Mapping Hacks

Schuyler, Jo, and I are but simple hackers who wandered into this space. We’ve read some books, but mostly we’ve
experimented with things and come to our own conclusions. Most of the time we’ve been, well, underclued would
be kind. On occasion we’ve managed to rediscover some of the basic rules of geography. We’ve been repeating
our mantra that ‘Maps reflect and create reality.’ Last night I was browsing in The Power of Maps, by Denis
Wood, when I fell upon the section ‘Maps Construct-Not Reproduce-the World.’ Close enough!

Adena Schutzberg, the editor of Directions Magazine always writes interesting editorials. Jan 12ths
The View From Here is fun for three
reasons.

1. I now know the four questions of geography (”[1] What is [2] where? [3] why? [4] so what?”), and that the last, ’so what?’
   is the most important.

2. Her comments on Google’s goal, to own, or at least aggregate, all the data, are worth rereading.
3. She had the most amusing typo of the morning.

While many apps can read and import KML (its just XML, right?) only Google’s reader can tap into Google’s steaming data.

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