Mapping Hacks

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Preface

This ... Geoscope would make it possible for

humans to identify the true scale of themselves

and their activities on this planet. Humans

could thus comprehend much more readily that

their personal survival problems related

intimately to all humanity’s survival.

—R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path

Humans are born storytellers. It’s part of our chattering simian heritage—as

if we taught ourselves language just to be able to spin yarns late at night,

around the recently invented campfire. Now, every story, as any school child

knows, can be told by answering the five great W questions: Who? What?

Why? When? and, of course, Where? It is this final query that we wish to

address in this book.

Indeed, nearly every human story, in one way or another, takes place some-

where! These tales rely on our knowledge of geography, which defines our

perceptions of “place” in scientific terms. Geography interests itself in the

measurement of locations—their relative positions, dimensions, geometri-

cal relations, and the enumeration of their names and their physical con-

tents. The representation of the story itself is the goal of cartography.Totell

stories about places, or relay the spatial component of any narrative, we

must bring together the science of geography and the art of cartography.

Learning to do so in a compelling fashion can be a challenge! The results we

cobble together in the process often ...