Lets work together

Cartographic design in today’s world is all about collaboration. There are no projects that are not reviewed, edited, fixed, noted, helped to produce, or at least referenced. Every thing in the world has been mapped to death, so today’s cartographers have the option of reproducing old maps. To do this, the cartographer has to collaborate with at least the original cartographer who produced the original production in the original projection. This referencing is the first step of collaboration. The next step is producing the thing worth producing and collaborating with other professionals and experts to come up with the best solution to any problems the publication may or may not accomplish. This could be in many forms, over the internet, through email, in an office, or simply by oral suggestion from one ideas-man to another. The next step is to send a pseudo finished piece off to an editor or publisher; this person or people mark it up and change the project to there specific specifications. This is usually done by many means of communication, but usually it’s done by people within the company or firm responsible for the print. All of these processes’ are done with a means to a greater good. All the cartographic communication and cartographic knowhow bundled into a package to try and create the best finished product available. With a single cartographer, we can only get one set of ideas, one manipulation of content, but with even two cartographers the ideas multiply exponentially and build upon each other for ever. Based upon this basic premise, multiple cartographers working on a project simultaneously is obviously preferred to a single projecteer.

NEVADA!

Nevada is an unbelievable place. It is full of desert, mountain, and forest. The government owns most of the state and the parts they don’t are owned by mining companies or railroads. This is a good and a bad thing for mapping the state. The good thing is there is a myriad of data available from the census and other government organizations, so data collection is not an issue. However, the bad thing about Mapping Nevada is out of the 17 counties, about 90% of the population is located in two of them. The other fifteen shows up as blanks in pretty much every data set you have. This makes the types of maps and how you show your maps very important. Meaning you can lie very easily in Nevada because of the types of data. Many mapmakers have shown this by creating multiple layers with differing transparencies; this creates an interesting effect on the mapped layers. By changing even the amount of categories you have to work with, you can change how the map looks and therefore how individuals interpret the information. With these different looks created by processing the same data sets is neat in a way, because this gives the mapmaker the ability to tell many different stories just by selecting a variety of categories to map. Instead of the norm where mapmakers are bound by their data and must tell the story the data dictates.

Having Mapped and appreciated the intricacies of Nevada, I have a greater appreciation of the state and how data fields work in other places as well. Nevada is both beautiful and challenging, but it is also worth mapping and needs to be done more.

The world according to Google

After playing, experiencing, learning, examining, probing, exploring and investigating a plethora of “Virtual Worlds;” such as, Google Earth, Celestia, World Wind, Microsoft Live, and Map Quest. There are many others out there, but they don’t have nearly the publicity. These virtual worlds are an amazing tool for individuals to play around and look at the world. It gives the laymen the opportunity to look at things they wouldn’t normally be able to see. I know plenty of people who have not been out of their home state, but with this new technology they are able to see places around the world, not nearly as intimately of course, but still, fairly closely. These things will all in all make humankind, at least the technological literate with access to the will to these programs, a better understanding of the world and how it works. With this knowledge, hopefully the human race isn’t doomed to oblivion. That’s a good thing.

Virtual worlds are cool. That’s the bottom line. They are fun, cool programs that users can do many things with and create new ideas and communicate in new ways. I love all types of virtual worlds, I’ve been lost in Celestia, I’ve researched trips in map quest, and I’ve incorporated GPS points into Google earth to make movies of trips. Basically, I’ve played with these virtual worlds quite a bit, and if you haven’t, I recommend you do.

Games

The use of maps in games, no matter the kind, has always been helpful to gamers. I want to look at four types of games; geography based board games, geography based computer games, regular board games, and regular computer games. I want to make the distinction between these different classes because of the way they implement special variability.

Geography based computer games. These can be very interesting and fun games. They usually are geo-trivia sorts of games like find the state on a map, or find the country. However there are a few games which enhance a broader set of geographic ideas, such as: this does a very good job at being geo-trivia and at enhancing special ideals at the same time. However, most people find most geo-computer games to be boring.

Geography based board or card games are common as well. National Geographic has a few out; most of these again are geo-trivia. Such as name the capitol, or find the state. These are well implemented in many classroom activities, but may not be as interesting for the lay person. Some of these games do also promote more than just geo-trivia; they also try and inform the gamer on matters of scale, and why places are where and whatnot.

Regular computer based games are usually quite fun and exciting for many people. If you think about it, most all of these games require a map, a place, or at least a reference to where things are within it. A game like Age of Empires, a popular real time strategy game, has a different map almost every game. Maps are very important to these types of games and the more familiar a gamer is with the games maps or mapping systems, the more successful the gamer will be.

The last category I want to look at is board games. I will split this in half as well; first I will look at board games which utilize maps and then the games which do not. There are many games that use real world maps to instigate play, such as, Risk, Axis and Allies game series, Take Off, and many others. These games make use of the real world to play the game, this does more than just provide an interesting experience for participants, and it also makes the players subconsciously learn something about their world. Certain games such as Axis and Allies will also teach participants about world history, and if the participants know some world history, they will benefit in the strategy of the game. The other types of games are none map based games; such as Chess, Checkers, Stratego, and others. These games may not have a map element to them, but people do have to learn and analyze space to be successful. Chess for example, if a player does not see many possible different moves in different directions and different pieces, they will certainly fail. If the same player can see the whole board as well as the spaces of each piece, success will be much more imminent.

I believe that a person who can see more than one space at a time will succeed more readily in any type of game he or she does pursue. Maps are integral in many types of games and many of those games could not exist without the use and help of maps. This is just another notch on the importance of maps in society today. They benefit our entertainment purposes.

You can see the use of maps in other issues of modern day entertainment. The use of place names to identify a sports team, movies use places to help tell the story… and in all of these they are displayed via the use of maps.