Tag: maps

Ground-Truthing

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: 2 mins

The upcoming issue of The New Yorker includes an article first
released yesterday to the magazine’s web site. 
"Getting
There: The science of driving directions," offers a sharp-right overview of
evolving navigational technologies, running from Rand McNally paper maps to
their updated on-dash equivalents.  A brief history of automobile
navigation gets a few column inches, too; both the "Jones Live-Map" and the "Photo-Auto
Guide" were early twentieth century contrivances for first-person (um,
first-vehicle?) navigating.  Though it’s only briefly mentioned and mixed
in with a bunch of other fun, interesting details, one proposition is that we’re
seeing a resurgence in egocentric navigational devices with various mobile
gadgets.

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Scent of Maps

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: 3 mins

Again and again we’ve read articles by D.R. Fraser Taylor this semester on
the coming revolution of cybercartography (even if that rev. arrived a year ago
with Google Maps and its API). Taylor takes credit for coining "cybercartography"
in his 1997 keynote address, "Maps and Mapping in the Information Era" at the
ICC conference in Sweden. Conceptually, cybercartography relaxes
cartography from the constraints of paper; the map-maker and the map-user blend
together; their products–often dynamic and unconventional–play a range from
physical maps to imaginaries and abstraction (idio-data), often at the computer
interface. The "false objectivity" of physical maps is loosened to the
enigmas and wonder. Consequently we have a disturbance of traditional
cartography (i.e. the map-maker, his instruments, and ink).

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Nodes from Class

/ Derek Mueller / 7 Comments
⏳ Approximate reading time: 2 mins


Here’s a Cmap
draft of the development of modern composition studies, roughly
reproduced from notes on the board during Tuesday’s
712. I went
back and snapped a digital photo of the
chalkboard yesterday
(preserved from the day before with a "Please do not erase"). Then, to
develop the Cmap, I inserted the
photograph as a temporary background to approximate the spatial arrangement of
links and nodes. After that, I quick-shopped a
periodization
backdrop to emphasize the past few decades as phases of disciplinary
development (fluctuation, upheaval, etc.). And finally, I shifted around a
few of the nodes, repositioned other stuff, tinkered with color schemes and sent
off a draft for future–ongoing–revisions. The map of complandia?
Certainly not; not in any perfected, exhaustive or territory-analog kind of way. But one map of complandia. Next I need to
figure out how to set up Cmaps on a server for collaborative map-making.
I’ll argue that this model holds promise for 1.) mapping complex histories; 2.)
exploring incongruous accounts of disciplinary formation, extradisciplinary developments
running through those formations, and sub-disciplinary peaks and valleys (rising
and falling, trends, etc.); and 3.) charting disciplinary mythologies and
imaginaries through the idiosyncrasies of individual and group
percept-cartography (granted, I don’t know that there is such a thing as
"percept-cartography"; I’m making that part up on the fly). Although this
map came together during a single class session, it could be updated, for pretty much any course, let’s say, over several weeks, possibly accounting for emerging ties and
emerging locative criteria/rationale as the course unfolds.

Making a Map?

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: 3 mins

If a person uses Google Maps (or Google Local…) to mark all of the
breweries in Chicago,
let’s say, has s.he created a map?

I asked this question today in GEO781, and I learned that just as all
comprhetors don’t agree on what writing is, all geographers don’t agree
on what mapping is. I don’t want to exaggerate the gape between
physical geography and social or human geography, but as these sub-disciplinary
orientations go, so goes the willingness/reluctance to regard maps as
representational and also rhetorical rather than as empirical or somehow
data-rigid.

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Mapping War

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: < 1 min


A colleague from the cybercartography course shared an email with this link
to the Iraq War Coalition Fatalities Map
produced in Flash by graphic designer Tim Klimowicz. He mentioned it
during yesterday’s session when we were working through maps and motion. It’s both upsetting
and fascinating: upsetting for the long sequence of flarepoints indicative of
deaths, fascinating as an example of design, map animation and the coordination
of temporal and geographic data.

Rrove

/ Derek Mueller / 5 Comments
⏳ Approximate reading time: 2 mins


Rrove is one of the
latest site-tagging apps making use of Google Maps API (via
& credit). I signed up for
an account this
morning and tested it with a link to the Palmer House in Chicago, site of the
’06 CCCC late next month. Rrove also has a community setting, so it might
be useful for conference hosting, collaborative markups of an area, and so on.
My first impression is that it’s a kind of geospatial del.icio.us, and although
the site still lacks a few features (such as RSS) common to the web 2.0 lineup,
I’m holding out hope that those features will roll out any day now. I have
other motives for seeing a web2.0-rich version of Rrove, not the least of which
is my GEO781 project, which, from my perspective several weeks removed from its
completion, will deal with some of the ways we might begin to recognize
cybercartography as writing. Still fuzzy (not discouragingly so), but I
think I’ll be dealing with Wayfaring,
Frappr and Rrove, developing
some of my earlier thinking on the
photographemic
map and
memorial froms, while sorting through theoretical/pedagogical rationale for
(hyper)imagetext integration of geospatial writing. I just received my copy of
Google Maps Hacks
yesterday, too, and after leafing through it for a few minutes, I would guess
it’s going to be manageable to begin working up customized maps very soon.

On a related note, one of my colleagues in class (who studies and teaches
physical geography) raised several really interesting questions about the
discord between the textual/encyclopedic side of Wikipedia and its stalled
counterpart, WikiAtlas. It set us off into some fairly provocative
exchange about atlas authorship, and also got me thinking again about what
Manovich does with paradigmatic and syntagmatic. From my perspective, the
energy surrounding cybercartography is in the multitude of overlays more than
the landforms in the background. The excitement centers on the syntagmatic
possibilities for the map; its writability.

Phenetic Urge

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: 2 mins

I was reading along in an article called "Neighbourhoods on the Net" when I
ran across an unfamiliar phrase: phenetic urge. The article evaluates the
impact of datasets circulating online about real neighborhoods.  The three
authors collected links to 33 sites that make use of "geodemographic"
data–income, pollution, average selling price homes, etc.  They reduced
the list to seventeen profiled examples, and from there, zeroed in on four sites
for extended "case studies." To conclude, the article offers a set of
implications for policy, which includes conclusions about screwy data leading to
flawed representations of certain places and accessibility concerns,
notably–and repeatedly–cast in terms of age and economic status ("Those
sections of the population that are financially unable and/or unwilling (as is
the case with many older people) to access online sources will be increasingly
disadvantaged as information availability and society’s dependence on it
expands" (37)).

Phenetic urge nods to the taxonomy impulse, the classificatory move. 
Here’s the immediate context:

Allowing for the enormous difficulties involved in ‘un-inventing’ IBNIS
[‘Internet-based Neightbourhood Information Systems’] (let alone the ‘phenetic
urge’ of which they are so potent a symbol), the core policy issue to come out
of this report is how best to ensure that the advantages of IBNIS are not
outweighed by the disadvantages listed above. (36)

Specifically, the disadvantages are much like those I already mentioned: "mis-characterising
localities," "inacurate depiction[s]," "unwarranted ‘redlining,’" and "online
marginalisation."   Ultimately, the concern-as-delivered is over the
datasets (geodemographic and, perhaps, beyond) representing neighbourhoods on
the net.  A Beckettian critique: "The danger is in the neatness of
identifications."  IBNIS, their place-identifying data, are a potent symbol
of "phenetic urges."

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Frappring the Consortium

/ Derek Mueller / 6 Comments
⏳ Approximate reading time: 2 mins

Before the break, I spent part of an afternoon mapping all of the programs from the Composition and
Rhetoric Consortium web site into
Frappr, then copying/pasting the
associated informational bits and URLs.  Once finished:
a Frappr of the Comp/Rhet
Consortium.  Sing sweet confessions, it was a fit of uninhibited geekiness,
motivated in part by my recollection that, when I decided to apply to doctoral
programs, I didn’t have a simple way to single out the programs proximate to the
Great Lakes–closest to where we ultimately hoped to move after KC. 
Of course, the map stands the chance of amplifying other
(surprising-insightful?) qualities of the consortium’s East-leaning geography.
It’s possible that I’ve missed a program or two.  If you spot one, please
let me know.  I’ll add it (as long as its affiliation is undisputed).

Beyond that, there’s another practical motivation: I’d been meaning to give
Frappr a whirl (initially, I was thinking a collective
From
project with a DL course).  It’s free and relatively easy.  The groups
systematically associated  with the CR Consortium seem a bit off. 
The Crochet Dude and
Dr. Vino? Uh…if you insist. 
Also, the system wants to remain open for others to add themselves. It would be
nice if there was a moderator feature for sifting new member additions (the
moderator is able to delete membrs and comments, fwiw, but anyone can add…I
think). 
Also, the data and profiles are somewhat constrained.  It’s not
possible–yet–to reorganize the listing of members.  They can be sorted by
location, but you’ll see that Syracuse is listed at the top.  I can’t
change that (well, right, maybe I wouldn’t if I could, but still).

My hunch is that another mapping option (Google Maps EZ or a Google Maps API hack)
would be better suited for the CR Consortium.  And although Frappr does an
okay job of making available what I’d hoped to, I just might tinker with
switching the map to a different system in the months ahead–especially if the
geography course I’m taking encourages experimentation with Google Maps/Google
Local.

Wayfaring

/ Derek Mueller / 4 Comments
⏳ Approximate reading time: < 1 min

I signed up for a free Wayfaring
account yesterday after I ran across it in this list of Web 2.0 apps (via). 
Having monkeyed with it for a few minutes (btw, there’s a greasemonkey script
for it in Firefox…encouraging sign), I’d say Wayfaring appears to be easy to use and especially friendly
for those who don’t want to bother with the code required for Google Maps EZ. 
Wayfaring incorporates waypoints (markers), notes, and routes (paths). Code is
readily available for sharing maps (like this one) to a blog.  And it’s
simple to designate maps for private/public access and for individual/group
changes.

Addressing Addresses Addressed

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: 2 mins

Below the fold you’ll find a map-like project I’ve been working on for a
little while today.  It’s a spread of the CCCC addresses since Lloyd-Jones
in 1977 with pop-ups including the details about each chair’s address (notice:

Roen’s upcoming collection).  If the corresponding text of the talk has
been run through parsing and posting at CCC
Online, you’ll find a link to it from the map. 

Why this?  Why now?  For one thing I wanted to get back in and
tinker around with Google Maps EZ. 
I used it
when it first came about, but there have been a few changes, including an
expanded range of options for coloring and labeling the markers. The
markers work with single characters; I’ve color-specified the placemarkers by
decade, then used a number to show the year of the convention and talk. It
leaves something to be desired, but it’s good enough for now. Ultimately,
I’d like to see two-digit markers; probably ought to look into how to do that
myself.  On the other hand, I probably should finish up grading.
And on the other other hand, I probably ought to turn off Judge Mathis
and stop playing Sudoku.

To add just a bit more rationale for this/now, I’m taking a course in
geography in the spring called Seminar in Cartography: Web Mapping and
Cybercartography. I don’t have much formal training in geography; the course
welcomes students from across the disciplines, and it will be the only course
outside of CCR that I’ll take during this program of study.  I don’t
have all the details about the GEO course yet, but we’ll be looking at a book called
Mapping Hacks and
hacking and writing a few maps of our own. And because, at my geekiest, I’m keen on
mapping disciplinarity (among other stuff, imaginaries, etc., as well…might
even argue that disciplinarity is an imaginary, and that it’s too vast and
complex to know totally, so we map away). Yeah, well, that’s why this/now.
I’d say more, but I have to walk over to a chiropractic appt. (neck’s still
killing me), then catch up with D. for a ride to Ph.’s game.

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