Draw the line: the case for preserving maps

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This was published 4 years ago

Editorial

Draw the line: the case for preserving maps

A young boy unfurls a scroll where X marks the spot and drags mum into a treasure hunt through the house. A grandmother prises open an atlas and traces the family history across continents, passing on knowledge to new generations. A bushwalker soaks in the view on an escape from the city before consulting an increasingly crinkled map to see where to go next.

Lines on paper, even those meant as an objective record of the world around us, can be powerful. Maps tell us not only where we are and where we are going, but provide insight into where we've been. The wars fought, the advances achieved, the empires that have risen and fallen.

Bushwalking guide and map trainer Ashley Burke.

Bushwalking guide and map trainer Ashley Burke. Credit: Steven Siewert

In some ways maps are more entwined in our lives than ever before. At the tap of a smartphone you can zoom in to any street on earth, whether to plan a dream holiday, avoid congestion on the morning commute or to see what your own house looks like via satellite. From counting the trees in the backyard to the planes on the tarmac at Groom Lake, Nevada, you don't have to go anywhere to have a better view of the world than at any time in history.

But the map as a physical object is under threat. Reduced demand for maps has resulted in fewer resources for their upkeep. As Nick Bonyhady reports today, Geosciences Australia has cut the production of paper topographical maps and its state equivalent has stopped reprinting them when they go out of stock. For example, paper topographical maps for places as popular as Thredbo are no longer available for purchase from the state government.

Hefty street directories can still be purchased, and are no doubt tucked away under the passenger seats of a million cars as a back-up, but for most people the days of navigating unfamiliar parts of the city by turning from page 5E to 42G are a thing of the past. It’s far easier to mount a smartphone safely and plug in a destination but in a city where construction and roadworks are constant this is not a sure-fire way of getting anywhere without an unwanted detour. Electronic maps and GPS technology are also susceptible to sabotage, cyber attacks and solar flares, to say nothing of the very human problems of dropped phones and flat batteries.

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As with phone books and encyclopaedias, there is something reassuring about the reality of a physical, printed record of the world. As a newspaper, The Sun-Herald can appreciate this. Rumours and lies spread quickly in an era of fake news and deep-fake manipulated images, so authoritative sources of fact only gain in importance.

Maps have not only recorded the world around us but have also been used to shape history. Examples of men arbitrarily deciding where one thing ends and another begins has had lasting consequences. We need look no further than Australia's state borders.

Besides, there's nothing quite like the real thing. Ask any collector or stamps, coins, books, typewriters or Teddy bears whether they would be happy with a digital download instead of an object they can handle, weigh or lovingly preserve. For all their practical uses, maps fold into the same category. And until you pore over one, there's no telling where it might lead.

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