OpenStreetMap
18 March 2019 - A Careful and Caring Cartography
Posted by mapmakerdavid on 17 March 2019 in English.Hello, world 🌎🌍🌏. I am writing this from Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. A masjid (mosque) in our neighbourhood was attacked by a white supremacist terrorist last Friday. Why did the attacker think that Aotearoa (New Zealand) is his land? We are grieving for our muslim brothers and sisters, and the event should make us rethink our worldviews, geography, and mapping. But who cares? Please read the following carefully.
Cartography, which includes geographic information, was and is part of colonisation, christianisation, imperialism, exploitation, dispossession, and domination. On the other hand, our present life relies on modern cartographic practice and mapping technologies, both of which inherit and reproduce the mistakes of the past.
I’ll give a petty indicator. Millions of people live in Oceania, but there is no emoji of the Pacific. 🌎🌍🌏 ?
How can we make sure that cartography, including the present trend of crowdsourcing geographic information, is careful and caring? What should a #caretography mean?
Diskusiyon
Comment from waldegger on 18 March 2019 seate 15:04
I’m not sure what you are getting at. As far as I understand, OSM is an open source project that enables people to contribute to the data and make this map available to everyone without corporate ties, advertisement and infringing user privacy.
The issues you are bringing up are mostly religious and thus idiologically themed. Most modern day borders are well established (except for Ukraine and other hotspots).
Crying about the existence or non-existence of certain emojis is awfully petty in my opinion.
I don’t think that OSM is the right place to be discussing these issues. You mention that you are planning on writing a PhD on cartography. OSM can’t realistically counter political issues such as where borders are drawn, nor should it risk getting there and deal with the consequences.
It seems to me like you basically want idiological material for your PhD paper.
Comment from mapmakerdavid on 18 March 2019 seate 17:19
Hi, waldegger. Thank you so much for the feedback. Apologies for conveying vague points. I think that the situation pretty raw right now. The issues I raised are broad, and are to provoke productive conversation, like this one between us volunteers.
If we take the multitude of indigenous lands into account, then we should also question the notion that “most modern day borders are well established”. OSM is not exempt from that.
Maps (including geographic information), are about space, knowledge, and power; and are always political and ideological. Martin Heidegger: “The essence of technology is by no means anything technological.” Ideology, in various ways and levels, is applied everywhere, including in the creation of geographic information.
The good thing is that, realistically speaking, OSM is one of the many ways where multiple ideas and ideologies can co-exist through maps. I love the fact that people of different backgrounds can contribute to OSM. Given the anxious and embarrassing history of cartography, that openness can be wonderful and transformative.
Cheers, David
Comment from waldegger on 18 March 2019 seate 20:22
I don’t have enough insight into the profound differences that OSM can offer compared to other map providers yet. All I know so far is that since it is open source, a lot of volunteers are putting effort into registering things that other maps might be missing and also consolidating the map info from other places that is publicly available already.
Heritage and other meta infos can be noted in the object descriptions. So I guess it would be possible to mark indigenous land that way. That’s all I can think of at the moment. But I’m still not sure what you want to hint at. Can you give a specific example of what you want to achieve?
PS.: Make no mistake, I am the true -degger of Deggers. Heidegger can kiss my Wald ;)
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️🌈 on 19 March 2019 seate 10:56
Did you know there’s a (low traffic) mailing list for discussion of diversity issues in OSM ( https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/diversity-talk )? You might find it interesting. I co-mod it.
Destorying imperialism & white supremacy is definitely a good thing! Let’s do that. I have often wondered about making a map style without showing country borders, with OSM that is possible.
(BTW Emoijis are decided by the unicode consortium.)
Comment from mapmakerdavid on 24 March 2019 seate 21:14
Hi, waldegger! Hehe thanks again for the feedback. For one, I’m thinking about ways on how to help increase the representation and participation by people from underprivileged backgrounds re: OpenStreetMap contributions and leadership.
Cheers, David
Comment from mapmakerdavid on 24 March 2019 seate 21:15
Hi, rorym! Thanks for the feedback. I’ll check out that mailing list then. Let’s work harder for diversity! I hope we can keep in touch. :)
Cheers, David