Slow Maps...or Can Dinosaurs Learn to Fly?
USGS founded in 1879... to discover where resources were that could be exploited
the 19th century view of maps as scientific instruments in service of extraction
and yet the massive human labor of map-making through manual surveys
public domain maps have spawned the locative data industry today
topographic maps
- anti-pictorial
- they look neutral, but the things they put in and the things they leave out are *not* neutral
- they carry their own meta-data
mapping by aerial photography
- still required manual line drawings! ie, Hans Ullmer, the mountain cartographer and his hand-etching
- tremendous amount of hand labor then = tremendous amount of code labor today
now, the expansion of user domain of cartography in order to gather support from Congress with the National Map viewer
- but the early bias of maps for countryside was a problem after 9/11 - not a lot of data to help estimate the damage
people still need and want maps from the government
trying to get the government to support effective geographies of the city that would incorporate history, tales, and people's lives
organizing a meeting between the neographers and the government geography folks
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