3 ms·

Pedantry? No, geography. A traditional use of maps is for the living to draw the locations with emotional significance to the deceased (and then you'd post th

Pedantry? No, geography. A traditional use of maps is for the living to draw the locations with emotional significance to the deceased (and then you'd post them in their tomb). Chinese and Japanese maps both were more concerned with political and emotional importance than absolute scale. So it is with many tribal cultures. Map-making as Westerners understand it may be completely foreign. Certainly it was for the Native Americans, and you see maps in tribal cultures reference landmarks and geographies that you simply can't see or understand without a deep understanding of the flora and fauna, with (what we would call) "distortions" applied to emphasize danger, or emotional meaning, or cultural import. Except they're not distortions. They're accurate to the user of the map. They're just not accurate to your GPS system. Absolute scale is the only thing GPS is concerned with, but being able to define anything absolutely is an incredibly modern thing. I don't see it as "people around the world who are buying tools that improve their lots in life." I think you are expressing a very imperialist mindset with the words you are using. A GPS system which cannot innately apply emotional or cultural distortions to match the worldview of the user is, by that very nature, imposing the worldview of the GPS creator on it. So, yes, I think manifest destiny is exactly what you're advocating for in your comments here.

alexqgb 14y ago
Did it ever occur to you that cartographic paradigms are like languages? In the same way you can learn French without giving up Italian, did you know you can learn to see the world through a new lens without abandoning one that's very different? I'm asking because you note that "Chinese and Japanese maps both were more concerned with political and emotional importance than absolute scale." Like I said before, this isn't news to me. I've spent a fair amount of time with traditional Chinese cartography. I understand (and greatly appreciate) how fluidly it's related to Chinese poetry and literature, incorporating them in ways that are largely alien to the western map-making tradition. But I'm also aware that China is launching its own GPS system, and that people in China do, in fact, use GPS to find their way around. Indeed, they're investing in it heavily. I'm sorry, but "choosing to invest in a technology" is just not the same as "being murdered en masse by foreigners claiming divine justification."
- vitovito 14y ago
  While I'm sure there are lots of people who use geo-aware devices to improve their lives, being both a geographer by education and a UX designer by profession means I'm also sure lots of them would prefer to use a geo-aware device which takes their cultural preferences into account. While a culture doesn't "have" to abandon its old ways, when a militarily superior presence arrives and says "we own all of this now because this GPS-made map says so" and you have no way of representing your territorial boundaries except in terms of "that sacred land on the third loop of this animal's migratory trail" and "twelve generations of reconstructing this holy temple in the same spot which moves because it's on the shore of a river that changes course and width and breadth constantly," and your kids who were previously happy hunting in the forest by day and smoking around a campfire by night now want guns and jeans and Nintendos because they're novel, it's hard to reconcile the two. Now you have to figure out French without anyone wanting to teach it to you, because then they don't get to pave over your Italian land if you figure out how to explain that it's yours in French, and also stop your kids from becoming indentured French servants just to spite you. It's a technology that's been forced upon you; you haven't been given the choice to "invest" in it on your own terms. These are real things that happen. This is not a contrived example. This is what geographers at my alma mater dealt with, teaching non-first-world peoples how to use GPS against encroaching developers and governments, and how to translate between their native cultural "distortions" and the emotionlessness, meaninglessness, absolutism of GPS and GIS.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - alexqgb 14y ago
    Right, that's about as many reversals as I can handle in one thread. Good luck with the job hunt.

alexqgb 14y ago

Did it ever occur to you that cartographic paradigms are like languages? In the same way you can learn French without giving up Italian, did you know you can learn to see the world through a new lens without abandoning one that's very different? I'm asking because you note that "Chinese and Japanese maps both were more concerned with political and emotional importance than absolute scale." Like I said before, this isn't news to me. I've spent a fair amount of time with traditional Chinese cartography. I understand (and greatly appreciate) how fluidly it's related to Chinese poetry and literature, incorporating them in ways that are largely alien to the western map-making tradition. But I'm also aware that China is launching its own GPS system, and that people in China do, in fact, use GPS to find their way around. Indeed, they're investing in it heavily. I'm sorry, but "choosing to invest in a technology" is just not the same as "being murdered en masse by foreigners claiming divine justification."

vitovito 14y ago
While I'm sure there are lots of people who use geo-aware devices to improve their lives, being both a geographer by education and a UX designer by profession means I'm also sure lots of them would prefer to use a geo-aware device which takes their cultural preferences into account. While a culture doesn't "have" to abandon its old ways, when a militarily superior presence arrives and says "we own all of this now because this GPS-made map says so" and you have no way of representing your territorial boundaries except in terms of "that sacred land on the third loop of this animal's migratory trail" and "twelve generations of reconstructing this holy temple in the same spot which moves because it's on the shore of a river that changes course and width and breadth constantly," and your kids who were previously happy hunting in the forest by day and smoking around a campfire by night now want guns and jeans and Nintendos because they're novel, it's hard to reconcile the two. Now you have to figure out French without anyone wanting to teach it to you, because then they don't get to pave over your Italian land if you figure out how to explain that it's yours in French, and also stop your kids from becoming indentured French servants just to spite you. It's a technology that's been forced upon you; you haven't been given the choice to "invest" in it on your own terms. These are real things that happen. This is not a contrived example. This is what geographers at my alma mater dealt with, teaching non-first-world peoples how to use GPS against encroaching developers and governments, and how to translate between their native cultural "distortions" and the emotionlessness, meaninglessness, absolutism of GPS and GIS.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- alexqgb 14y ago
  Right, that's about as many reversals as I can handle in one thread. Good luck with the job hunt.