Blog #1 - Can a map tell a story?


When we think of a map, we think of the earth, laid flat, a flat canvas painted in green and blue but never the specifics of it we will now understand. When I think of a map I remember google maps. How It Is used as a function, to over view an area to navigate and area to get from point A to point B. Today I want to talk about how I agree with Bunini’s Paradox that in simple terms stated that a model can’t be both accurate and useful.

In my own interpretation, this makes perfect sense. There is the reason. For say the more we zoom into a map, we may end up on a road. This picture alone had no meaning and no value at all. In fact for the viewer, all it is, is a black page, nothing, let’s assume one zoomed out a little more. We have no information. A road. But our reasoning will ask questions like where is going to, where is the road, it is very accurate. Picture a bigger picture 30meters wide and 100meters long. Here it is, a road segment in real scale with mailboxes and sidewalks on each side of the road, yet it means nothing. It remains a road segment and no context.

It is easy to say that the best representation of something is an exact copy of that in real size say another earth in another mention, where everything is the same down to the last grain of sand. There is it’s so accurate, but it is the amount of information represented is that makes it more useful.

The idea is to remove a bit of information and use that space to zoom out and fill that space with information. In that same 30m x 100m space had been shrunken to let more information. By cutting out every tree and road light and adding in land larger land marks, I now know that that road is along a beach, not made by asphalt but by gravel, and it leads to a plaza where ice cream vans stop.

Now not so accurate in scale but it is so useful, I know what to do and I have a sense of direction, people are not stupid, they will figure out the details that don’t matter to them selves, in fact they won't because the details don’t matter.



Saed Abdulhadi  

              (Spetember 2017)

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