Flourishing neocartography

In the old computer game "Alchemy", whose clones are still popular, it was necessary to connect two elements to get a new, previously non-existent. But after all, games are just a bizarre reflection of our life. From the combination of different technologies, sometimes having nothing in common, new, unprecedented technologies and phenomena are born that involve many people who had never thought of anything like that before. For example, when traditional analog cartography received modern computer and satellite technologies, when personal computers and the Internet became widely used and powerful enough, an amazing social phenomenon appeared - neocartography.

The past decade has become a real flowering of applied “popular” cartography. Unexpectedly, it turned out that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people around the world are ready to spend a lot of time with pleasure in drawing up, specifying and complementing maps of every square kilometer of our planet.


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Perhaps the main impetus for this process was the release of Google Maps in 2005. True, the API developers have not posted. However, it didn’t take so long for enthusiasts to figure out how to display different markers at GM at their discretion. One of the first projects of this kind was Housingmaps , which provided information on apartments available for rent, collected from various sources and superimposed on GM maps. So neogeography and neocartography originated .

Neogeography is called combination of online maps with different data, tying them to specific points on the map. This phenomenon is considered a subsection of neocartography , or folk cartography, when maps are massively created by ordinary people, amateurs. A striking example of a neocartographic service is the OpenStreetMap project , and a non-geographic one is WikiMapia . They are very widely known, so we will not describe them. There are also publicly available databases on a variety of topics that can be used in neogeography. And every year the number of amateur cartographers is increasing. For particularly avid participants in this process, the term maphead has even appeared in the English language.

The spread of the Internet has spurred another phenomenon; the passion for collecting cards is potato .





It takes very diverse forms, one of the strangest and bizarre is cartomania ( cartocacoethes , the rare case in which the Russian term is shorter and easier to pronounce), the tendency to see patterned images of maps in different manifestations of the surrounding world. Like this "map of Australia":





In fact, this is a kind of paradolia . There was even a comic discipline "accidental cartography" (accidental cartography), when people try to find images of maps in ordinary everyday objects around us.

And here is another pair of neo-words: geonerd , which can be translated both as geobotan, and geophanate, and trace into geonerd; and topophilia (topography + filia), craving for everything related to the landscape, orientation to the terrain, etc. That is why geocaching , a kind of variation on the treasure hunt, is so popular all over the world: someone creates an arbitrary cache and lays out his geographic coordinates, while others must get there and find the cache. The fans of this fun - geocash - even formed a kind of division into castes:

megacacher , the most honored participants who have found the most caches (the account goes to thousands);

fast trackers (free translation of the term power cacher ), trying to find as many caches as possible in the allotted time;

extreme cacher who attract only dangerous routes and places;

headheads (free translation puzzle cacher ) who like to solve different riddles and puzzles in the process of finding a cache.

The so-called “ virgin cache ”, that is, the cache that no one has found before you, either was not able or didn’t have time, is especially valued in the community of geocachers. The lucky ones in this case proudly call themselves FTF ( first to find , the first finder).



Another interesting hobby that has emerged in the neocartographic ecosystem is the search for intersections ( degree confluence hunt ). People visit places whose latitude and longitude are whole round integers. That is, the intersection point of parallels and meridians. Naturally, this great moment is recorded on photos and videos confirming your presence in this place.

Why is all of the above so popular all over the world? Why do so many people create detailed maps that are not inferior, and often superior to large commercial products? Why do so many people enthusiastically wandering around the planet with maps and navigators at the ready? Probably the answer lies in our brain with you. When we find the right path in space, our subconscious builds a cognitive map , a mental model of the real world. Therefore, many people like to look at all kinds of cards.

There is even a point of view that the use of navigators that save us from having to navigate the terrain, in fact, block the creation of cognitive maps . We now very rarely ask for the road and oncoming people, because smartphones lead us wherever necessary. It is almost impossible for a modern city dweller to get lost, while we generally do not look around very much, having buried in the screens of the gadgets that display the route. On the other hand, if we approach the question correctly, then the navigator can allow us to get lost much better. The main thing is to hide it deeper and get away. And then you can be happy to try to determine your location and search for the road, without fear of getting lost too seriously. After all, in your pocket is a navigator that will help get out, if that. And our task is to look at the world and look for our own way in it.