Scale 1:1 and ‘grandeur nature’ representation
The starting point of this article is the famous Borges forgery style story “On Exactitude in Science” about the Empire’s map at scale 1:1. In How to Travel with a Salmon and other essays, Umberto Eco discusses this text in an hilarious way. Pretending to take Borges seriously, Eco considers all possible and even most astonishing solutions. He demonstrates : 1) that there is not any practical way to set up a map at scale 1:1 and 2) that a map at scale 1:1 is theoretically impossible.Umberto Eco main argument addresses the radical impossibility to get a perfect representation of the world. Any representation process has to deal with loss of reality. The representation requires that a distance remains between who is representing and what is represented.
As a matter of fact, neither Borges or Eco could take into account the fact that the problem changes drastically when we consider a 1:1 digital map. Most of Eco’s arguments about the practical possibility of the 1:1 scale map are ruined by the new geospatial technology. But Google Earth and Virtual Earth can be read as a sign of this incredible project of the maps at 1:1 scale, that Borges and Eco thought as a theoretical apory, a strange and troubling dream.
I attempt to address in this topic some social, politic and scientific questions about this race to the perfect representation of the world.
Connecting books and maps
An analysis of the way books are now related to maps through place names query tools. Example of Google Books.
Inventory of Geospatial Applications Featured in ‘24′
I attempt to inventory geospatial tools used in some seasons of the TV Serie 24.
Alias vs ‘24′
Comparative analysis of the way geospatial technologies are used in 2 differentTV series : 24 and Alias.
