Virtual Songlines
I've been reading Maps Are Territories, a book about the meaning of maps.
Author David Turnbull discusses the cartography of Australian Aboriginal peoples. In essence, for the Aborigines the landscape is a map of itself: points on the landscape invoke aspects of their djalkiri, which is often translated as "songline"--the creation stories that knit reality together.
This all reminded me of annotated reality: the systems we are now developing to hang any kind of information we wish on the landscape.
Early efforts include Web-based ideas such as the memory map on which a person notes what is salient to them about a given terrain. But increasingly ubiquitous mobile phones and GPS systems are going to enable any bit of info to be placed anywhere we like in the real world.
Eventually, it will be possible to go to any place and see what some person or group thought was important about that street or hilltop, on your mobile or maybe even a head-up display. You might want to see what an art historian, a Wiccan, or your own family has to say -- and the landscape itself will become an infinite number of maps of its own meaning.
Josh Calder
in Technology, Information
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