On the relevance of cartography – An interaction design perspective

The Photogrammetric Record, 1994

Cartography andphotogrammetry have always been strongly linked and this paper emphasises a view of cartography as a process of spatial data representation, rather than as a method of creating a product, a map. Of course, the dejinition of cartography must change with developments in its practice. An outline of the historical background to the subject is presented, followed by a Consideration of the relationship between the cartographer and the user of the product. The basic problems involved in the transfer of information from the complex real world to a generalized cartographic product are analysed and technological aspects of the discipline are described. Contemporary applications of cartography include hazard mapping, links with CIS, tactile products and electronic hydrographic representation, all of which represent customer driven progress. It is concluded that the future of cartography is, overall, dependent on a graphical representation of high quality being supplied to the end user, rather than on the methods used to attain this objective.

Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 1985

This paper argues that the major technological and socio-economic changes of the 'information revolution' are so extensive that if cartography is to play a role then the development of an entirely new cartography is necessary. The paper discusses the extent and nature of a new cartography and argues that education in cartography will have to change if the challenge is to be met.

Cartographic perspectives, 2004

I really liked your opinion piece in the recent Cartographic Perspectives (2003, V45). I just can't figure out why Scott would choose to run it. I mean, dude, it's going to create a passel of problems. Shorn of its rhetoric, your argument is pretty simple, and pretty much irrefutable. Cartography has everything to say about a profession that makes maps, a discipline whose brief has been the mechanical design, crafting, and critique of this type of two-dimensional graphic argument. It says little about the maps themselves, or the content they contain, and in the age of computerized mapping, well, the discipline-as-it-was is dead. The etiology you offer is interesting but irrelevant. It doesn't matter that the word is a nineteenth century artifact "coined" as a Portuguese neologism ("cartographia") by the Viscount de Santarem in 1839. Nobody cares that "cartography" entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1859 or "cartographic" in 1863. All that is simply a rhetorical device that says the word is too new to be sacred, too Victorian for us to care about. Lots of good, useful words entered the English language in the nineteenth century, and their relative modernity is no reason to disparage their use. Nor does it matter in itself that the cartographic product academic cartographers love to discuss in journals like Cartographica, say, are mostly professional artifacts done mostly by working stiffs at the direction of PhD bosses at the behest of this or that employer. That's all true, but like, so what? And I mean, Denis, you were one of those academics for more than 20 years, a fellow who made his way in journals like Cartographica by commenting on the atlases, maps, and cartographic arguments of others. The real problem at hand is, if Cartography is Dead (Thank God!), what do you think they should call this rag, and this society? To continue to call the journal of the North American Cartographic Information Society (a geographically limiting, clumsy name) Cartographic Perspectives carries a whiff of necrophilia, of holding the decomposing corpse of a dead discipline to our collective bosoms. Yuck. To think of a new name means carefully considering what to keep of the corpus, and what can safely be buried. In its short history, cartography has been about a set of tools no longer in use, or now used so frequently and so casually they require no special home. The techniques of drafting and inking and lettering that George McCleary once tried to teach me in his Introduction to Cartography at Clark University (1971) are gone, dead, already buried. They've been replaced by the digital equivalents embedded in PhotoShop, Corel Paint, ArcView, ArcGIS, Maptitude, and a score of other programs. What was once a craft has been democratized out of existence in precisely the way of other nineteenth century crafts like typesetting and

The city is quickening. We hover between built space and media places. Place making that takes no heed of the knowledge environment is no longer sustainable. In the era of pervasive computing we need better maps to manage the built environment. The Cartographer's Dilemma proposes a new place making action plan for a withering public sphere. We need to develop new epistemic assemblages-street probes-for navigating a landscape of space and information. The city as site and form of knowledge begins with Patrick Geddes, the evolutionist/planner who celebrated the Greek polis, who was a pivotal link in an intellectual lineage that extends from Darwin to contemporary media theorists. With projects like the Outlook Tower and the Cities Exhibition, Geddes left behind a tool kit on synthesis, gear to map sites and record knowledge, and assemble places where mapping persists. He saw the city as an evolving search engine, a tableau you drifted through, synthesizing as you move. For Geddes, you became a citizen when you glimpse the future and humanize it. Mindful of Geddes-and wedged between a data space and a hard place-this paper will explore how place makers can begin to rethink the neighbourhood enclave and reprogram them as precincts for knowledge creation and creative action. This paper uses Geddes' work on the city to rethink the implications of the digital environment for the space we call Civic. It recalls projects in the UK context, that address this space as an archive of knowledge and identity. The Cartographers Dilemma is relevant for the re-cabled megalopolis that will need strategies for capitalising on this status. It will argue for a new definition of the sustainable city, by projecting the urban planning theories of Patrick Geddes onto the evolving 21 st century media environment.

Making Explicit What has Been Implicit: A Call for a Conceptual Theory of Cartography, 2021

How is a map different from things that are not maps? What is a map? How do you know it's a map? Such questions appear quite simple-the answers would seem to be things everyone knows almost without thinking-yet comprehensive answers have proved elusive. Hitherto, such existential questions have almost inevitably been either conflated with practical ones or deliberately ignored. Map artifacts are, by themselves, mere things. Like any text, the map artifact can be read, and, through the action of being read, the artifact comes to bear meaning. Maps, however, go beyond mere meaning-bearing to achieve a state where they actually embody meaning. Reaching a state of meaning-embodiment requires a transformation that is analogous to an apotheosis or a transfiguration of the common clay of the artifact into an abstract conceptual state of map-hood. Describing this transfiguration into a conceptual state requires a Conceptual theory of cartography-one that defines the relationship between the artifact as a thing and the map as an abstract entity, and that also defines the map entity in a manner unambiguously applicable to every, any, and all maps. Such a theory would also have to define the discipline of cartography in relation to that abstract map entity. This paper proposes the outlines for the required Conceptual theory-one based on the proven model of Conceptual Art. Practically speaking, the first step-and the effective scope of the paper-is an inquiry into the nature of the map as an abstract conceptual entity. It provides a model for an investigative methodology for interrogating the formal map, and sketches out a framework for assimilating the findings of such investigations. This paper will not settle all fundamental questions about what a map is, but it will outline an analytical course that can address them. It proposes that asking how one knows something is a map is a step on the road to discovering what a map is.