Maps, Society & The Digital Age
Maps are a cultural artefact of humanity. Now they're being democratized and will play an even more important and interesting role in the digital age.
We’ve been making maps ever since we figured out how to use a stick to draw in the sand and how to make paint to draw on cave walls. Maps are a deeply embedded cultural technology. They are psychological references to navigate our world and our lives. We have mental maps for decision making, navigating relationships and more.
Maps play a vital role in human cultures and societies beyond just figuring out how to get to the nearest sushi restaurant. Maps can provide deep cultural and social insights such as political power systems, how we perceive the spaces around us and how we organise our societies.
Maps are also a form of communication between individuals and communities. They tell stories about our history, spirituality and art.
Anthropologists have long used maps in ethnographic research. Drawing the areas of the places and cultures they study, labelling them with spiritual landmarks, showing how societies move about their regions. Adding notations and insights. Now, most anyone will be able to be a sort of anthropologist. Adding nuance to our world.
Now, maps are evolving in interesting ways. And may well be a new channel for social media as the become more interesting. Smartphones are about to play a significant role, and in some ways already have, in rethinking our societies. In time, Augmented Reality (AR) tools via smartphones and smartglasses, will also play a role.
Until quite recently, for millennia, if you wanted a geographical map it was quite expensive. You needed ships, people to run those ships and then people who made nice drawings along with the materials on which to draw those maps. Until the arrival of the printing press. Which spurred us on to make new maps, adding new layers of context and our understanding of the world and societies.
We even liked to draw sea monsters, dragons and other such lovely beasts for creatures we did not understand or we thought must live in certain places. Our religious, political, economic and other cultural ideas fell upon our maps even as they revealed truths about our world.
The arrival of Google Maps opened a whole new world of opportunities. While Google Maps may seem, like their search engine, to dominate the world, that is mostly in the domain of the general public. Although there are many more niche uses of Google Maps. There are also map companies that enable some very interesting ways to enable sense making of our world.
But the uses of maps for the general public, for citizens, has been challenging until recently. Apple brought along its map app to rival Google. This spurred competition and has resulted in both products becoming much better. And now we’re starting to see more map apps come along.
It is often when a technology becomes invisible that it starts to get interesting. By invisible I mean that it’s so common that we don’t really think about it other than as a tool that we use in our daily lives. This is where we are with maps in our digital world.
You can already do quite a lot with Google Maps, from creating hiking trails for everyone or a select group or creating places to visit in other places for your vacation. Now, other maps are helping journalists and others add data layers to maps to gain deeper insights. Some are aimed at community groups and organisations wanting to create a more social media style experience.
As we democratize maps and they become not just more available, but a means of creation, they will begin to take on new sociocultural meaning. Helping us evolve our understanding of the world and explore new ways of sense making. Much as the internet and social media have done for us.
This adds a new contextual layer and adding a social element to them brings not just economic benefits, but societal benefits. Adding in data analysis and some AI tools like Machine Learning and Computer Vision make them even more valuable.
As the saying goes, it’s not the destination, it’s the journey. What interesting new journeys might we undertake with all these maps?