Oct 11

Harley is critical of the evolution of cartography toward GIS and away from traditional maps influenced by culture. This relates to our discussions on Allen Island spacetime because while the Island may not be physically changing over time (or at least minimally), how it is presented through maps has certainly changed over time.  In many ways this comes down to the perspective of the mapper.  Today, a computer will use satellite imagery or GIS coordinates to precisely determine the shape and geographic features of Allen Island.  However, if Gideon or Alexander Allen were to map the island when they first laid claim to it, a very different map would be produced.  Not just in terms of the  accuracy of the shape of the island, but more notably in the features described.  A hand drawn map by one of the Allen brothers would likely have incorporated significant landmarks that it would be important to know the location of on the island.  For example, their houses and property lines would likely have been marked because those were the most important features of the island to them at the time.  As the Island developed though, grazing land, ports and boat launches also could have been mapped.  Although GIS mapping could identify these same features (and probably more accurately), it does not provide the same ability for a historian to “read between the lines” of the cartographer’s work (Harley 6). Harley’s criticism of modern mapping solely using GIS makes sense is understandable, but for the project that my timeline JS group will be tackling (ownership/use) I think the ability to combine modern GIS mapping with older maps could be a major asset to creating a successful digital humanities project.

A piece of text that stood out to me in Harley’s “Deconstructing the Map” is a dictum of Korzybski’s, “The map is not the territory”. This confused me at first. I had never really put that much though into what a map really is, other than a resource to get around. If I didn’t have a definition for what a map is, I definitely couldn’t tell you what a map isn’t or what it could be. I then realized that Korzybski’s  statement is rather obvious. When I looked more into Korzybski, I saw another quote by him that really clarified the original dictum, “A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” Maps are a person’s reaction to place. Harvey includes in his piece  the idea that “maps, like art, far from being ‘a transparent opening to the world,’ are but ‘a particular human way of looking at the world.'”

Korzybski brings up an interesting point but Harvey is trying to go deeper, “deconstruction goes further to bring the issue of how the map represents place into much sharper focus.” He ends the piece with,”Post-modernism offers a challenge to read maps in ways that could reciprocally enrich the reading of other texts.” This is a very relevant sentence to me. My timeline group will be using many maps as forms of media, and this is one of our major goals. I’ve realized that a map is more than just useful, it can be incredibly meaningful.

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.