[ 1] http://www.aca-demiccommons.org/ commons/essay/ balsamo-taking-culture-seriously

July + August 2008

out. The question is really about what gets in and what does not. In the Middle Ages maps were not necessarily about navigation; there were many blanks in people’s knowledge of lands near and far. Many maps were not “practical”; they were not about navigating from point A to point B. Christian mapmakers drew up mappa mundi that showed their understanding of the world, including heaven and hell. The most famous examples are the Ebstorf map (created circa 1234 AD) and the Hereford map ( created circa 1300 AD). To our modern eyes, these maps look positively fanciful; known locations and key features are represented, but the spaces between them are filled with (literally) fantastic images. Cartographers weren’t just filling the gaps for visual continuity, however, they were representing what was important and unimportant, what was near and what was far—morally, ethically, and emotionally, rather than what was near and far spatially. As Alfred Crosby, the historian phrased it, these maps were for “sinners not navigators”; they were meant to be used to chart conceptual and moral knowledge and to reflect the harmonious order of God’s creation. For these mapmakers, those spaces between things known were never blank. They were dauntingly full of imaginings— beasties and peoples unknown, Lilliputians and dragons.

With savage-pictures fill their gaps; And o’er uninhabitable downs

Place elephants for want of towns

—Jonathan Swift, the Irish cleric and essayist

(1667–1745)

While I actually don’t want to rag on the Tom Tom too much (I do love it), I want to make the point that what is in the data-base, what things are left blank, and how we route people are not only aesthetic but also social and political choices. In his book Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson discusses the drawing of maps by colonial rulers. He points out the ways in which maps were drawn and imposed upon colonially occupied lands, and how the borders they charted failed to honor the perspective of the people(s) who were living there. These imposed borders created social tensions that still have ramifications today. This lesson should not be taken as a distant one, only useful for politicians and historians. Design blindness and political/cultural ignorance can have an immediate impact on business choices. A great example is elaborated by Anne Balsamo of the University of Southern California in her essay of a few years back entitled “Taking Culture Seriously: Educating and Inspiring the Technological Imagination.” She writes: “A map of India included in the Windows 95 OS represented a small territory in a different shade of green from the rest of the country. The territory is, in fact, strongly disputed between the Kashmiri people and the Indian government; but Microsoft designers inadvertently settled the dispute in favor of one side. Assigning the territory (roughly 8 pixels in size on the digital map) a different shade of green signified that the territory was definitely not part of India. The product was immediately banned in India and Microsoft had no choice but to recall 200,000 copies [ 1].”

The Tom Tom is a “ wayfinding” device. In 1960, the architect Kevin Lynch coined the term “wayfinding” in his book The Image of the City. He described how people orientate and choose paths within the built environment, taking into account how architectural and/or design elements—signs, maps—give travelers information about their current location and how to get to their desired location. It occurred to me that I had mostly thought of navigation devices like the Tom Tom as being only for wayfinding by car. But wayfinding is crucially affected by mode of transport— I was immensely pleased to discover navigation devices for sailing, biking, and hiking. Reflecting on these devices, and on our everyday experience, it is very clear that wayfinding is not always simply about getting to a destination. Sometimes it’s about what you’re going to see on the way; some maps take us past historic monuments or the best views. And then there is a temporal (perhaps circadian or seasonal) or sometimes a meteorological dimension that can entirely change the way we wish to map a location and a route, and that can change our perspective on the desirability of a destination.

In that vein, I recently designed a map for online daters showing areas of San Francisco in terms of nighttime inhabitation and illumination, aimed at people concerned with being alone at night in deserted places. The map shows which areas of San Francisco are dark and isolated in the evenings; you can toggle between day and night to see which areas are bustling in