Map-ersonality

So, I have been watching with fascinating the BBC Four documentary series The Beauty of Maps. I watch this with a level of excitement matched only by seeing Angelina Jolie and her pouty lips in a film.

As I have previously written, I have a real passion for all things map related.

"Ultimately, geographic information is adopting a new stance whereby this geographic information is instead becoming information, geographically. An ever evolving web of uniquely distilled user-created knowledge is dispelling the myth that a map has only a small repertoire of uses."
Part of Tuesday's episode (the link may not work for viewers outside the UK) showed the work of an artist by the name of Stephen Walter, the creator of a piece titled "The Island".

"Stephen Walter's contemporary image, The Island, plays with notions of cartographic order and respectability. His extraordinary London map looks at first glance to be just as precise and ordered as his hero Rocque's but, looking closer, it includes 21st century markings such as 'favourite kebab vans' and sites of 'personal heartbreak'."
On the one hand, I applaud Mr Walter's efforts. Indeed the map is a wonderful and creative piece on which the artist celebrates his life's experiences through geography. For that, I hope you will visit his site and with admiration, pay close attention to the detailed and diligent efforts required to create this work.

I do however have a problem with a quote given by the artist, Stephen Walter. So, the joy I experienced with learning of his work, was met with disagreement at his comment;

"I think this is a certain time in human history where so much is already figured out and mapped."
I disagree strongly that "so much is already figured out and mapped". I don't think we have even begun to scrape the surface.

In my opinion, maps up until very recently have primarily been sources of the simple form of where things are, how one would get from point A to point B, or that Shaftesbury Avenue goes to Piccadilly Circus in London. This as far as I'm concerned is extremely basic data (I agree however it has not come about easily or quickly), essentially showing a bunch of trigonometrical aspects. There is no emotion, no personality to this data -- I believe a true map should encompass the scientific and the emotive.

"When we understand every single secret of the universe, there will still be left the eternal mystery of the human heart."
- Stephen Fry (possibly quoting Ludwig Wittgenstein)

From my perspective, maps have a personality, a history, a story behind them - they have a soul. Undeniably a location is about a specific location - one with a longitude and latitude, but they have so much more - and I don't believe we will be anywhere close being able to say that so much is already mapped until these are easily and regularly included in a map.

Historically, maps were for the elite to show how important they were - that their region was so important, it was worthy of the cartographer's efforts to set out on an expedition to create an accurate map of the area.

Now, at this defining moment in history where geography and technology cohabit each others lives, I am most optimistic that many more maps - perhaps even the maps which we accept as the new official (non-Ordnance Survey type data) order of maps will inherit what I call "Map-ersonality". The ability to explore a map where I can learn not only about the physical nature of that location, but all the stories behind it, the opinions people have of it location and why these exist. This would be the beginning of mapping so much. Potentially this gives a map the amazing possibility - the possibility to hold an amount of personality and power equivalent to that of a human mind.

The land surface of planet earth is approximately 148,940,000,000,000 m² and there are approximately 6,500,000,000 people and growing. If each person was to give their opinion - a piece of their soul to each square meter (even if it was to say it wasn't a big one), then potentially, a map would contain 9.6811 × 10²³ elements. Maybe that's something to think about?

Of course, a more accurate figure would be far less as each person cannot give an opinion on each m² - however, what we can all give is a large volume of our a soul to several locations, so the actual volume of information could be just as high? I don't know, maybe!

So, have we already "mapped so much"? Nah, still plenty more powers of ten to go and the addition of the human soul alongside the M25.

So with those mind-boggling figures, I will end this post.

But next time you look at a map, or are participating online to build a future map, consider...

I approach each day as if I know so little about maps, except from one thing. I have a curiosity about them.