been trying to find "critical GIS" writing that actually gets into the political economy and history of the technology--like more than repeating Esri's own hagiography and more than a generalized gesture at "maps are tools of empire" and not sure if this is a me problem or what
I tried looking in media studies literature for stuff that might get into this and there's some OK stuff on the weird culture rift between "real" GIS and web mapping stuff (which, in 2023, lol) but feels weird the discipline known for having all the Marxists doesn't seem to have a framework for talking about map tech relative to markets!
disappointed that this mostly got favs without recommendations, seems like a bad sign/fuck do I have to write a history of EPSG codes
in my experience when people who don't do map stuff learn that the industry standard source for coordinate reference systems still used today was made by a professional association of oil geologists they think it's weird. (the Esri monopoly is less weird; Adobe or Maya tend to be the analogies that come up which makes sense I guess)
@ingrid if you haven’t already looked down that well / the archives of “cartographic perspectives” might yield something – https://cartographicperspectives.org/index.php/journal/search/index?query=Projections&searchJournal=1&authors=&dateFromMonth=&dateFromDay=&dateFromYear=&dateToMonth=&dateToDay=&dateToYear=&searchPage=1#results
@ingrid daniel huffman / would be a good person to poke for pointers and #feelings – https://somethingaboutmaps.wordpress.com/2022/12/19/projection-connections-a-very-nerdy-poster/
@ingrid maybe adding some hashtags could help? 🤷♀️
@ingrid I’d read it! I didn’t know about the tie to Oil & Gas. All that mapping they do that (seems like) never reaches the light of day. Also, ugh, why couldn’t we have just kept with Proj strings or even WKT? If it’s not an EPSG code, you’re 🤬. (I work in planetary mapping and we’re just getting some standard EPSG codes for common projections).
Doesn't help, but it got you a follow from me 🤷
I was ignorant of pretty much everything you outlined above until quite recently, and even so, I'm not further than barely scratching the surface on disentangling the interplay of GIS and other geopolitical forces, colonialism, racism, etc.
4) Borges had this one story about maps
@ingrid Nicholas de Monchaux up at MIT could be a great source?
@ingrid …he’s pretty clued in to the stuff that ESRI was building from like SYMAP. I’ve just been face-first in DIME & TIGER/Line for the past couple days and the whole 1960s New Haven Census scene is worth a look. Stace Maples at Stanford might be your source for that.
@migurski man I owe you a call anyway about all the current weird stuff in maps--is email the best way to schedule something or should I DM?
@ingrid ESRI likes to reference Tomlinson and McHarg a lot, I guess because it places them in a historical land-use lineage instead of a CG one, and gives them parallel construction on exfiltrating a bunch of stuff from the Harvard graphics lab? </pure conjecture>
@ingrid less political economy but ? https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03091325221074691
@divya oh this is great, thanks! remote sensing people (or I guess remote sensing people I tend to know lol) seem to be more attentive to power dynamics around their tools which is cool
generally "critical GIS" scholarship seems to fall into these camps:
- what is a point, really
- military industrial complex exist
- respect newbies, open source good
all perfectly interesting and valid observations, but also you're telling me nobody has tried to write a history of EPSG codes