-
nickseaver
Maps can do a lot more than geography
Howard: We’re trying to get away from maps as just products
What is the diagrammatic impulse that makes us make maps? Is it a culturally inherited norm? The human nature for connection?
Need to get kids to “get it in their gut”: the reasons we map
Ian: Google Maps/Earth: political boundaries, static, doesn’t show how things came to be
Jesse: All maps are in some way historical, even Google Maps
Silvia: what if there was a map wikipedia? (not about putting wikipedia on a map, but allowing boundaries and notes to be publicly edited; edit wars over contested boundaries?)
Henry: The variety of kinetic properties of digital maps should change how we see the world
Dock: mind maps, timelines,
clay: so maps need to hit you in the gut, and one way they do that is by making sense
mind maps are creative, geographical maps are descriptive, at least they seem so at first. How do we complicate these with each other?
Jesse: what are the gaps?
Nick: Maps are a mechanism for understanding, so instead of teaching a map, we teach mapping mechanisms and mechanisms to enable critical understanding.
Ian: Where are there terrorist organizations is an easy map to make, but what does the “why are there terrorists” map look like? Is it purely conceptual?
Howard: have kids make maps out of unusual datasets, to approach maps in a fresh way.
Silvia: Layers on the map: here is an island, this is what it’s called, this is who owns what part of it; each of these add data, and of course there are far more, all with their own potential biases and benefits.
Nick: Why layers? Does the metaphor of a layer change the way we think of what can be mapped?
Henry: Google HQ has a map showing realtime queries from around the world, colored by language. America looks like fireworks, Africa has only a few things, Europe has clear national boundaries by language.
Silvia: Queries are questions, so it’s interesting how you can see what people want to know.
Dock: in that case, motion is critical. (how to integrate time into mapping?)
back to maps that can explain “why” (as opposed to “what”/”where” maps)
Ian: natural resources can affect national institutions that encourage development, for example.
Henry: Map military bases and terrorism and ask: what is cause and effect?
Erin: Think about pivot tables in excel: foregrounding and backgrounding in all ways, resisting one static base layer
[people are so interested in the chance to theorize about maps in the abstract! this is great]
Howard: when does a map of the trajectory of an idea become a “chart?”
Silvia: “A map is something that helps you make sense of something”
Henry: How is a map a subset of a visualization? Let’s not collapse all visualizations together.
Clay: what about the map in the phantom tollbooth, looks physical, but with personality terms
Eric: 24 lets you think that people can get from one place to another without any time in between. How do modern technologies collapse space? They can take out the physical base layer altogether, but seem like they should still be “maps”
Clay: If I’m on the phone with someone in Africa, my voice is in Africa, I’m here, maybe I need a more complicated map.
Jesse: I think a map has something to do with something that can be experienced. Slippages occur between the other forms of visualization
Ian: what is the difference between a map and a picture?
David: How do we help people see where they are in a non-physical space, and how do we make this make sense to kids in school?
Howard: kids have to negotiate schedules in an extreme way; how can maps be related to this schedule? What matters to them, to others? They don’t necessarily understand why the schedule is relevant. “disequilibrium”
Clay: we have to teach how to make a “map,” but drawing in a mapmaking way is very intuitive.
Nick: [shows maps of social networks made by kids] kids seem to take the instruction to “map” something in a variety of different ways (looking like geographical maps, mind maps, pyramid diagrams)
Dock: that suggests another reason to not separate maps off inherently from other forms of vis.
Erin: kids are still making kinds of maps they’ve seen before, mapping by analogy, so teaching ways to map, new kinds of maps might be useful
Howard: what about having kids map a game, the cafeteria, social networks within the classroom
Dock: you have to build a level of expertise with mapping for them to be able to use maps as a metaphor. imagine a tool or a set of tools that contained a variety of map exemplars. Can you give them a vehicle to make the abstract more concrete?
Eric: only through the process of making it do you really know what it is
Dock: Maps can do a lot more than geography.
