Archive for the ‘Journal’ Category

Welcome To The United States; A Cold War Tourist Map For Soviet Visitors

Governments and authorities like maps. They’re a useful way of clearly saying this is mine, that is yours. They’re also useful for saying where you can and more importantly, where you can’t go. This is all too evident in a surprising map of where Russian visitors to the US were permitted to visit during the 1950s.

In the mid 1950s America and Russia were in the middle of the game of oneupmanship, with added nuclear weapons, that was the Cold War. Despite the uneasy detente between the two countries, if you were one of an elite group of Soviet citizens you were actually able to visit the United States. But not all of it. Large swathes of the US were closed to prospective Soviet tourists.

What makes this map interesting is not so much the slice of relatively recent world history that it portrays but more of the questions it poses. What were the criteria that were used to determine where a Cold War era Soviet visitor could and couldn’t go?

You can make some educated guesses. It’s not unreasonable to assume that major ports, coastlines, industrial areas and military and weapons areas were off limits. But that doesn’t cover the full scope of the open and closed areas.

Over at BoingBoing, there’s speculation that this was as much a tit-for-tat set of restrictions as it was a set of restrictions based on what the US Government didn’t want Soviets to see. As Cold War era historian Audra Wolfe, the author of the Slate article on this map, notes

The main premise is ‘strict reciprocity’. X% of Soviet coasts are off-limits, therefore X% of US coasts are off-limits, too.

Photo Credits: Rockefeller Archive Center, Item record: Rockefeller Family Archives (III) Record Group: 4 Nelson A. Rockefeller – Personal, Series: Washington D.C Files, Subseries: O.9 Special Assistant to the President Declassified Materials, 1954-1956, 1969 Box: 4 Folder 94.

Written and posted from the British Library, London (51.53004, -0.12765)

Open Data Yields Tangible Results – And Tangible Maps

In January of this year I made a hopeful prediction that 2013 would be the year of the tangible map.

This hope was prompted by the maps I saw at one of London’s geomob meetups in November of 2012, where I saw and, importantly for a tangible map, touched Anna Butler’s London wall map and a prototype of David Overton’s SplashMap.

The hopeful prediction was made as a result of literally getting my hands on one of Anna’s London maps and it’s a treasured possession, though still sadly needing a suitable frame before it can take pride of place on a wall at home.

But what of SplashMaps? In November 2012 the project was on Kickstarter and I was one of the investors in this most tangible of maps. In December 2012 Splashmaps met their funding targets and went into production and today, through the letterbox came my own, tangible, foldable, scrunchable and almost indestructible SplashMap of my local neighbourhood.

Now all if this could be taken to be simply my crowing with delight over maps. But there’s a deeper context to all of these tangible maps. Both the London Wall Map and SplashMaps have come about due to one single thing … open data. The case has often been made, though equally as often misunderstood, that open data is an economic stimulus. As many people ask why should we give something away for free as ask for data to opened up to the public.

Both of these maps wouldn’t have been financially possible without access to open data; the pre-open data era licensing costs and restrictions alone would have put paid to any startup opportunities an aspiring entrepreneur came up with. But in these maps, the proof of what open data can do has become very real, indeed very tangible.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

The Changing Map Of Europe’s Boundaries

The boundaries of Europe’s constituent countries have changed a lot in my lifetime. Some countries don’t exist anymore whilst others have come into existence. But it takes a map visualisation to make you realise just how much the map of Europe has changed.

Actually, it takes two map visualisations. The first, courtesy of the BBC, dates from 2005 and covers the years between 1900 and 1994. Starting wit Imperial Europe and fast forwarding though two world wars, plus the Cold War and taking in the collapse of the Communist Bloc and the expansion of the European Union.

The other map takes a much wider view, ranging from 1000 AD to the present day. It’s oddly fascinating to watch the Holy Roman and Byzantine Empires go from dominance to vanishing entirely.

But the purist in me finds as much to dislike as to like in both of these maps. The BBC one is just two small and cries out for the ability to pan and zoom the map. For some unexplained reason, the map is … tiny and, though I hesitate to use the word in this content, the cartographer has obviously been experimenting with differing shades of colour to try and clearly delineate the countries but didn’t experiment hard enough.

The LiveLeak map is also small and while the video containing the map can be enlarged to full screen, there’s a loss of crispness to the map. For a map with such a wide timespan, it would have helped massively to have some kind of timeline accompanying the animation, so you can see just where in history you are.

Two maps. Both interesting. Both, for me, ultimately flawed. This sort of map just cries out to be reworked. If only I could find a suitable boundary data set spanning over a thousand years.

Written and posted from BA Galleries First Lounge, Heathrow Terminal 5 (51.47017, -0.48711)

Marvellous Miniature Map

Some maps are works of art; this miniature marvel is no exception. You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s deserved of a place hanging on someone’s wall, but the truth is that this map is far more likely to end up in a rubbish bin.

That’s because this marvellous miniature map lives on the cover of a box of matches and empty boxes of matches have a very short shelf life before they end up in the rubbish. Which is a crying shame as this beautiful map with Mount Fuji in the background, a house and what looks like a tram deserves a kinder fate than that.

Photo Credits: Jane McDevitt on Flickr.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

How A Map Can Go Viral (In 8 Simple Steps)

Back in February of this year, at the height of the madness that was the Vaguely Rude Places Map, Ed Freyfogle from London’s #geomob meetup got in touch and asked me to come and tell the story behind the map. This is that story.

And so last night, in the Chadwick Lecture Theatre in the basement of London’s UCL, after listening to some amazing presentations on building a map of mobile cell tower coverage, of building a seismically powered alternative to GPS and a whole host of other great talks, I took my place on the podium and started where any good story needs to start … at the beginning.

Read On…

The List Of Basic Human Needs (Fixed)

In 1943 psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote a paper called A Theory Of Human Motivation which set out what he perceived as our basic needs, laid out in a hierarchy.

Maybe it’s time to update Maslow’s hierarchy to fit in with the times we live in. Maybe someone’s already done this.

Image Credits: Wikipedia and Geeks Are Sexy (this domain really exists).

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

After The Missing Manual For OpenStreetMap, Here’s The Google Map Maker Version

The growth and uptake of today’s internet and web allows us to do a lot of things that were previously the preserve of the professional. You can see this in the rise of words which now have citizen prepended to them. We don’t just write blog posts, we’re citizen journalists. We don’t just take photographs, we’re citizen photographers. To this list, we can now add citizen cartographer as well.

With the help of OpenStreetMap, HERE’s Map Creator (which I work on) and Google’s Map Maker, anyone with a modern web browser and an internet connection can now help to make maps where previously there were none and to improve and keep maps up to date, which still remains one of the biggest challenges to map making.

There’s already been a book about OpenStreetMap, which I wrote about in April of 2011. As far as I know, no-one’s written about HERE’s Map Creator but for Google’s Map Maker there’s Limoke Oscar’s Instant Google Map Maker Starter.

When I wrote about OpenStreetMap; Using and Enhancing the Free Map of the World, one of the reasons I liked reading about making maps with OSM in a book was because …

OpenStreetMap is easy to use, graphical (on the website), comes with multiple discussion and documentation sites and well supported mailing lists; you can always find the answer to your question. But sometimes you don’t know what the question is. Sometimes you just want to read a book.

The same can be said of Instant Google Map Maker Starter. The e-book edition I’ve just finished reading doesn’t appear to have the physical weight and depth of the OSM tome, but that’s only to be expected of a book that clearly sets out to be a starter.

As a starter, the book describes itself on the cover as short, fast, focused and on all these counts it succeeds admirably. Making, creating and editing a digital map is now massively easier than it was 5 years ago, but it’s still not simplicity itself.

When you’re setting out, you need to have explained what the difference is between what’s in the map, the spatial data of the map itself, and what’s on the map, the places or points of interest. You need to know how to use your software tool of choice, be it OpenStreetMap, Map Creator or Map Maker. You need to be shown the shortcuts and how to avoid the inevitable pitfalls.

Limoke obviously knows how to use Google Map Maker and it shows in the clear, concise prose, which educates from the ground up and doesn’t once stray into making the reader feel patronised or being lectured.

Maybe I’ve been spoilt with the depth and coverage of this book’s OpenStreetMap counterpart and even though the book is clearly labelled and pitched as a high level starter guide, it left me wanting more. But that’s not the fault of the author. Most of what I wanted more of is information that only Google would be able to provide; about why Google Map Maker is open for editing in some countries and about why you have to ask Google to get the data you put in back out. But I would have liked to have seen the author touching on the why of map making as much as the how, which he’s admirably written about. Why do people make maps and what motivates them?

Maybe there’s a book to be written about this; maybe one day I might even do that.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

Organic Pigs Or Organic Pig Waste? Mapping The Pros And Cons Of Each US State

Where you choose to live is always a trade off between the pros and the cons, the good and the bad. It probably comes as no surprise that if you’re a resident of Iowa and you have the most organic pigs in the United States you will also have the highest amount of pig waste.

But who would have thought that the downside to having the most organic mushrooms is that your state has the most amount of dams in need of repair. Apparently, this is the case if you live in Pennsylvania.

And maybe the cause of the highest binge drinking rate that you’ll find in Wisconsin is all those acres of organic corn that’s grown in that state.

A lot of the statistics, from sources including the U.S. Geological Survey, NASA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, look like they’re issued by the Department Of Stating The Obvious and makes me wonder how much the residents of each U.S. State agree with how it’s seen that their home State excels or doesn’t.

Image Credits: Mother Nature Network.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

Mapping Heavy Metal With A Little Help From The CIA

If there’s an unwritten law of digital map making it is this: given a data set with a geographical element, someone, somewhere, will probably make a map out of it.

A prime example of this law is mining data from Encyclopedia Metallum detailing the Heavy Metal bands per country and mashing it up with population data from the CIA World Factbook (yes, this really exists) to make a map of Heavy Metal bands, by country, per capita.

While I’m not the biggest fan of heavy rock, the resulting map does, err, rock.

Credit is also due to my lovely wife who, knowing my penchant for all things map related, pointed this out to me in the first place.

Image Credits: Reddit user depo_s via GIS Lounge.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

Pigs On A Map

Each time I find a new map I always end up learning something, sometimes directly from the map, sometimes from the content of what the map is trying to show. But I always end up learning something. In the case of this map, from H. W. Hill and Co from Decatur, Illinois circa 1884, I learnt that …

That you really can put pigs on a map.
That in the 1880s each US state (apparently) had a nickname for a pig. Or is it that the States have nicknames that are best represented by pigs? Or maybe something else entirely.
What a hog ringer is. Apparently it’s a device for putting rings in the noses of pigs. Ouch.

How much use this information will be to me is yet to be decided, but every piece of information you learn might come in useful someday, even from this map.

Image Credits: US Library of Congress.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

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