ADAM ON SPACE AND GEOGRAPHY – 1

SOMETHING GAINED. SOMETHING LOST.

Before the advent of MapQuest or Google Maps, I used to like to draw maps to help explain to others how to get to my home. These maps were oriented a bit like a Saul Steinberg drawing, where the representation of my home – typically drawn as a simple box with a triangle rooftop – was way out of proportion to anything else depicted. Streets, freeways, or an important surrounding landmark such as a nearby park or shopping center, all receded in stature. In effect, my home was the center of the world. (Or at least, the center of my world.) I probably should have added these words at the bottom of my directional maps – “Map drawn to emotional scale”.

If you were to search for my home on GoogleMaps, you’d find it’s presented entirely differently from my hand-drawn abstractions of the past. On the Google map, the streets and landmarks are shown with clean, uniform and orderly lines. Everything’s in proportion and to scale, and there’s a little red pin-like icon pointing out my home.

While the location has been called out, it certainly doesn’t feel like it’s the Steinberg-like center of the world as it did in my maps. In this homogenized depiction my “home” has become a “house”, just one of millions of others in the big city. There’s an emotional trade out going on here – more precision equals less personality or personal space. On some level, it feels like my little private space has been absorbed by the vast collective public space.

Which may help explain why, at times, I feel so lost in the modern world. And even though there’s a perfect Google map in front of me, I still “can’t find my way home….”