Also, I think with the rise of social media, few people want maps. Consider that in the new consumer landscape, facts and analysis are marginalized as maybe "nice to have", but rarely essential to the mission. Shared reasoning is 20th Century thinking, so if it doesn't tell *me* how to get to *my* next appointment, what meaning can it possibly have for me? Maps, anymore, are things that managers requisition by fiat as an affirmation of power and influence. And that too is largely a singular and personal artifice.
The former president solidly underlined the role of cartography in our society with his Sharpie pen meteorological wizardry.
IMHO, the idea that "..opportunities for consumer maps are being missed..." could be abstracted (and extended) to data presented as visual information too....charts, graphs, timelines, and more.
When we get most of our "information" from Tik-tok and AI, who needs a map? And why? And to be fair, did maps ever serve any _real_ decision process in the Anytown, U.S.A. "planning" department, where decisions are made long before the maps are created?
CARTO is amazing. But I would argue that CARTO has done a good job of verticalization into "business analytics," which has made them less focused on consumer geospatial.
I often wonder about the future interfaces of maps. and I do wonder what audio maps would look/sound like.
So far, the future of interfaces for maps appear to have gone the way of magazines and the like; that is, the current market forces are driving them (mostly) to extinction, except for the place of special cases where there is a clearly delineated group ready to support a monetized construct niche. Public newspapers? Forget it. Public gazetteer maps with functional data-driven widgets? Forget it.
I think that your idea of "audio" maps is pretty interesting. Do you mean the data or the map? That is, do you mean something like a heat map or radio telescope map? Or do you mean a point map with links to sound bytes of some kind?
I was thinking about how to deliver a geographic experience audibly. Noting that much of the professional and youth populations operate with one or two ear buds in almost all day.
Ahh, right. Well, about 15 years (or so) ago, some folks at NPR came up with what I thought (at the time) was a pretty cool idea: It was called "Radio Expeditions". Do you recall, by chance? Anyway, it somehow never seemed to get any "legs", so to speak, and quickly withered on the vine, it seems. Reflecting on this takes me back to your very simple but very effective graphic about "people" and "spatial people". I think it might be that perhaps there is only a small segment of the population that really ponders these things with any significant energy or consistency, no? I mean I am a Brony. Are you? Bronies Unite! Right? Shifting gears, both ESRI and CARTO (as well as the good folks at Knight Lab) have provided reasonable public access for "Story Maps". This seems to be (at least) one avenue for *real* people to tell *real* stories about *real* events in a potentially compelling way. And it has been around for nearly 20 years or so. But there doesn't seem to be much in the way of general public interest in the construct or format. Now, obviously that is not in the auditory spectrum, as you are focusing on. But still..... It would seem that with the skyrocket rise of podcasts, etc. that things like the "Radio Expeditions" would have, by now, gotten more mileage would be a given, no? But it seems that, anymore, what is really a driving focus of the message is the messenger themselves, not the content. Who cares where they are, really? Or even what they are doing? The thing is that they have a "brand" that caries a "vibe" and a "feeling" and "moment". And either I can feel I can be "liked" by "liking" them in my tribe---or not. Nothing else really matters at this point.
Is CARTO not a thing here? Just wondering?
Also, I think with the rise of social media, few people want maps. Consider that in the new consumer landscape, facts and analysis are marginalized as maybe "nice to have", but rarely essential to the mission. Shared reasoning is 20th Century thinking, so if it doesn't tell *me* how to get to *my* next appointment, what meaning can it possibly have for me? Maps, anymore, are things that managers requisition by fiat as an affirmation of power and influence. And that too is largely a singular and personal artifice.
The former president solidly underlined the role of cartography in our society with his Sharpie pen meteorological wizardry.
IMHO, the idea that "..opportunities for consumer maps are being missed..." could be abstracted (and extended) to data presented as visual information too....charts, graphs, timelines, and more.
When we get most of our "information" from Tik-tok and AI, who needs a map? And why? And to be fair, did maps ever serve any _real_ decision process in the Anytown, U.S.A. "planning" department, where decisions are made long before the maps are created?
CARTO is amazing. But I would argue that CARTO has done a good job of verticalization into "business analytics," which has made them less focused on consumer geospatial.
I often wonder about the future interfaces of maps. and I do wonder what audio maps would look/sound like.
So far, the future of interfaces for maps appear to have gone the way of magazines and the like; that is, the current market forces are driving them (mostly) to extinction, except for the place of special cases where there is a clearly delineated group ready to support a monetized construct niche. Public newspapers? Forget it. Public gazetteer maps with functional data-driven widgets? Forget it.
I think that your idea of "audio" maps is pretty interesting. Do you mean the data or the map? That is, do you mean something like a heat map or radio telescope map? Or do you mean a point map with links to sound bytes of some kind?
I was thinking about how to deliver a geographic experience audibly. Noting that much of the professional and youth populations operate with one or two ear buds in almost all day.
Ahh, right. Well, about 15 years (or so) ago, some folks at NPR came up with what I thought (at the time) was a pretty cool idea: It was called "Radio Expeditions". Do you recall, by chance? Anyway, it somehow never seemed to get any "legs", so to speak, and quickly withered on the vine, it seems. Reflecting on this takes me back to your very simple but very effective graphic about "people" and "spatial people". I think it might be that perhaps there is only a small segment of the population that really ponders these things with any significant energy or consistency, no? I mean I am a Brony. Are you? Bronies Unite! Right? Shifting gears, both ESRI and CARTO (as well as the good folks at Knight Lab) have provided reasonable public access for "Story Maps". This seems to be (at least) one avenue for *real* people to tell *real* stories about *real* events in a potentially compelling way. And it has been around for nearly 20 years or so. But there doesn't seem to be much in the way of general public interest in the construct or format. Now, obviously that is not in the auditory spectrum, as you are focusing on. But still..... It would seem that with the skyrocket rise of podcasts, etc. that things like the "Radio Expeditions" would have, by now, gotten more mileage would be a given, no? But it seems that, anymore, what is really a driving focus of the message is the messenger themselves, not the content. Who cares where they are, really? Or even what they are doing? The thing is that they have a "brand" that caries a "vibe" and a "feeling" and "moment". And either I can feel I can be "liked" by "liking" them in my tribe---or not. Nothing else really matters at this point.