If a map is meant to ‘illustrate and sustain’ a vision of history, then the natural instinct of an aware citizen is to deeply and critically investigate the content of popular, widespread maps. Thomas Paine argued in his Rights of Man in 1792 that ‘Every man can understand what representation is’ – centuries and inventions later this statement seems as elitist and idealistic as it probably did then, if only to describe a desired condition. 4 Now, through open-source solutions, people have a chance to grasp participation and to be represented the way they would like. Zygmunt Bauman argues that the state of modern politics is based on a new division between power and politics – nobody is really responsible for action and a modern democratic citizen has been changed into a handy object rather than a powerful source of great deliberative power. 5 However, what creative commons and open technologies claim is that besides the status quo of the big players (corporations, most powerful states and governments, international institutions), there is still enough space for alternative streams which can be used as new digital agoras. Citizen mapping is not only a matter of tagging things on Google Maps. Considering the possible tools, media, knowledge and information that can assist in forming a new vision, everyone can overcome the traditional vision of the world and present a radically new perspective of it, using the principles of graphic rhetoric. Your own map of the world will be a new message, with a determined goal, specific choice of colours, fonts, layouts, images and data, and it will also serve some particular community in order to improve its particular life.
The development of new technologies, and access to sophisticated tools such as GIS and GPS in mobile phones, allow anyone to transform themselves into a citizen-cartographer. It is an effect of being exposed to Google Maps censorship: according to diverse agreements and political pressures some areas are either blurred or simply not shown in Google Maps – these are mostly governmental sites demanding special security and discretion, and parts of China and North Korea which did not agree to be shown. The actual catalogue of omissions is much longer and not necessarily transparent, which again shows how far the current most-used map takes us from democratic standards. The catalogue forms a post-colonial vision of territory, in which many of the conflict areas, still suffering from diverse forms of colonialism, seek their own cartographical representation, drawn within their own boundaries. A nation-state driven vision of the world where boundaries are key in the interpretation and perception of geographical space might not be the main interest of many citizens – as Mark Graham argues, ‘spatial imaginations have traditionally been grounded in the local rather than the global’. 2 New democracy is more likely to seek solutions at a smaller scale – and so the scale of the maps also changes. A map is a complex work that combines graphic design, geographical knowledge, use of new media and/or traditional forms of aesthetic expression with historical information. It interests the citizen-cartographer who cries for representation and deliberation 3 instead of imposed, given, fixed, agreed upon and ‘indisputable’ information Each enthusiast who strolls down the streets with a mobile, photographing and mapping whatever they find accurate, under-represented and relevant, enters a debate on a vision of the world and its figuration, without claiming to have discovered the final state of art – the work of mapping is understood by the citizen-cartographer to be as infinite as the process of democracy.
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3 Deliberation – a process of inclusive, open, egalitarian,
democratic-to-the-core debate on any topic relevant to a community of people who want to change status quo, make a decision or present their vision of the world. It is the main ingredient of civil society and most probably a path to establish real democratic decision- making processes. 4 The belief that representation would be a form of political engagement somehow natural to each citizen, in fact demands a large educational effort and the ability to perceive things not present in the curriculum, media or other sources of knowledge – access to real representation was and still is limited to a chosen few. 5 Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Times of interregnum’ www.ethicsandglobalpolitics.net/ index.php/egp/article/view/17200
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