How has the Internet changed maps?

Beyond anyone's imagination, really. The effects have been colossal and irreversible. If you were to say 20 years ago that we would all be walking around with free maps on our phones that placed us at the center of the world and told us where to go and how to get there, I would have thought you were crazy. The Internet has had more effect on maps, cartography, and the way we get around than anything else in two thousand years of map history. Rand McNally only covered America for a century. Now Google Maps, which has only been around for about five years, is all over the world and without a doubt the most influential map company in history. They have a lot of responsibility to get it right.

How has that affected the way we see ourselves in the world?

Our entire view of the world is skewed. Today we are always a little flashing blue dot in the middle of every map; we're the center of the world! But often that map is only 2 inches by 3 inches on your phone screen, which means that we get a very limited view of what's around us, and we look at the world in a very egocentric way. We can get in a car and travel across the country without really knowing how we got there because we're just following GPS commands. We learn far less and lose that instinct of what lies in relation to what. Why would anyone learn to read a map when it's all done for us? And why should I go spend $10 on a paper map when I can get it all for free on my phone? And the map will be more up-to-date on my phone too. It makes sense.

So, what is the point of traditional maps anymore?

Maps tell us what we understood about the world at a particular point in history, and then how our view of the world developed. We got a lot of things wrong, but that actually tells us quite a lot about that time period. Maps have a wonderful, romantic nature as well. They were usually drawn by one person who brought his own character to it. We invented a lot of mythical ideas to explain the way the world looked. If it weren't for errors on maps, then we wouldn't have sailed to places we didn't know were there, the classic example, obviously, being Columbus, who thought he was going to Japan and China. So, getting things wrong can be a great advantage. That works in our day-to-day life as well. It's quite nice to come across things that we haven't discovered before by chance.

I think you should use both digital and traditional maps, because that means you won't get your directions wrong, and you'll get a much wider perspective on the world. You should be able to read a map in an emergency situation. Traditional maps are invaluable to outdoorsy people in places where there isn't good GPS or the batteries are low. But I think by and large the days of paper maps are numbered. I think digital maps are only going to become more and more omnipresent in all our lives.

How will digital maps influence our lives in the future?

What is clear is that we won't be able to tell our history in the same kind of way. I imagine that in 20 years a Google Map is going to look pretty similar to the one we look at now. The topography would have changedwe'd have new buildings and roadsbut the actual look of the map, the colors, and the scale, probably wouldn't have changed very much. A traditional map changes depending on the person who draws it up. They bring their character to it, whereas you look at any digital map and they tend to look similar, automated, and impersonal. In fact, the more impersonal, the chances are the more accurate they are and the more they will be able to be read by more people all over the world.

The idea of map drawers and personality brings us to your new book, To the Letter. Why do we think of paper letters having more personality than emails?

If I was to send you an email, I could change the font and the font size, but it would look pretty much like every other email you receive. The words would have a personality, but not the look. There would be no physicality to it. Even a typewritten letter has the character of the typist, the typewriter, the paper, the damage from the postthey make it a very unique thing.

How will digital communication affect our historical record?

With digital communication we lose the way that we write. People don't send love letters anymore, but that doesn't mean they then send love emails. We tend to just not express our emotions the way that we used to in our daily communications. In terms of a written record, we're going to have a far less emotional record of the way we lived our lives and the way we thought about things. And also, emails tend to be instant, whereas a letter . . . no one would expect a letter returned by the next day. You would write in a different way, and you'd think about your words much more carefully. Without letters, we're not going to be able to tell our history with as much emotional depth as we could in the past. Historians are going to have a very hard time.

Will emails last?

Emails will be stored and shared, if we can get around the firewalls and passwords, but no one is ever going to discover a cache of their grandparents' emails in the attic. Our digital communication basically just shows where we were at a particular time. We'll have our calendars and lots of texts saying "I'm going to be 10 minutes late" or "Let's meet for supper here." We're wrong if we think that emails are going be around forever. Even today, some people think emails are too formal, too much effort. In 20 years all of our communication will be instant: texts, tweets, Skype messages. And then we will hardly leave any written record behind us at all.

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