Mapping Hacks

Use Your Track Memory as a GPS Base Map #55

Chapter 5, Mapping with Gadgets

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HACK

particularly fun in the places that you visit often but that are outside of your

normal routine.

In the 1950s, the French Situationists realized that we tend to live our lives

in ruts. In one study, they tracked the movements of a young lady in Paris

over the course of a month. Her Paris was a triangle defined by her apart-

ment, her job, and the studio of her piano teacher. In part out of reaction to

this intolerable closing of mental frontiers, they created the idea of the derive

as a sort of forced wandering.

Over the course of three visits to conferences in Amsterdam, I built up a

comprehensive base map of street coverage of the Eastern side of Amster-

dam. The experience led to serendipitous spatial exploration, too; I would

decide to traverse smaller streets and take small detours so I could extend

my tracklog map further in detail. In Oxford, I managed to create such a

map for the center of town in a couple of afternoons. This act of forcing our-

selves to engage in a task allows us to engage our goal-seeking instincts

while not allowing those goal-seeking behaviors to dominate the experi-

ence. We are put into the state of forced wandering, of the derive.

On a GPS track map, especially one taken at walking or cycling pace, you

find a context that is at the same level of detail as your life. Waypoints, too, ...