James Fulton - Blog Post 2

And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"

"Have you used it much?" I enquired.

"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."

- Lewis Carroll -

I spent my childhood, like most people before me, running around a set of coordinates on a thoroughly detailed physical map in some atlas. I then watched as that map was made available on library computers, home computers, and even the palm of my hand. As a child of the generation that fought to have access to the internet declared a basic human right (and won) I navigate more on that map than I do in the city it represents. I am the small blue arrow walking past phantom people, cars, and buildings from satellite imagery of days gone by. These ghosts are my guide to the present, and the directions broadcast from space to my cellphone free me of any need to rely on physical reality while navigating through it.