Uncharted Territory: The Power of Amateur Cartographers
Katie Collins – As populations continue to shift, environments continue to change and cities continue to grow, there needs to be an ongoing remapping of the world around us if we’re to continue facilitating these kind of discussions. That MapMaker, OpenStreetMap and other similar map-making tools — along with dissimilar ones, which haven’t even been touched upon here — coexist is vital to making sure we’re constantly challenging our ideas of what should be mapped, and why, and how and by whom. Satellite imagery may have made visible many of the world’s secrets, but the stories told by the ever-changing nuances of human geography need to be plotted and updated regularly according to human knowledge. Cartography is just as much an instrument of power as maps themselves, and for the first time in history, it’s a tool being freely used by people who may have been ignored, or overlooked for a whole number of reasons to put themselves firmly on the map and take control of their own visibility.
