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With new digital technologies for mapping, now, there is a lot of maps
we can see though internet as almost real-time. As the new digital
technologies spread out, like Pickles mentions in his book, “Perhaps we
should place emphasizes on the worlds that are being produced in the
digital transition, the conceptions of history with which they work, and
the forms of socio-political life to which they contribute." 32 New
technologies for maps and mapping have an impact on contemporary
urban society and public practices. 33 The following is a quote by Board,
explaining about represented and generalized maps and models:
[I]t is comparatively easy to visualize maps as representational; models of real
world, but it is important to realize that they are also conceptual models
containing the essence of some generalization about reality. In that role, maps
are useful analytical tools which help investigators to see the real world in a
new light, or even to allow them an entirely new view of reality. 34
Figure 22. Mark Hansen/
Ben Rubin, Listening
Post, 2004
Data Visualization The democratization of information has
important implications for how we understand space, culture, economy,
society, and nature. As we know, data visualization is a powerful tool for
representing, understanding and sharing information. In many fields, the
goal of visualization is to provide the viewer with a better understanding
of data or solving an isolated part of the specific problems for the scientific
and social achievements. Visualization also can offer a method for seeing
the unseen. It also enriches the process of scientific discovery and fosters
profound and unexpected insights. Ben Fry mentions “one goal of
information design is to show comparisons between elements.” 35
Conceivably, contrast, hierarchy, and grouping are other elements to
show differences. 36 One aspect of visualization is that it becomes different
according to size, weight, color, and so on.
32
Pickles, John. A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping, and the Geo-Codes
World, 2003 , p146
33
Ibid., p146
34
Ibid., p27 (Board, C. “Maps as models." Edited by R.J. Chorley and P. Haggett, models in
Geography, London: Methuen, 1967, p671-726)
35
Ben Fry, “Computational Information design.”, 2004, p110
36
Ibid., p113
J.KIM_A LANDSCAPE OF EVENTS 32