Show & Tell: Contemporary Cartography vs. Cybernetics in History

2 thoughts on “Show & Tell: Contemporary Cartography vs. Cybernetics in History”

  1. Here is my main reservation with this (which occurred to me during my run): that one might conclude from your argument that Google Maps is broken, or perhaps that it intentionally deceives. Certainly the Google PageRank algorithm has built-in biases, and I’d love to see it replaced with something more open, but I think the right conclusion should be: let’s not take what these services give us as the last word. I’m not sure we disagree here, but I thought I’d clarify.

  2. You are right.
    And no, we indeed don’t disagree here.
    I feel like this example is still being taken to literally, while my intention is much more symbolic.
    I was trying to suggest that the interface design paradigms that we’ve grown to know present to us a visually full page results – meaning from top to bottom the page presents the full number of search results the engine found. While with a map interface the results are presented on a page that is partly empty. This visual representation of emptiness, based on the interface conventions we’ve grown accustomed with, might spark the by-product global awareness / cultural curiousity I am speaking about.

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