How digital maps change our perception of the world

Once cards were paper, big and inconvenient. It was necessary to spend some time to find the place where you are now, and figure out how to get to some other place. We estimated the distance, chose routes. We felt like a tiny piece of the world, even within this leaf. Today, digital cards in each smartphone helpfully place us in the center of the world, instantly plotting a route and displaying it entirely on the screen. And the way we use maps today has gradually changed our in-depth perception of the world.

Our perception of cities is changing. Our view and orientation in streets, boulevards, roads, parks, hills, etc. is transformed. And this happens not because the landscape itself or the building changes, but because of the small devices in our pockets. Numerous cartographic applications blur the boundary between the digital and the real world, and we implicitly begin to perceive the environment as part of - or a continuation of - technology.

Modern gadgets provide a lot of features, have many functions. And all this is right in the hand. In part, this can be considered a technorevolution, because we no longer need to make special efforts to find the necessary information. Life has become much easier, just dial a couple of search queries in your smartphone. No trips to the library, searches in paper directories and encyclopedia volumes. And once in an unfamiliar place, we no longer need to ask people around and “wrinkle the convolutions”, trying to tie ourselves to the terrain on a paper map.
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Although even your own paper card in your pocket is a relatively recent "invention." For thousands of years, up to the end of the 19th century, most people lived their lives happily in their native villages and cities, not particularly interested in what is outside the small territories they were familiar with. But over time, the cards became cheaper to manufacture, and eventually turned into a mass product. Also, partly affected by the complication and acceleration of life: the proportion of the urban population grew, the cities themselves became larger and more complex in planning, with the development of transport people began to drive more often, so the need for maps of various cities and districts grew. So there was a class of pocket cards, the format of which allowed to put them in the pocket of a man's raincoat.

With the advent of digital technology, our habits of using maps began to change dramatically. There were a myriad of geolocation services, with the help of which we find food and entertainment, we publish photos, videos, etc. in them. Maps are drawn into an increasing number of aspects of our lives. Today we are already generating maps for our needs. That is, maps are transformed from a public instrument into a personal one. More precisely, personalized.

The phrase "you are here" was no longer needed. After all, which application does not open, it immediately focuses on you, on your coordinates. That is, your marker is a priori the center of the world. And the rest of the space becomes just an environment, as if in a geocentric picture of the world.



And this is one of the most important moments affecting our perception of the city. Not only cafes, banks and shops “revolve” around your marker, but also all your experience, photos and messages in social networks - memories “pinned” to a digital map in the places where they originated. Medieval rulers hung cards of their possessions as a symbol of power in palaces and castles, and somewhere deep down we are driven by a similar desire when we try to integrate our social person into the digital space of the world, as if we own all these institutions around us.

How illusory is this sense of ownership? Maybe we just stop considering the city as a kind of collective object? Scrolling through the pages of the atlas and trying to cope with the sheets of the tourist map gives us a physical sense of scale: here is the city, and the edges of the map are kind of boundaries. And thanks to the digital card diving, we lost this sense of scale. We no longer hang over the maps, we plot the route from point A to point B, and everything outside the route doesn’t seem to exist. And the fact that we no longer need to look out for a map where we are located is one of the key changes. Most of us will not be able to find our position on a map at specific coordinates. Many in general already forgot to think about any coordinates there. Life has become a little easier. And since navigation was largely automated, the boundaries between virtual and real cities became thinner.

Even in games the cards have changed. First, complete with floppy disks and disks were supplied with paper maps, then they began to massively introduce common digital maps of levels, on which the player's marker was displayed. And in modern games, navigation has been simplified before following the route line or the marks on the horizon. Today, similar methods of immersion (immersive methods) are gradually appearing in augmented reality technologies, as well as in already familiar mapping applications. For example, you can navigate through an unfamiliar city, without looking at the smartphone at all, but simply by following the voice instructions of the navigator in the headphones. By the way, a very strange feeling when you go to unknown places like this “blindly,” and someone just tells you where to turn. Also a kind of game. And although you walk through the open city, the synthetic voice in the headphones turns it into a kind of corridor. This is very similar to the maps of John Ogilby, which appeared in the 17th century: they were narrow stripes, on which only specific roads were displayed, and the entire surrounding area was ruled out "as unnecessary". Only those objects that were necessary for orientation were left.



But if then it was a strange quirk, today the “corridor” perception of the terrain has become widespread. We just do not notice. And it can be expected that in the coming years the above described approach to navigation will be massively implemented: when we set the end point and the route is superimposed on the terrain in some augmented reality glasses. Quickly, simply, efficiently, just get from point A to point B. And the rest of the city remains "beyond." Nothing personal. It’s just that in our hectic life you need to quickly arrive at the right place, without looking around, without turning into interesting streets and not trying to learn something new about the city in which you live or turned out to be in transit.

Simplification of the algorithm for using digital maps has caused a somewhat paradoxical tendency: maps are becoming more primitive. Moreover, the modern version of Google Maps is less detailed than it was 6 years ago . The map has become more schematic, the emphasis is on the display of streets and roads, and not on the harmonious ratio of different objects. After all, this is not so necessary, the main thing is to see how to get to the traffic jams faster.


On the left there is a paper map of the 1960s, on the right - Google Maps at about the same scale.

And the simplistic situation is not saved even by the efforts of enthusiasts who are ready to draw almost the benches near the entrances on the map of the very popular OpenStreetMap service.



Digital cards are characterized by another tendency that leaves an imprint on our perception of the world. The simplicity of drawing various “points of interest” on the map — cafes, banks, cinemas, restaurants, gas stations, and many other objects — has turned modern maps into reference books. Yes, it is convenient, but ask yourself a question: have you traveled around the city for a long time in search of interesting places? Unless you are a fan of walking, it’s probably a long time ago. And why to do so, because now it is enough to enter a key request into the search line of the map or turn on the filter to display the necessary objects. I found the nearest one, laid a route, and “along the corridor” went to my destination. Not looking around, not exploring new places and areas. In many ways, we begin to perceive the world - and even the city - not as something integral, with all its features, traits, advantages and disadvantages, but as a certain set of places we need. After exploring the unfamiliar streets, we make up in the head a lively image of a part of the city, and not just move in accordance with the instructions on the screen, really remembering only scraps. Did you remember the road well, if you drove along it only on the navigator?

It is not excluded that in the near future there will be digital maps that have degraded to a schematic display only “useful” objects that may be of interest to a citizen. We already see this in the games, look at the navigation in Pokemon Go. Here, everything is subordinated to the same goal - to search for and capture representatives of the Japanese animated fauna. And what prevents the appearance and success of users, say, maps of pubs open all night? I opened such a “treasure map”, stuck it in a suitable “little chest”, the gadget made a route and went forward to the goal, without looking around. With the advent of unmanned vehicles, people generally stop looking around: the car is lucky, and all attention is absorbed by the news sites, friends and social networks on social networks. Not the world, but a slideshow: here I sat down, went out here. What was in between is not important.

By the way, did you notice how boring most digital cards look? Especially in comparison with maps of the 19th century, and even maps of the first third of the 20th century? Most of the map services, especially vector ones, look like faceless schemes with blotches, with their pastel tones and low contrast lines. After all, nothing should distract the user, he needs to get from point A to point B, so that his eyes do not ripple. Previously, maps were just interesting to look at, they aroused interest: “What does this city, this country, this mountain look like?” But today it is a refined, convenient, effective and incredibly boring tool that is unlikely to make you want to take a new route, just for curiosity.

When in the 19th century pocket cards began to be massively sold, people appeared who preferred not to use them, but to explore cities on their own, relying on chance and luck. Perhaps, in the 21st century, with its abundance of gadgets with cartographic applications, the fashion for “natural” orientation will reappear, new flanders will appear. This can be a natural reaction to the prescribed routes, excessive orderliness. For example, the first signs of this tendency have already appeared in the gaming industry - simulations of free exploration of the world .

In the end, the cards themselves are lifeless. As Charles Baudelaire said, the meaning of cities is not in their structure, but in the people who inhabit it. In 1863, he wrote: “ He who is moved by the love of life of the world, penetrates the crowd, as if into a gigantic electric battery. “And although we like to save photos and notes on map points, it’s still hard to pin real memories to some coordinates. People and their memory are not as easy to map as streets and roads.