10 ms·

Mourning the End of Paper Maps

98 points by elorant 7y ago

devicetray0 7y ago
There's a beautiful map store in London that I visited. If I recall, everything in there are contemporary "originals" -- meaning printed in that year, no re-printing. So a 1973 map of the Underground was from 1973. They also had very old, beautiful maps. I wanted them all! After 20 minutes, I began to realize my wife was casually leafing through dozens of poster-size maps with £30,000 price stickers on them. My jaw nearly dropped. Her hands held "art" that they valued at close to £500,000++. I also realized I couldn't afford the map I wanted and left empty-handed
- bazzargh 7y ago
  You can also visit the National Library of Scotland Map Room in Edinburgh - they have a mindboggling 1.5 million sheet maps. https://www.nls.uk/collections/maps https://www.nls.uk/collections/maps While they don't sell originals, they do reproductions on demand for a lot less than 500k. I was just looking at a 1934 sheet for my wall, £27. Tho mainly I go to their site to jump back and forth in time, they have a great georeferenced map browser that lets you see how places have changed.
  - devicetray0 7y ago
    Great news! I'll have to check that out, thanks!
rbritton 7y ago
I actually print and use paper maps a lot, specifically topographic maps. We do a decent amount of backcountry riding, and while not completely accurate, the USFS and USGS maps have various trails marked on them that are useful. USGS publishes nicely formatted quadrangle-sized PDFs when smaller areas are enough, and CalTopo provides custom PDF generation when it’s more useful to specify a range. These I print at home on a 24” Epson 7800 and some paper I really like for the purpose (iGage Weatherproof Paper).
- exergy 7y ago
  Indeed, paper maps are alive and well in the field of hiking/camping. It is a terrible experience trying to navigate even on the biggest of phone screens. Even the stuff one can print at home is, maybe, on an A3 sheet of paper, hopefully in colour. A vast improvement over the phone, and still not unwieldy. But to me, nothing compares to those huge mapsheets that fold accordion style. You can take in SO much more of your terrain and locate yourself so much better in your surroundings. One of my favourite things to do while out hiking is to sit with a compass and a map and try to identify peaks and glaciers. I could do it for hours. ETA: Everything I've heard about CalTopo makes it sound like God's gift to us.
- arethuza 7y ago
  In the Scottish hills I carry an iPhone with OS mapping app with a backup external battery pack, and usually a 'proper' OS paper map and a backup printout of my route overlaid on an OS map. The idea that paper maps were obsolete is news to me! More than once I've had to give people my backup paper map copy because they had no idea where they were, usually as their phone has run out of charge!
  - ghaff 7y ago
    The Ordinance Survey digital maps are great. But, yeah, I carry an external battery pack, often even a spare smartphone, and a paper map. The paper is mostly just a backup but I don't want to be in a situation hiking where a dead phone puts me in a bad position.
- davidw 7y ago
  Yeah, I'll carry a paper map for mountain biking out where I may not have a cell phone signal, as a backup to any maps stored on the phone. That said, I remember saving up a bit of money as a kid to get 2 or 3 USGS topo maps. Now, I can get pretty good topo maps of the entire world for free from my browser. That's a beautiful thing.
  - ticmasta 7y ago
    Have you used trailforks.com from pinkbike? Their app combines a lot of data with the actual map, plus it's hard to beat how current they are due to crowd-sourcing. Definitely focused on biking but expanding into other users and works offline.
newnewpdro 7y ago
Paper charts are still alive and well in sailing
- geephroh 7y ago
  Only for the sailors who like to remain alive and well...
- tr352 7y ago
  And flying.
- nicwolff 7y ago
  Well, they're alive. The USCG made paper charts optional for US-flagged vessels in 2017. Most cruisers use chartplotters at the helm, and chart apps on phones or tablets for route planning. At this point, I tend to use my iPhone at the helm as well. The charts are updated more often, and the location and tracking are very accurate (with an external Bluetooth GPS). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/07/18/2017-15056/equivalency-determination-for-marine-charts-charts-or-maps-publications-and-navigation https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/07/18/2017-15... https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/DCO%20Documents/5p/5ps/NVIC/2016/NVIC_01-16_electronic_charts_and_publications.pdf https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/DCO%20Documents/5p/5ps/NV...
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
    Obviously sailors are using modern navigational aids, they're a huge improvement when they're operational. But I sure hope you still keep your sextant and charts dry and safe below deck somewhere if you spend any time at sea.
- germinalphrase 7y ago
  Paper maps are nearly ubiquitous for routing in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota.
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
chrisseaton 7y ago
There is no way that digital maps are anywhere near as practical, let alone more practical, yet. Digital maps: * rely on precious battery charge and weight * aren't very robust * are extremely hard to use in the dark or with night vision * can't be cut and folded into something small and light enough to hold in a hand * when portable aren't large enough for displaying on a table or wall for people to gather around
- jacquesm 7y ago
  I was with you until the 'extremely hard to use in the dark or with night vision' because that is just about the only time they work much better than paper ones. But maps of all sorts are a dying breed, the bulk of the uses for maps were to find directions and turn-by-turn voice navigation has made the map component pretty much optional.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    What displays do you use for in the dark? For paper you can shine a pin-point of green light and read it. That works for old-style LCD like a CASIO watch but I've not seen it work for a display designed to be backlit like a tablet. And you'd need a specially adapted display that used an IR backlight to use with night vision - I haven't seen something like that in practice. My smart watch has a night vision mode, but that's an LCD.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      Anything with a backlight. As for night vision, you mean when wearing vision enhancement optics? I did not fully understand you the first time, I thought you meant night vision as in 'night adapted eyes', where you'd lower the intensity as much as possible not to ruin your night vision. Not sure what the implications would be for electronically enhanced optics but if they use a display you could of course put the map straight on the display?
      - chrisseaton 7y ago
Aloha 7y ago
I'm convinced that learning how to navigate with a map book, made me less likely to get lost.
oldandcold 7y ago
I knew some folks that worked for Natural Resources Canada. They were part of the "press team" who printed all sorts of wonderful maps. The press room held an enormous high-speed press... I loved the smell of the place. Ink, oil, machinery and reams of paper. These guys... so highly skilled, as much art as technology. The maps were beautiful...even the ones with mistakes. They would cut them up and make scratch pads out of them. All this was shut down years ago... they knew the end was coming. It makes me sad just thinking about it.
eldenbishop 7y ago
I own a few Butler motorcycle maps. Phones kind of being impossibly inconvenient on a bike. My riding suit even has a giant back pocket specifically for easy access to a map.
LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
My brother new by profession alot of the paper cartographing crowd. They where absolutly blown away by google maps. The concept, that somebody would freely give away satellite images, the gold coins of cartography, was beyond imagination for them. Sometimes i think, this was the plan behind the piracy support by some companys for some time. Disrupt the media companys and then take over. Supply what others depend on for free - and wait until the industry collapses, then rule the wastelands.
costcopizza 7y ago
When we break up Big Tech, should we make them subsidize all these neat and skilled professions they've effectively replaced?
bookofjoe 7y ago
Screens are a transitional display medium: ubiquitous holographic projection will make them as paper is to screens today.
pflenker 7y ago
It might be an unpopular opinion, but in my experience a sizable amount of paper maps is just bad. I have more than once regretted buying hiking maps which where missing trails or roads. These will die first (if they haven’t already), and I can’t say I am sorry.
blackbrokkoli 7y ago
Paper maps will prevail as long as not-rich people are interested in (real) outdoor activities. Paper maps have a consistency and security no digital navigation device I ever owned or saw ever had. I realize this is a kind of "get off my lawn" argument one could also make about digital vs analog newspapers, or books. The key is: If my Kindle decides to do some weird updating and requires re-downloading all my books, well I guess I won't read on my subway ride home. If my map does that in northern Scandinavia, well now I am fucked. Just print 5 maps and laminate them and you're pretty safe against weather and time. Not so much with a digital map. Print something and it will show that print as long as it is not physically destructed. Not so much with a digital map ("oh, our services don't work in this country ha ha. Did you not read the t&c?") Sun glare. Off the grid for three weeks. Weight. None of this is a problem with analog maps. I guess you can solve most of these problems by throwing lots of money at god knows what military/navy device, thus I specified non-rich people. Or you know, just use a paper map.
- SamuelAdams 7y ago
  Can confirm. I run the Great Lakes Relay [1] each year. It's a 275 mile course along northern Michigan. We go through some heavily wooded areas for multiple days at a time. We usually do not have cell service. Even GPS is spotty at times. Furthermore, the driving directions and running directions don't always use roads. Here's some examples: Driving directions: turn left at C509 (unmarked) for 2.9 miles. The exchange is past the creek. There will be big puddles, plow through them. Problems happen when you're in a Honda civic that can't go through 2.5 feet of water. So you have to turn around and find your own way to the exchange, with no cell service. We always bring multiple copies of a Michigan Atlas. This way we can pinpoint where we are (using GPS) and find nearby roads, despite the terrible race directions. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Relay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Relay
- jcadam 7y ago
  As far as I know, the US Army still teaches land navigation using a paper map, protractor, pencil, and compass. At least they did when I was in (early 2000s). Getting caught with a GPS-capable device on the land nav course was considered cheating.
umeshunni 7y ago
What a privileged, west-centric viewpoint. Much of the world did not have access to maps till the middle of the last decade when smartphones became the default way people navigated. I had never seen a map of my hometown in India (pop 1.3M) that was more detailed than the state or district-level till about 10 years ago, and now we have maps that show side-lanes and gullies and rickshaw pullers use their $50 smartphones with $3/mo data plans to find their way around. Romanticizing the past is great as long as you come from a rich background.
- Aloha 7y ago
  I guess they weren't needed then perhaps? Generally local maps here in the states, until the invention of the automobile were drawn up by whatever county or city the maps were for, yes, you could buy a copy, but they were not in common circulation unless you had a car.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    Some places aren't mapped for political/military reasons. The idea being that a public map would be helpful to an invading force so they are prohibited by law. In other places the maps are purposely incorrect to be of less use to an invading force. Making life hell for locals is considered an acceptable side effect for national security.
- 205guy 7y ago
  I think it's a bit harsh to call an article by, for, and about British and Australian map-making "privileged" and "west-centric" in the sense that it's tautological. It would be another whole article, and a fascinating one, to track civilian mapping in India from the British occupation to Lonely Planet guides. I encourage you to follow up on this idea, either to research and write it yourself or find others who can (maybe even write to the article's author to raise your point and suggest it). My experience in India as a student backpacking there 20 years ago was that tourist maps were inadequate, the LP guide was worth its price for the city maps alone, and locals on the street couldn't read either kind to help you. I don't know if it was illiteracy or just unfamiliarity, but outside of hotels and tourist centers, about half the people we asked on the street were baffled by a map and unable to orient themselves on it to help us. I'm sure they knew their way around, we just couldn't communicate with words (expected) or pointing at maps (unexpected). There is a sibling comment that says in some cases there were also military reasons. I don't know about India, but I did run across this in Ecuador. To get a topographic map to climb a volcano, we had to find the Military mapping office and show our passports. Obviously, they wanted some control over the cartographic information. Now, world-wide topographic maps are available on google maps with terrain turned on. The data for which I believe was obtained by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission in 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Radar_Topography_Mission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Radar_Topography_Missi...
cneurotic 7y ago
One advantage of paper maps, for me, is that they're much better at installing a 'model' for a city in your head. With digital maps, I can navigate from place to place to place pretty easily. But then I retain virtually no information. I end up with no 'nose' for how to find my own way home. But if I study a map on paper, laboriously plan my route in advance, and then follow it IRL — it's like magic. That route is installed there forever. Do that enough times, and navigating even really crazy big cities starts to become instinctual. No GPS required.
- xeromal 7y ago
  Yup, that's basically what I do on my motorcycle. I map out a route in my head and try to memorize it. Even if I miss a road, I have a pretty good mental model for alternative routes.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
oldmapgallery 7y ago
We come at this from a strange perspective, as we dealt in old maps for the last thirty years or so, mostly paper, but on occasion things on silk, cotton or rayon. It's an amazing non-proprietary technology, paper. Even things that are water damaged over the centuries, or obscured by foxing (a kind of staining), many times can be reversed and brought back to a clean state(we've worked some near miracles ourselves on some 18th century maps just recently). Without vulnerability to bit-flip, or cosmic rays compromising the data and rendering a work useless and corrupt, paper is lo-tech and easily enduring. The paper map also enables a comprehensive view of the subject at many different scales, without having to move a cursor, pinch or expand... none of that, your eyes just take in and adjust. The benefit is an understanding of context and relationship. When we do presentations at schools it always interests us that there is a fragmented understanding of how things relate for some students, which almost feels like an artifact of digital cartography. In a digital world the constant zooming in an out, first to find the greater region, and then to reach down into the detail of a street or land feature. The problem is at that tight detailed scale, it's hard to see how it relates to much of its surroundings. You can push around at that detailed level and form some understanding, but it feels abstract, especially for those that don't have the best visual memory. The paper map affords a certain level of pattern recognition at different scales of detail without constant enlarging and reorienting. We have maps going as far back as the late 15th century with the matrix of the paper being made of nothing more than cotton fiber, not gold or titanium, just simple cotton. When we read of the challenge of preserving the digital world and the technological progress of our species, it does concern us that even the best storage technologies available might reach 100 years or so. Timothy O'Reilly in a talk a few years ago mentioned the danger of how technology can be lost. He mentioned how the great church, Hagia Sophia was the largest building on earth for about 1000 years, but then there was a long pause before anything came close to its stature again, almost as if the technical understanding of how to build at that scale was lost. In an era where almost everything is developed, distributed and saved in a digital format, perhaps we should print more hard copies, not just for backup purposes, but maybe for the unique perspective that that simple 2 dimensional surface can supply.

98 points by elorant 7y ago

There's a beautiful map store in London that I visited. If I recall, everything in there are contemporary "originals" -- meaning printed in that year, no re-printing. So a 1973 map of the Underground was from 1973. They also had very old, beautiful maps. I wanted them all! After 20 minutes, I began to realize my wife was casually leafing through dozens of poster-size maps with £30,000 price stickers on them. My jaw nearly dropped. Her hands held "art" that they valued at close to £500,000++. I also realized I couldn't afford the map I wanted and left empty-handed

bazzargh 7y ago
You can also visit the National Library of Scotland Map Room in Edinburgh - they have a mindboggling 1.5 million sheet maps. https://www.nls.uk/collections/maps https://www.nls.uk/collections/maps While they don't sell originals, they do reproductions on demand for a lot less than 500k. I was just looking at a 1934 sheet for my wall, £27. Tho mainly I go to their site to jump back and forth in time, they have a great georeferenced map browser that lets you see how places have changed.
- devicetray0 7y ago
  Great news! I'll have to check that out, thanks!

rbritton 7y ago

I actually print and use paper maps a lot, specifically topographic maps. We do a decent amount of backcountry riding, and while not completely accurate, the USFS and USGS maps have various trails marked on them that are useful. USGS publishes nicely formatted quadrangle-sized PDFs when smaller areas are enough, and CalTopo provides custom PDF generation when it’s more useful to specify a range. These I print at home on a 24” Epson 7800 and some paper I really like for the purpose (iGage Weatherproof Paper).

exergy 7y ago
Indeed, paper maps are alive and well in the field of hiking/camping. It is a terrible experience trying to navigate even on the biggest of phone screens. Even the stuff one can print at home is, maybe, on an A3 sheet of paper, hopefully in colour. A vast improvement over the phone, and still not unwieldy. But to me, nothing compares to those huge mapsheets that fold accordion style. You can take in SO much more of your terrain and locate yourself so much better in your surroundings. One of my favourite things to do while out hiking is to sit with a compass and a map and try to identify peaks and glaciers. I could do it for hours. ETA: Everything I've heard about CalTopo makes it sound like God's gift to us.
arethuza 7y ago
In the Scottish hills I carry an iPhone with OS mapping app with a backup external battery pack, and usually a 'proper' OS paper map and a backup printout of my route overlaid on an OS map. The idea that paper maps were obsolete is news to me! More than once I've had to give people my backup paper map copy because they had no idea where they were, usually as their phone has run out of charge!
- ghaff 7y ago
  The Ordinance Survey digital maps are great. But, yeah, I carry an external battery pack, often even a spare smartphone, and a paper map. The paper is mostly just a backup but I don't want to be in a situation hiking where a dead phone puts me in a bad position.
davidw 7y ago
Yeah, I'll carry a paper map for mountain biking out where I may not have a cell phone signal, as a backup to any maps stored on the phone. That said, I remember saving up a bit of money as a kid to get 2 or 3 USGS topo maps. Now, I can get pretty good topo maps of the entire world for free from my browser. That's a beautiful thing.
- ticmasta 7y ago
  Have you used trailforks.com from pinkbike? Their app combines a lot of data with the actual map, plus it's hard to beat how current they are due to crowd-sourcing. Definitely focused on biking but expanding into other users and works offline.

newnewpdro 7y ago

Paper charts are still alive and well in sailing

geephroh 7y ago
Only for the sailors who like to remain alive and well...
tr352 7y ago
And flying.
nicwolff 7y ago
Well, they're alive. The USCG made paper charts optional for US-flagged vessels in 2017. Most cruisers use chartplotters at the helm, and chart apps on phones or tablets for route planning. At this point, I tend to use my iPhone at the helm as well. The charts are updated more often, and the location and tracking are very accurate (with an external Bluetooth GPS). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/07/18/2017-15056/equivalency-determination-for-marine-charts-charts-or-maps-publications-and-navigation https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/07/18/2017-15... https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/DCO%20Documents/5p/5ps/NVIC/2016/NVIC_01-16_electronic_charts_and_publications.pdf https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/DCO%20Documents/5p/5ps/NV...
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  Obviously sailors are using modern navigational aids, they're a huge improvement when they're operational. But I sure hope you still keep your sextant and charts dry and safe below deck somewhere if you spend any time at sea.
germinalphrase 7y ago
Paper maps are nearly ubiquitous for routing in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota.
- newnewpdro 7y ago

chrisseaton 7y ago

There is no way that digital maps are anywhere near as practical, let alone more practical, yet. Digital maps: * rely on precious battery charge and weight * aren't very robust * are extremely hard to use in the dark or with night vision * can't be cut and folded into something small and light enough to hold in a hand * when portable aren't large enough for displaying on a table or wall for people to gather around

jacquesm 7y ago
I was with you until the 'extremely hard to use in the dark or with night vision' because that is just about the only time they work much better than paper ones. But maps of all sorts are a dying breed, the bulk of the uses for maps were to find directions and turn-by-turn voice navigation has made the map component pretty much optional.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  What displays do you use for in the dark? For paper you can shine a pin-point of green light and read it. That works for old-style LCD like a CASIO watch but I've not seen it work for a display designed to be backlit like a tablet. And you'd need a specially adapted display that used an IR backlight to use with night vision - I haven't seen something like that in practice. My smart watch has a night vision mode, but that's an LCD.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Anything with a backlight. As for night vision, you mean when wearing vision enhancement optics? I did not fully understand you the first time, I thought you meant night vision as in 'night adapted eyes', where you'd lower the intensity as much as possible not to ruin your night vision. Not sure what the implications would be for electronically enhanced optics but if they use a display you could of course put the map straight on the display?
    - chrisseaton 7y ago

Aloha 7y ago

I'm convinced that learning how to navigate with a map book, made me less likely to get lost.

oldandcold 7y ago

I knew some folks that worked for Natural Resources Canada. They were part of the "press team" who printed all sorts of wonderful maps. The press room held an enormous high-speed press... I loved the smell of the place. Ink, oil, machinery and reams of paper. These guys... so highly skilled, as much art as technology. The maps were beautiful...even the ones with mistakes. They would cut them up and make scratch pads out of them. All this was shut down years ago... they knew the end was coming. It makes me sad just thinking about it.

eldenbishop 7y ago

I own a few Butler motorcycle maps. Phones kind of being impossibly inconvenient on a bike. My riding suit even has a giant back pocket specifically for easy access to a map.

LifeLiverTransp 7y ago

My brother new by profession alot of the paper cartographing crowd. They where absolutly blown away by google maps. The concept, that somebody would freely give away satellite images, the gold coins of cartography, was beyond imagination for them. Sometimes i think, this was the plan behind the piracy support by some companys for some time. Disrupt the media companys and then take over. Supply what others depend on for free - and wait until the industry collapses, then rule the wastelands.

costcopizza 7y ago

When we break up Big Tech, should we make them subsidize all these neat and skilled professions they've effectively replaced?

bookofjoe 7y ago

Screens are a transitional display medium: ubiquitous holographic projection will make them as paper is to screens today.

pflenker 7y ago

It might be an unpopular opinion, but in my experience a sizable amount of paper maps is just bad. I have more than once regretted buying hiking maps which where missing trails or roads. These will die first (if they haven’t already), and I can’t say I am sorry.

blackbrokkoli 7y ago

Paper maps will prevail as long as not-rich people are interested in (real) outdoor activities. Paper maps have a consistency and security no digital navigation device I ever owned or saw ever had. I realize this is a kind of "get off my lawn" argument one could also make about digital vs analog newspapers, or books. The key is: If my Kindle decides to do some weird updating and requires re-downloading all my books, well I guess I won't read on my subway ride home. If my map does that in northern Scandinavia, well now I am fucked. Just print 5 maps and laminate them and you're pretty safe against weather and time. Not so much with a digital map. Print something and it will show that print as long as it is not physically destructed. Not so much with a digital map ("oh, our services don't work in this country ha ha. Did you not read the t&c?") Sun glare. Off the grid for three weeks. Weight. None of this is a problem with analog maps. I guess you can solve most of these problems by throwing lots of money at god knows what military/navy device, thus I specified non-rich people. Or you know, just use a paper map.

SamuelAdams 7y ago
Can confirm. I run the Great Lakes Relay [1] each year. It's a 275 mile course along northern Michigan. We go through some heavily wooded areas for multiple days at a time. We usually do not have cell service. Even GPS is spotty at times. Furthermore, the driving directions and running directions don't always use roads. Here's some examples: Driving directions: turn left at C509 (unmarked) for 2.9 miles. The exchange is past the creek. There will be big puddles, plow through them. Problems happen when you're in a Honda civic that can't go through 2.5 feet of water. So you have to turn around and find your own way to the exchange, with no cell service. We always bring multiple copies of a Michigan Atlas. This way we can pinpoint where we are (using GPS) and find nearby roads, despite the terrible race directions. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Relay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Relay
jcadam 7y ago
As far as I know, the US Army still teaches land navigation using a paper map, protractor, pencil, and compass. At least they did when I was in (early 2000s). Getting caught with a GPS-capable device on the land nav course was considered cheating.

umeshunni 7y ago

What a privileged, west-centric viewpoint. Much of the world did not have access to maps till the middle of the last decade when smartphones became the default way people navigated. I had never seen a map of my hometown in India (pop 1.3M) that was more detailed than the state or district-level till about 10 years ago, and now we have maps that show side-lanes and gullies and rickshaw pullers use their $50 smartphones with $3/mo data plans to find their way around. Romanticizing the past is great as long as you come from a rich background.

Aloha 7y ago
I guess they weren't needed then perhaps? Generally local maps here in the states, until the invention of the automobile were drawn up by whatever county or city the maps were for, yes, you could buy a copy, but they were not in common circulation unless you had a car.
- jandrese 7y ago
  Some places aren't mapped for political/military reasons. The idea being that a public map would be helpful to an invading force so they are prohibited by law. In other places the maps are purposely incorrect to be of less use to an invading force. Making life hell for locals is considered an acceptable side effect for national security.
205guy 7y ago
I think it's a bit harsh to call an article by, for, and about British and Australian map-making "privileged" and "west-centric" in the sense that it's tautological. It would be another whole article, and a fascinating one, to track civilian mapping in India from the British occupation to Lonely Planet guides. I encourage you to follow up on this idea, either to research and write it yourself or find others who can (maybe even write to the article's author to raise your point and suggest it). My experience in India as a student backpacking there 20 years ago was that tourist maps were inadequate, the LP guide was worth its price for the city maps alone, and locals on the street couldn't read either kind to help you. I don't know if it was illiteracy or just unfamiliarity, but outside of hotels and tourist centers, about half the people we asked on the street were baffled by a map and unable to orient themselves on it to help us. I'm sure they knew their way around, we just couldn't communicate with words (expected) or pointing at maps (unexpected). There is a sibling comment that says in some cases there were also military reasons. I don't know about India, but I did run across this in Ecuador. To get a topographic map to climb a volcano, we had to find the Military mapping office and show our passports. Obviously, they wanted some control over the cartographic information. Now, world-wide topographic maps are available on google maps with terrain turned on. The data for which I believe was obtained by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission in 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Radar_Topography_Mission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Radar_Topography_Missi...

cneurotic 7y ago

One advantage of paper maps, for me, is that they're much better at installing a 'model' for a city in your head. With digital maps, I can navigate from place to place to place pretty easily. But then I retain virtually no information. I end up with no 'nose' for how to find my own way home. But if I study a map on paper, laboriously plan my route in advance, and then follow it IRL — it's like magic. That route is installed there forever. Do that enough times, and navigating even really crazy big cities starts to become instinctual. No GPS required.

xeromal 7y ago
Yup, that's basically what I do on my motorcycle. I map out a route in my head and try to memorize it. Even if I miss a road, I have a pretty good mental model for alternative routes.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

oldmapgallery 7y ago

We come at this from a strange perspective, as we dealt in old maps for the last thirty years or so, mostly paper, but on occasion things on silk, cotton or rayon. It's an amazing non-proprietary technology, paper. Even things that are water damaged over the centuries, or obscured by foxing (a kind of staining), many times can be reversed and brought back to a clean state(we've worked some near miracles ourselves on some 18th century maps just recently). Without vulnerability to bit-flip, or cosmic rays compromising the data and rendering a work useless and corrupt, paper is lo-tech and easily enduring. The paper map also enables a comprehensive view of the subject at many different scales, without having to move a cursor, pinch or expand... none of that, your eyes just take in and adjust. The benefit is an understanding of context and relationship. When we do presentations at schools it always interests us that there is a fragmented understanding of how things relate for some students, which almost feels like an artifact of digital cartography. In a digital world the constant zooming in an out, first to find the greater region, and then to reach down into the detail of a street or land feature. The problem is at that tight detailed scale, it's hard to see how it relates to much of its surroundings. You can push around at that detailed level and form some understanding, but it feels abstract, especially for those that don't have the best visual memory. The paper map affords a certain level of pattern recognition at different scales of detail without constant enlarging and reorienting. We have maps going as far back as the late 15th century with the matrix of the paper being made of nothing more than cotton fiber, not gold or titanium, just simple cotton. When we read of the challenge of preserving the digital world and the technological progress of our species, it does concern us that even the best storage technologies available might reach 100 years or so. Timothy O'Reilly in a talk a few years ago mentioned the danger of how technology can be lost. He mentioned how the great church, Hagia Sophia was the largest building on earth for about 1000 years, but then there was a long pause before anything came close to its stature again, almost as if the technical understanding of how to build at that scale was lost. In an era where almost everything is developed, distributed and saved in a digital format, perhaps we should print more hard copies, not just for backup purposes, but maybe for the unique perspective that that simple 2 dimensional surface can supply.