Mapping Hacks

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Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

Mapping with Other People

Hacks 93–100

In thy face I see the map of honor, truth,

and loyalty.

—William Shakespeare, Henry VI Part II, III:1,

the King to his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester

Hopefully you’re now as convinced as we are that a new wave in geographic

tools and techniques is revolutionizing the way we produce and consume

maps. Commodified consumer GPS, Wi-Fi location sensing, open source

GIS tools, and web publishing of spatial data—the kind of work that previ-

ously could only be carried out by large military, governmental and transna-

tional agencies—can now be used by home users or community groups.

We can all see a little bit of the years to come; we can draw pictures of a

shared future with the practice of “collaborative mapping.” This doesn’t

have to be a serious-minded, socially conscious activity. Buckminster

Fuller’s original vision of the “geoscope,” via which “All the world would be

dynamically viewable and picturable and radioable to all the world,” sug-

gested a “World Game,” in which we could playfully work out the conse-

quences of our future plans.

With this in mind, we’ve looked for playful and unusual ways in which to

use and generate spatial information. We’ve looked for simple applications

that you can set up, allowing your friends and neighbors to describe your

world in ways that are meaningful to you and re-usable by others.

Those in hyper-networked ...