disorientated.

About the author
Simon Garfield
Simon Garfield is a journalist and author of On The Map: Why the World Looks The Way It Does

It is now hard for most people aged below 25 to remember a time when we used maps that folded (or at least maps that came folded from a shop, and never folded quite so well again). And it is a sobering thought that our most influential maps are now in the hands of a very new breed of cartographers.
These are not people traditionally charged with representing our landscape with carefully plotted co-ordinates and contours, and with recognisable symbols and important landmarks. The new maps are gridded by technicians and pixel masters, who may be more concerned with screen-loading speeds than the absence on a map of certain parts of, say, Manchester or Chicago.

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