geomantic

From Boston.com, an interesting piece of journalism about the growing ubiquity of maps. The article cites several examples of  the effect of this ubiquity, which can be applied for good (monitoring global climate change) or bad (Mumbai siege).

Incidentally, I posted a while back about the cartograms from Mark Newman. Newman quite accurately sums up the explanatory power of the cartogram:

Mark Newman, the University of Michigan physicist who created the algorithm responsible for the best-known election cartograms, coauthored a book this year that uses cartograms to illustrate hundreds of global trends, from immigration flows to carbon dioxide emissions to Internet use. Surprises abound. Spain leaves a large footprint in book publishing, but dwindles to insignificance when it comes to library use. A map of the world’s rabies deaths is little more than a giant, bloated nation of India – which also dominates the world in movie viewing.

The value of the cartogram, Newman argues, is its simplicity. Even a color-coded map, after all, requires a legend. But cartograms embed information in the contours of the map itself, using our assumptions about maps, and our familiarity with the actual shape of the world, to drive home the point.

“You don’t have to learn how to read these maps,” Newman says, summing up, in a sense, the whole enterprise of mapping. “You look at it and it makes sense.”

A cartography boom offers new ways to see the world – The Boston Globe