[HN Gopher] Virality in cartography: What makes a map go viral?
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Virality in cartography: What makes a map go viral?
Author : bryanrasmussen
Score : 56 points
Date : 2024-11-10 07:48 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (geoawesome.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (geoawesome.com)
| Zobat wrote:
| For those looking for the travel time map:
|
| https://www.rome2rio.com/blog/2016/01/08/time-flies-accordin...
| gloflo wrote:
| (2022)
| alanbernstein wrote:
| How about novelty?
|
| I'm not sure about "viral", but the spilhaus ocean map is
| fascinating to me largely because of the novelty aspect.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I was hoping for the famous Napoleon losing troops map to and
| from Russia.
|
| Still a good read though, just a focus on today's trends rather
| than the timeless pieces...
| ghaff wrote:
| I assume the virality of that map comes down to Tufte.
|
| It's actually an interesting map/graphic. It paints a dramatic
| story but you really have to study it. Probably wouldn't fly in
| a newspaper or typical magazine.
|
| I remember a story a number of years back that showed complex
| relationships in Afghanistan in intricate detail. Similar sort
| of deal.
| oldmapgallery wrote:
| Yes, Tufte did much to popularize the Minard map related to
| Napoleon, but there were map dealers that had been intrigued
| by it and discussing it for quite a while prior to that.
| Those discussions can leak into academia and pollinate a
| whole new batch of discussions.
|
| Virality as part of the ebb and flow of popular culture is
| interesting. But, we find it as interesting when an old map
| will somehow drift through the pace layers of culture and
| become a discussion point. That resurfacing of an older map
| could allude to deeper issues and mechanisms that are
| ongoing.
|
| Have been intrigued to watch Hornaday's Bison extermination
| map surface in discussion. https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/s
| ervlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~3...
|
| You see those dwindling circles of Bison population and it
| hits you that not only could this be reoccurring, but perhaps
| the disappearance of other species could have similar
| cascading reactions. Some have pointed out that with the loss
| of the primary food source of the Bison, friction with
| settlers escalated quickly. It also had huge impacts in the
| soil of the West. Maybe the dust bowl wouldn't have been as
| cataclysmic. ---- Unfortunately we're concerned that even
| viral maps can be lost over time. They become dead links. And
| somehow even the wonderful people at Internet Archive can't
| save everything. This is part of why we push cartographers we
| know to print something they've done at the end of each year.
| Paper is astoundingly enduring. If there was one map that you
| did and it resonates with you, please print it out. Build a
| small portfolio of hard copies over the next few years. Your
| work is worth printing!
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I had a map go viral in 2013, a map of US rivers. Here's the
| Daily Mail article about it, the apotheosis of virulence.
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2342083/The-veins-n...
|
| Two things made it go viral.
|
| 1. Jason Kottke posted it to his weblog. Either you know about
| Kottke or you don't. Many journalists do. He's an authentic low-
| key tastemaker.
|
| 2. I shared the map on Flickr with a CC by-SA license. Which
| meant any publication could republish it for free without even
| asking me.
|
| I'm still a little embarrassed about it. The map is pretty
| simple. The visualization is highly misleading and has all sorts
| of ugly visual artifacts. That Daily Mail article is full of
| mistakes (including misspelling my name three different ways.)
| The picture wasn't even really my goal, it was just a debugging
| workprint off my "real" project, a GitHub repo teaching people
| how to make maps in Javascript with vector tiles. But the picture
| looked cool and was easy to understand.
|
| But I'm also proud of the result. It did look cool! And the
| recognition pleased my vanity. If I wanted I could have landed
| several years of consulting work off the momentary fame, I had
| all sorts of requests for custom work based on it. My favorite
| outcome was the artist Tamsie River took the data, made a giant
| mold, and poured a hot iron cast of the Mississippi watershed.
| I'm still sorry I didn't go for the event.
| https://tamsie.com/River%20of%20Iron.html
| fryktelig wrote:
| Great post! Is the GitHub project also still available?
| gus_massa wrote:
| I agree.
|
| @GP: It's never too late to post old stuff in HN if it's
| interesting. Just add (2013) to the title here. It can also
| be a post mortem, with the extendd story in your comment, a
| few maps and the explanations of the main suggested
| improvements.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Thanks! The GitHub project is still available but is many
| years out of date now. I did this when vector tiles were new,
| there's now really good software packages out there. Some of
| the ideas of cleaning and simplifying the data may still be
| useful though.
|
| https://github.com/NelsonMinar/vector-river-map
| mci wrote:
| My map of the most frequent occupational surnames in Europe [1]
| also went viral in 2015. When I posted it on Reddit, newspapers
| from Ireland (they asked me for permission to reprint it) to
| Greece (nobody else asked) and countless people on Facebook
| republished it. Well, everybody has a surname, an occupation,
| and a country.
|
| Late advice: when making a viral image, put your URL on it :-)
|
| [1] https://marcinciura.wordpress.com/2015/09/17/smiths-
| millers-...
| ianburrell wrote:
| Great story. I think the artist is Tamsie Ringler.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| thank you, you're right and my edit window has closed. Sorry
| Tamsie!
| narski wrote:
| I read this as virility and expected something very different. So
| I'm going to comment as though it said "Virility in cartography".
|
| A virile map has monsters, and beckons a boy to grab his stick
| (gleaming steel) and hop aboard the patio (great ship with full
| sails) and set the neighborhood alight in delight fighting
| pirates.
|
| He devises elaborate dilemmas and improvises wilely against his
| barbarous captors, even as the governors of his native country
| conspire against him, or wonders what strange countries lie just
| beyond the edge of the words "the known world".
|
| Or maybe the sea is made of stars, and he envisions gayly
| springtime planets, or dark winter stars that become dragons
| across the nebulae.
|
| Idk, even then, maybe there's a frontier beyond the final one -
| where consciousness melts between the fabrics of little
| realities, each with their own cutely crafted logic, and he
| drifts to a new dream where 1 + 1 is 3 and it only makes sense
| that way.
|
| Idk. ChatGPT raised me and I'm afraid I'm becoming my father, who
| then will I raise to look like me? If only I had a map of the
| ages to not fear myself.
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