iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Replies

The Map Center @mapcenter.com · 06/07/2026

What even is a map? There are many definitions and I'm working on mine. I think most of us have a mental model of the earth and spaces around us in our brains and anything that activates that mental model to convey information counts as a map (even if it doesn't look like a map).

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Oggie @oggie.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

A system that conveys data we can utilize in an abstracted form at a greater level than we can immediately sense, but we can utilize for intuitive jumps once we understand the codification choices. This is off the cuff, but I was trying to fit in orrerys at the very least. Might be awful.

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tweety fish @sifu.tweety.fish · 06/07/2026

Ed Hutchins and, of all people, Geoff Hinton did interesting work on Micronesian navigation arguing they used a different kind of map, which instead of representing space from a fixed location instead represented landmarks perceived over time by a person sailing at a fixed speed

journals.sagepub.com

Why the Islands Move - Edwin Hutchins, Geoffrey E Hinton, 1984

Micronesian navigators routinely make voyages across large expanses of open ocean. To do this, a navigator must judge both the direction in which he is sailing ...

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jmm1.bsky.social @jmm1.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

That reminds me of these cool Inuit maps of the coastline of Greenland (from a museum exhibit in Anchorage, 2019)

2 Wooden maps around 6” high and 1-3” wide, with curves and valleys representing coastline.

Text from museum display:

Kangertittivatsiag
Fiord
Sermiligada
Fiord
MAP LEFT
Inuit Traditional Place Names
INUIT HERITAGE TRUST PLACE NAMES PROGRAM
MAP RIGHT
The Coastline Near Tasiilaq, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland)
Compare this modern map of the coastline between Kangertittivatsiaq and Sermiligaaq with Kunit's carved maps. The coast is represented using both sides of the wooden maps, which are sometimes referred to as the
"Ammassalik Wooden Maps."

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Dominika Noworolska @dominikanow.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Ah ontology 😍 what’s interesting is that you limited the boundary of your definition to space/ geographical understanding of ‘map’, when we also have conceptual maps; that create a visual representation of abstract mental models like ‘systems’ which technically don’t exist physically. Now that’s fun

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Robert Simmon @rsimmon.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Interesting that you pose this question just as I’m finalizing my cartography course for the open visualization academy. The best I could come up with is “spatial abstraction”. Abstraction is key because “the map is not the territory” — a 1:1 map isn’t particularly useful.

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John Krygier | Making Maps book @poponthebeezer.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

A map is a map is a map. Alternatively, J.H. Andrews' compilation of 321 definitions of “map” - with the admission that they are all official, Western, and not particularly creative: 321 Definitions of “Map” makingmaps.net/2008/11/25/3...

makingmaps.net

321 Definitions of “Map”

What is a map? J.H. Andrews compiled 321 definitions of “map” for a 1996 article (“What Was a Map?” Cartographica 33:4, pp. 1-11). A copy of that paper is available here. Edit out all t…

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Area Man @pthibodeau.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

A map is a picture of a place intended to communicate information.

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The Map Center @mapcenter.com · 06/07/2026

Cue 'the magic was inside us the whole time' but I'm riffing here. In abstract art, we say that the meaning of the art is what the audience brings to it. A shoelace is just a shoelace until I tell you that one end is the train station, one end is the end of the line and YOUR stop is in the middle.

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