The Future of Maps is ‘squishy’
“Hello all you cyberheads! Welcome to the 90’s version of intimacy…you can hear me, you can even see me, but you can’t touch me!”
This conundrum may finally be about to be resolved, almost, well maybe not the last part!
In A glimpse into the future of maps City Labs stated that Snapchat’s “newest feature [Snapmap] combines two major trends in modern cartography: mapping life in real time, and mapping subjective, emotional information.” Thanks @PetersonGIS for tweeting this.
While this article touches on “[the] great deal of grief [it may cause] among anxious parents and footloose young people alike”, it notes: ‘Because maps depicting objective data like roads or rivers are so plentiful and easy to access, cartographers are increasingly looking to map squishier information like perceptions and experiences.” Hence this post’s title.
Aren’t these the two axes of mapmaking, the social an abscissa of the cartography?
In other words the value of map products is measured in the social impact it has : it is positive if it helps your delivery arrive while the pizza is still hot , negative if “Pokemon Go”ers enter private property without your permission.
One good example is what3words, created when its founders couldn’t pinpoint their friends’ location on a music festival site. Its details are well written up elsewhere, but what is the abscissa here? Is it a grid location that is more intuitive to use than latitude & longitude projections onverted into a usable map? Or is it the assurance, or feel good factor that a simple yet accurate spatial measure make it easier to put you spot on location for, say, postal, railway or courier deliveries?
SnapMap proposed to do something similar, in a Pokemon-like interface in game-like simplicity, to help friends emote with each other regardless of their location. The assurances are that only those invited can “see” each other (opt-in), that comms are secure (encrypted), and data are de-facto ephemeral (no permanent storage).
Whether that’ll stick as de-jure assurance in practice as well as in the courts, time will tell. And if previous faux pas by Google (recording i.p. addresses) and Uber (tracking passengers after drop-off) don’t bode well, they pale in comparison to potential unauthorised surveillance (think paedophiles in public spaces).
But if all those bases are covered, then there is truly the potential to add the emotional to the cartography. Teens will love and therefore use a map that helps them track their buddies so emotively.
Is that not the holy grail of any new tech, to make an app that’s simply irresistible?
Perhaps Madonna can then rephrase her invitation as “you can hear me, you can even see me, but you can now find me!” — or perhaps not — but the purpose of her posting in particular and her recordings in general is to reach out as far&wide as possible to connect with her audience.
Emptional connections are the squishier information we may be able to map and help stay connected, provided all security & privacy issues are locked down… Stay tuned, will that emotional abscissa rocket off the chart?!
