Google Maps Is Changing the Way We See the World

This article, "Google Maps Is Changing the Way We See the World," is from Wired magazine by Evan Ratliff. If you haven't been paying attention, or if you have but have been wishing that you had more time to pay more attention, you'll find it informative.

Today the power still lies in the hands of the map makers. The only difference is that we're all mapmakers now, which means geography has entered the complex free-for-all of the information age, where ever-more-sophisticated technology is better able to reflect the world's rich, chaotic complexity. "Once you express location in human terms, you get multiple places with the same name, or political issues over where boundaries are, or local differences," says David Weinberger. "As soon as you leave the latitude/ longitude substrate, you get lost in the ambiguous jumble of meaning. It's as close to Babel as we get."

For an example of a good campus map done with GoogleMaps, see this column.