On The Origin of A Map

In a previous blog post in which I wrote about my favourite things, (excluding raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens), I mentioned my passion for maps, specifically atlases;

"Atlases - I personally find looking at an atlas an almost sexually exciting experience (but not quite - so no need to call the men in white coats yet). When at school, my friends would be saving up for playstation games, or asking for them as presents for birthdays, but instead I got all excited when the latest edition of the world atlas came out and would want that! I could just look at all the places for hours on end, trying try to understand how different places were related, how diverse and beautiful our natural landscape can be."

This passion for maps is in fact not just limited to atlases, but to geography and geospatial information as a whole (road, aerial, ground level, sensor data). In this post I will share with you why I like "maps"*, and the role, the increasing role they are playing and hopefully will play in the continued evolution of society.

* = I use the word map here as a generally recognisable word that conjures up the image of a geographical resource. Throughout this post, when I refer to map, the meaning should be taken to encompass geographic information and information geographically -- whatever the information and spatial context are.

At a purely basic level, to me, a "map" links intimately with proprioception, which essentially is the sense of ones body knowing the relative position of its body parts. An example might be knowing, even if blindfolded whether your arms were hanging down by your side or above your head. Also, proprioception can be general awareness, sometimes conscious, sometimes subconscious of your body's situation. For example how many of you right now are fully aware of the chair, or bed that supports you as you read this? (well everyone now!). Studies have also demonstrated that when a person looses, or experiences a distortion of proprioception, it severely impacts upon their ability to function well.

In this way, the positioning of ourselves internally, in turn relates externally to our surroundings. For example, the chair that supports my back, which rests on the floor and foundations of the building I am in - and so on until I would list the Eurasian tectonic plate, and even further afield to a planetary position. There is also the hippocampus component of the brain which is an important part in understanding location.

Therefore, I believe it can be said that humans have a biological preference, even a need to be able to relate to their spatial environment. Being able to relate allows for the first step in being able to understand. When we understand, we can reflect and when we reflect, we can know in a propositional manner the direction in which to travel.

"If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better."
- Lyndon B. Johnson

In recent years, the developments in linking information technology (I include cellular in this) and geography has unleashed a plethora of geographical pioneers into the community. These pioneers are a group of people using mapping technologies to satisfy their needs to relate, increasingly so to their environment. This army is over 1 billion in size and growing each day. They are the inhabitants of the planet they map.

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
- Reputed to be Chinese proverb

Online mapping tools (and by online, I mean broadband on computers and data connectivity on cellular devices) - free online tools are being placed in the hands of the public, spurring on this geographical evolution. Tools such as Google Maps and Google Earth (there are many others and examples of those include Bing Maps or NASA World Wind, but for this post, I am using Google's examples as I am most familiar with those, plus I find their mission, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.", or in this case geographically organize most congruent with my views) give people unparalleled power to know about their planet through exploration, through the sharing of cultural differences, through the unveiling of scientific discoveries and so many more ways than I can list here.

Each person, now more than ever, can readily feel their sense of place and communicate their knowledge to form new "maps" - "maps" that are not unfolded to show how to get from point A to point B (which is good as I could never fold them back up!), but "maps" that act as an invaluable weapon of connectivity for social collaboration, informational exchange and awareness that places which though still physically distant, no longer are emotionally distant and more so that we are responsible for these.

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. Evolutionary, we need to know where we are - and these online tools are only now allowing us to see the abundance of situations where a spatial element is an integral part of being.