The title was one of the opening statements made by Google’s “technology evangelist” Ed Parsons in a recent talk for the British Computer Society. In the talk he argues traditional street maps are bad (all of them) because they fail to engender a sense of place and because they abstract the world using map symbols. He goes on to say Streetview is good and doesn’t suffer any of these problems. So is Google Earth. The take-home message is that 2D is bad! Maps symbols are bad! Photos are good! And paper is bad! [subtext: Google doesn’t make paper, but if we did, we might soften our stance].
Here is my concern: I’m not aware of any research to support such simplistic claims. Merely saying them, repeatedly, doesn’t make them true. The wayfinding research that I have seen shows that for some users, for some map reading tasks, yes, absolutely Streetview and Virtual Earths and geo-tagged photos can help. And for some users and some situations paper is better than pixels. And for some users, and some kinds of data, 2D is better than 3D. But none of those statements is a blanket truth and by outright rejecting all traditional maps in his talk–even if just for wayfinding on mobile devices–an otherwise solid argument is overshadowed by hyperbole.
If drug companies made arguments like these they might try to convince us by saying “Aspirin is bad. Aspirin may make your arms fall off. But our new drug has none of these problems. Use our new drug.” The difference is drug companies are legally obligated to back-up their claims. It is perhaps the reason they don’t employ “evangelists.”
The deeper, more troubling message that we hear again and again is that cartography is little more than making street maps. And the flip side of that coin is the only reason we use maps is for wayfinding. Streetview is very cool (it really is), but it is also pretty specialized in its uses and the advent of it does not in fact “kill cartography.”
Cartography is more than taking photographs of a street. It’s a shame that someone with this level of influence at Google has such a limited view of why we map.
