Proto-GIS and the Birth of Digital Mapping

Jeremy W. Crampton

New Maps Collaboratory &Department of GeographyUniversity of Kentucky, USA

Outline

Intro: What is the event of the map, today?

Three intensifications:a) historically a calculative form of governanceb) anxietiesc) entrepreneurialism of biopolitical spatial Big Data

Is the “algorithm” vulnerable?hacking, spoofing and crypto-wars

“Proto GIS”

W. Bunge 1962-6 Theoretical Geography

1. “It will never be enough”

2. “It is too revealing of our intimate selves” (surveillant anxiety”

Harley The Map as Ideology book outline.

Source: British Library Harley Papers

Data in three acts1. During 19th century it was biopolitical populations

2. Until 1970s it was individuals as part of a “mass”–Mass production, mass marketing, etc.

3. Since 1970s it has been data doubles or derivatives–Commoditized (FB revenue $9.45 per user)–Risk-based, predictive–Foucault’s pastoral power (“transactional reality”)

Dan Bouk, Forthcoming:“The History and Political Economy of Personal Data over the Last Two Centuries in Three Acts.” Osiris

The ATCOROB Device

“The fact that each model consumed an average of 2200 man hours, and each duplicate 150 man-hours, indicates the painstaking detail required”

Source: Roosevelt, K. (1947/1976) War Report of the OSS

Wallace W. Atwood 1872-1949

Arthur H. Robinson 1915-2004

Hereward Lester Cooke 1879-1946

The operator seated within the machine at a table that could be raised and lowered according to the amount of vertical exaggeration required

Above the operator were two lenses which were covered with red and green filters. The operator then carved a plaster block

For three dimensions could also put on glasses with red and green lenses.

Source: Mechanix Illustrated

Bill Donovan went on the radio to appeal to the nation for maps

OSS made newsreel to appeal to the public for any “holiday snaps” they had taken while abroad of strategic targets (bridges, harbors etc.)

To: Map Division Field UnitsFrom: Map Division, Washington [AHR]

Report #4SECRET6 March 1944

Source: NARA, RG226, Entry 1, Box 31 “General Correspondence, 1942-1946” Folder 1

Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen“Largest collection in the Geography and Map Division”>23,000 maps Project Cybersyn, Chile early 1970s

Complete, real-time data on entire country

“The Map as Ideology” Lecture, Univ. Wisconsin-Madison, 6 Nov. 1985.

Source: Harley Papers, British Library, Box “Ideology II” item 3b.

Harley, draft manuscript The Map as Ideology

Annotations by Derek Gregory, August 1984

“It is, I think, exactly that sense of ideology as ‘false consciousness’ which much of the modern, so-called ‘humanistic’ Marxism—& esp. the work of E.P. Thompson—would reject.”

Harley “Silences and Secrecy” typescript, date/location unknown [12th International Conference on the History of Cartography, Paris, September 1987?]

Source: British Library, CDS materials, “B’s Silences/Secrecy Paper”

Fantasy and anxiety of total information, control, in real-time

Arthur Robinson, 1984

Source: AAG panel, Washington, DC, 1984 “Geographers, Cartographers and the Second World War” [Geographers on Film 1984F.1]

J. Brian Harley, 1988

Source: Ed Dahl

Marie Tharp, 2001

Source: Earth Institute, Columbia University

Vulnerabilities of algorithms

Hacking, spoofing, crypto-wars

Responses

1. We need critical histories of geographic computation (this AAG session). Technicities of attention, anxiety

2. Julie Cohen: Level of the network / the post-liberal self

3. Agnieszka Leszczynski: political economy of the work algorithms / Spatial Big Data does in the world

4. Including when algorithms and IoT breaks down (data breaches, hacking), vulnerabilities

Thank you!

@jeremycramptonjcrampton@uky.edu

(Via Denis Wood)

British Library, Harley Papers