Today, a map celebrated its birthday. You heard… or I mean.. read me correctly. Today, on opening my internet browser, I read on the page that Google’s Maps is turning 15 years of age. I am fully aware that this is becoming my most frequently used phrase, but how ridiculous is that?! When cartographers such as myself created maps, they were changed and altered and redeveloped and redrawn and recreated mere weeks after we established them. By god, I spent months on such a charting voyage only to have my map declared obsolete on my return to the mainland! But actually, the way that this map is redrawn is a little different than the ways we used to draw and change maps.
When maps were created in my time, they were drawn off of the voyages that our ships and our exploration parties took part in, across land or sea. We understood, based on the position of the sun and moon, where we were in relation to the mainland. Our compasses provided us with the general direction, and based on the time it took us to reach a certain point in our voyage, we were able to establish where we were and how far it was from the position we took off from. Today however, folks are able to view the entire planet from space. I cannot repeat enough how dumbfounded I am by this. Yet, somehow, man flew into the sky in a large metal carriage powered by fire and fuel and was able to take pictures of our dear planet earth from outside the atmosphere.
Not only this, but humanity later sent unmanned vessels back up into space. These unmanned tin canisters, like unanchored anchors float in the sky above, rotating around our planet and sending us pictures of the earth from above. Using the pictures that these satellites send us, the workers over at the Google company are able to provide us with a map that is not only completely picture accurate, but also updated and redrawn for us to view at a ridiculous frequency. No longer does man need to venture out to see and record what he saw, the machines and their electricity do this work for us. How convenient your world must be! Why I never need to know the street I’m on as these internet maps tell me exactly where I am and exactly where it is I should be going. Imagine getting in a carriage and telling the driver where you wish to journey… and why he or she has no clue in the world where that is! But of course they’re able to take you there! Why they just pull our their pocket machines with the internet and use the keys as I’m doing now to tell the small device where they want to go. The machine asks the satellite where it is to direct the driver, and by God’s grace the satellite up high in the heavens responds, directing our directionless driver in the direction we desire.
Perhaps you all are less amazed than I. Why for all I know, this map could be the most mundane idea to emerge from generation…
Back In My Day 