maps etc

[gfish]

I've been thinking how it's likely that the skill of map reading will die with our generation. (Except for weirdo hobbyists, of course, like people who teach themselves celestial navigation today. [Yes, I'm included in that group.]) It follows that physical maps will eventually die out as well, which suddenly strikes me as a much odder thought. Phone books are even more obviously doomed. None of the entire combined index of our reality will be tangible. Now that I'm watching the new Survivors remake, it makes me wonder what post-apocalyptic fiction will look like in a couple of decades. Imagine being surrounded by resources but not being able to find out where they are, or how to get there. How bizarre.

Also, why didn't anyone tell me about the Survivors remake? It's already into its second season!

Also also, sorry I haven't been updating much. It's been a weird couple of weeks. I have some non-news to share which I thought I'd have the final clearance to post about some time ago. Waiting for the go ahead (which will almost certainly take the form of official word I wasn't selected) has given me a weird mental block on updating LJ. I should at least have a cool project update or two to make asap.

Comments

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

While I think you're right about map-reading (and maps) mostly dying out, I think that post-apocalyptic fiction about that vanishing, would only be relevant to people to whom the maps themselves were relevant. I was thinking about something related the other day when we were taking a tour of a mission house, and the woman noted that when the missionaries were teaching bible verses to the indigenous people, they'd learn the verses, and entire chapters, by rote rather than by reading, and they'd do it overnight. They were pre-literate and used to memorizing, but once they had an alphabet, everyone stopped caring or even noticing that nobody could still memorize an entire chapter of the bible overnight. It wasn't on their mental map. So, too, with maps themselves, I'm guessing: it will be a sufficiently foreign thought that it won't even register.

[quiet000001.livejournal.com]

Non-scientific experiences in school seem to agree with this. My fellow students (who do not remember a time Before The Internet) are really quite perplexed by the entire idea of, you know, not just going to a search engine to find out information, or using google maps to do a preliminary location scout. Nevermind having to actually take FILM photographs and have them DEVELOPED to put together a location folder.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Typically, when I am intruducing star charts to my students by analogy to earth maps (representing the celestial sphere on a flat map being the same issue as representing a spherical earth on a flat map) none of my students have so much as heard of a Mercator projection. Only when I have an over-40 "non-traditional" student does anyone have a clue.

I find the inability to read a map scary--a kind of perceptual blindness that I can't even imagine from the inside.

[hpapillon.livejournal.com]

But doesn't the use of Google Maps mean that people know at least a little of how to read a map? (if fairly straightforward ones, with directions)

I tend to carry google map printouts with me whenever I go anywhere new. Partly because I don't own a handheld device that would be suitable for displaying such a thing, but also Big and Able To Take Notes On helps.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

It's something, but I'm not sure it's enough. Particularly given how very, very ubiquitous smart devices will obviously become. When everything you own can give you directions, how many people are really going to bother with maps? And even if you do show a map, it will be the automatically updating kind that always puts your location in the center and (ugh) shows forward as up, instead of north. I really don't think you can learn how to read a map if that is all you are exposed to, any more than you can learn a language by just listening to it being spoken.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I was too busy watching videos of the volcano in Iceland to finish my reply: sorry to just imitate what you said.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Google Maps may be a transitional technology. I can imagine that in ten years most people will be using tomtom-like guides, and twenty years after that (and after the passing of liability limit legislation) people will get in their cars and tell the cars where they want to go, and rarely consider actually having to figure out where something is.

[hpapillon.livejournal.com]

I live in England and get around on foot. What is this 'car' thing?

[hpapillon.livejournal.com]

... now, I admit, I *have* phoned information and gone "I'M LOST! I'm at X, how do I get to Y???" on foot but only once. :)

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Because you didn't grow up with ubiquitous location-aware technology. Hell, I still think GPS is pretty nifty. It's the NEXT generation we're talking about.

[hpapillon.livejournal.com]

I'm just suggesting that people still have to walk, until we have personal hoverbubbles at least, so the second level of "Just tell the car where you want to go and don't think about it" can't be ubiquitous that fast.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Devices can give you directions while walking (almost) as easily as while driving. Though you're less likely to need one, just because the distances are more human scaled, of course.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this for a while this afternoon, whilst out running the lathe, and I wonder about the idea of maps going out of style. Preliterate societies made maps, if we mean didactic graphical representations of the physical relationship of objects. That seems to be part of how our brains work.
But the idea of purchasing atlases and rolled maps -- probably children being born now are going to think they're an affectation, like absinthe spoons.

[avhn.livejournal.com]

Maps do not require power and do not break as easily. Also, GPS devices frequently fail if there is construction or temporary road blocks. People who continue to use maps (in addition to other technologies) should have the advantage when navigating. Which will become an evolutionary advantage when I set up my navigational challenge with which I determine who gets to reproduce. (Don't tell anyone about my plan to take over the world, please.)

[tereshkova2001.livejournal.com]

Also also, GPS devices sometimes decide to send you on the scenic route, instead of the most direct and speedy route.
:D

[avhn.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. Though I'm still not convinced it slowed us down all that much.