I believe cartography and the development of maps have accelerated space-time-compression. Earlier in the semester we talked about how technology (i.e., vehicles – transportation efficiency, internet – communication efficiency) has compressed space and made our world feel smaller over time. Well, I think the development of maps may have had the same effect. J.B. Harley states, “The object of mapping is to produce a ‘correct’ relational model of terrain” (4). Maps create relational space and suggest the distance and direction from one location to the next.
Before maps, no one had a sense of where other places were located; “were all the maps in the world destroyed and vanished […] each man would be blind again” (Harley 1). Someone who lives in Boston, may have heard of Los Angeles, but he/she would have no idea how far or in what direction the ‘foreign’ location exists. With maps in our world, people have an understanding of what is around them, how long it takes to get to various places, what is needed to get there, and in what direction to go to get there. In other words, people have gained an understanding of relational space and can now plan ahead to come up with the most (time) efficient methods of getting to different locations.
As maps were developed, cartographers started by first connecting their current location to the spaces near by. Slowly over time, they reached further and further away from their starting location, which made their “near by” space feel closer and closer. For example, the distance from Maine to Boston once sounded overwhelming. But as time has passed, relational space has developed and space has compressed, the distance from Maine to Boston sounds comical compared to Maine to California. Therefore, the development of maps not only created relational space but also increased space-time-compression.