Re-Mapping The Earth

Cartography was once a very elitist and top-down activity. And yes, even maps have agendas. What they include or leave out or annotate has always reflected the decisions of very few people. But that's changing fast, with Google Maps and Google Earth. Places once ignored are now quite prominent, and the details and annotations are gettig much more democratic:

John Hanke, the director of Google Earth and Google Maps, zooms in for a closer look at Bangalore. At first, the city appeared in Google Earth as little more than a hi-res satellite photo. "Bangalore wasn't mapped on Google's products," he says, "and it really wasn't very well mapped, period."

Now, however, hundreds of small icons pop up on the screen. Pointing at one brings up a text bubble identifying a location of interest: a university, a racetrack, a library. An icon hovering over the Karnataka High Court calls up a photo of its bright red exterior and a link to an account of its long, distinguished history. Another, atop M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, links to a Wikipedia entry about the legendary cricket matches played there. "As you can see, it's very well mapped now," Hanke says, pulling up a photo of a Hindu temple.

The annotations weren't created by Google, nor by some official mapping agency. Instead, they are the products of a volunteer army of amateur cartographers. "It didn't take sophisticated software," Hanke says. "What it took was a substrate the satellite imagery of Earth in an accessible form and a simple authoring language for people to create and share stuff. Once that software existed, the urge to describe and annotate just took off."

(Hat tip: Jesse Walker.)