1. Proto-GIS and the Birth of Digital
Mapping
Jeremy W. Crampton
New Maps Collaboratory &
Department of Geography
University of Kentucky, USA
2. Outline
Intro: What is the event of the map, today?
Three intensifications:
a) historically a calculative form of governance
b) anxieties
c) entrepreneurialism of biopolitical spatial Big Data
Is the “algorithm” vulnerable?
hacking, spoofing and crypto-wars
7. Data in three acts
1. 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
8. 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
9. Wallace W. Atwood 1872-1949
Arthur H. Robinson 1915-2004
Hereward
Lester Cooke
1879-1946
10.
11. 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
12.
13. 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.)
14. To: Map Division Field Units
From: Map Division, Washington [AHR]
Report #4
SECRET
6 March 1944
Source: NARA, RG226, Entry 1, Box 31 “General Correspondence, 1942-1946” Folder 1
15.
16. 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
17. “The Map as Ideology” Lecture, Univ. Wisconsin-Madison, 6 Nov. 1985.
Source: Harley Papers, British Library, Box “Ideology II” item 3b.
18. 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.”
19. 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”
22. 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
24. 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
Has long origins
“Proto GIS” Bunge: Not just extrapolation, but prediction, because “Village” can be predicted using say central place theory even though it does not appear on the given map.
Later, Harvard Graphics Lab
Algorithm = data + control, here data + “conduct of conduct”
Pastoral power, Foucault: “constantly ensure, sustain, and improve the lives of each and every one”
Not freedom v. government, but “transactional realities” (realites de transaction)—must know the state of the flock, but of every individual, the interplay between freedom and what eludes freedom (ie not domination or ubiquitous surveillance). Today we might trace these transactions as they occur across the geoweb. “Correlative to a form of governmentalty we call liberalism” (BoB, p. 297).
FOR Foucault, this would allow us to “imagine and build up” what we could be to refuse this “double bind” of totalization and individualization of modern power structures [Subject and Power, Vol 3, p. 336].
