The 2004 US elections prompted the development of web-based interpretative
maps (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/). These contributed to a
debate about the political character of the nation. At the time it seemed
that people were carrying a radically revised political map of the US around
in their minds in ways that affected their prerception and behaviour.
More recently other kinds of maps have impinged on people's perception and
may be affecting their behaviour. These include mortality/war maps of Iraq
(http://www.obleek.com/iraq/) and the US
(http://www.mvp-seattle.org/pages/extrapages/pageUScasualtyMap.htm), and a
proliferation of (mostly Google) mapping hacks, including environmental
degradation, (http://www.sprol.com) and sex offenders
(http://www.georgia-sex-offenders.com/maps).
The rapid development and diverse range of mapping resources has got me
wondering who in the social/critical geography community has been looking at
the ways such maps - and their production - are contributing to a reworking
of ideas about space, and more to the point, are altering spatial behaviour.
It is also about the opportunity for anyone with a computer & internet
connection to express themselves via mapping technology. The creation of
maps as social activity. Psychogeography never had it so good.
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