Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and mine is Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: Julie tell me this. Uh, you in your husband using
Speaker 1: an iPhone? Do you not to traverse the world around
Speaker 1: you? You You depend on its maps? Affirmative? Mr Lamb, We
Speaker 1: do so you like like like My household were probably
Speaker 1: somewhat distraught when the maps changed all of a sudden.
Speaker 1: We're recording this early October two thousand twelve, just a
Speaker 1: week or two ago. Everyone updated their iOS and suddenly
Speaker 1: Google Maps were no more on the phone. It was
Speaker 1: Apple Maps instead, and there were some There was some
Speaker 1: some ensuing confusion. Bridges melting melting bridges. Uh. The system
Speaker 1: that we were used to was no longer in play,
Speaker 1: and suddenly we were unable to simply drive a mile
Speaker 1: from our house to to a location that we've been
Speaker 1: to before. Nobody showed up at work. They didn't know
Speaker 1: how to get here anymore because the maps weren't working.
Speaker 1: I think that all this points to the fact that
Speaker 1: maps are totally underrated and people don't realize how important
Speaker 1: they are and actually how difficult it is to get
Speaker 1: a good system in place. And I mean, speaking of systems,
Speaker 1: remember what it was like before all this. I mean
Speaker 1: by the time I was actively driving two places I've
Speaker 1: never been to before, I think I had what was
Speaker 1: the map Quest at my disposal, which even map Quest
Speaker 1: was really confusing. Yeah, you had your print out of
Speaker 1: map Quest and then the Sun's direction and you're on
Speaker 1: your own. Yeah, and and and I and I'd still
Speaker 1: get lost. And then we eventually had you know, Google
Speaker 1: Maps with an improvement as far as I'm consappie, as
Speaker 1: far as most people were concerned. And then then came
Speaker 1: the more affordable GPS devices and we were able to
Speaker 1: navigate more without thinking about it. Well and uh, we
Speaker 1: have seen actually instances where people absolutely did not even
Speaker 1: think about it. And um, this was made fun of
Speaker 1: in the TV episode The Office, But Michael Scott, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he drives into the lake because it's not on the map.
Speaker 1: On the map, the GPS says that you know, the
Speaker 1: road keeps going, and it's a joke, but I think
Speaker 1: this has actually happened to some people. It was amazing
Speaker 1: when I when I was looking at into our history
Speaker 1: with maps and and sort of comparing our modern understanding
Speaker 1: of maps and use of these highly technological maps, and
Speaker 1: comparing that two models of the past. I found these
Speaker 1: photo auto guides from around nineteen o five really interesting. Basically,
Speaker 1: if if I was to go back in time to
Speaker 1: nineteen o five and then I had access to a
Speaker 1: car and we're touring the country, and I was touring
Speaker 1: the country and I was like, WHOA, my GPS doesn't work.
Speaker 1: I brought it back. I bothered to bring it back
Speaker 1: with me, but it has no satellites to playoff off,
Speaker 1: so it's just setting there without a signal. What should
Speaker 1: I do? What? What would it be like then? If
Speaker 1: I were to try and replicate the GPS driving experience
Speaker 1: using early twentieth century technology, or not even technology, but
Speaker 1: just printing abilities and photography abilities, you would end up
Speaker 1: with the photo auto guide, which was basically a detailed
Speaker 1: set of directions for it to drive from one place
Speaker 1: to another that would include photographs of intersections, detailed instructions
Speaker 1: about how to navigate in order by turn. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: kind of a combo an early version of both the
Speaker 1: map quest print out of directions and a detailed GPS
Speaker 1: p o V of where you are and where you're going,
Speaker 1: but also travel guide of sorts do right because they're
Speaker 1: talking about landmarks and about the different things that you
Speaker 1: will encounter on the way. So as humans, we need maps,
Speaker 1: and that's basically what we're talking about in this this
Speaker 1: episode of stuff to blow your mind about our relationship
Speaker 1: with maps from its early goings and on into the
Speaker 1: future and just how tired we are to them. We
Speaker 1: may not think about them all the time, you know,
Speaker 1: you may not think about the map until you're having
Speaker 1: to navigate somewhere you haven't been to before, or you
Speaker 1: don't really remember the instructions are you're having to share
Speaker 1: these instructions, these directions with someone else. But the map
Speaker 1: is always there in the mind like it's it's really
Speaker 1: part of our neural architecture at at a very deep
Speaker 1: and important level. But at one point you could argue
Speaker 1: that it wasn't there right because we didn't have even
Speaker 1: though you know, humans have been nomadic for some time, uh,
Speaker 1: we didn't necessarily have a sense of place beyond the
Speaker 1: say of like I don't know two mile radius that
Speaker 1: you might forage in. So there's some arguments about whether
Speaker 1: or not there have been true maps made at those
Speaker 1: times and or whether or not those were just sort
Speaker 1: of moral like you know, turn right at the boulder, um,
Speaker 1: and when we started to make maps in earnest as humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now's this interesting. You said place. It's really important to
Speaker 1: think about place, and certainly the difference between place and
Speaker 1: space is reading in this book To Take Place Toward
Speaker 1: Theory and Ritual by Jonathan Z. Smith, which is one
Speaker 1: of my old college religious studies books, but like really
Speaker 1: deep stuff about like the origins of ritual. But there's
Speaker 1: a part where they talk about the use of maps
Speaker 1: and he he quotes UM geographer Yi Futuin who says,
Speaker 1: this space is more abstract than place. What begins as
Speaker 1: undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it
Speaker 1: better and endow it with value. If we think of
Speaker 1: space as that which allows movement, then place is pause.
Speaker 1: Each pause in movement makes it possible for location to
Speaker 1: be transformed into place. So this is sense of in
Speaker 1: a sense, it's like bringing order out of chaos. You're
Speaker 1: bringing place out of space. Well, I like this idea
Speaker 1: of movement too, because I think of that in those
Speaker 1: terms of like spaces being a frontier something you're going
Speaker 1: to explore and Emmanuel can't. Also, he argued that geography
Speaker 1: was the study of knowledge in a location, while history
Speaker 1: is the study of knowledge and time. Okay, So it
Speaker 1: comes down to, you know, it's it's core to our
Speaker 1: perception of reality in the world around us. This this
Speaker 1: map of where we are in space, of this place
Speaker 1: that we inhabit that is full of things that have
Speaker 1: value and meaning. Well, and that's what I think is
Speaker 1: so intriguing about maps is that it tries to do
Speaker 1: double duty. It tries to take space, place, and time
Speaker 1: and combine it all on on one surface, right right,
Speaker 1: one sort of understanding. Um, it is thought that the
Speaker 1: oldest known maps are preserved. Um, well, not that they're preserved,
Speaker 1: but that they actually go back to and then they
Speaker 1: are preserved on Babylonian clay tablets from that time and
Speaker 1: an ancient Greece, where photography was considerably advanced. The concept
Speaker 1: of a spherical earth was well known among Greek philosophers
Speaker 1: by the time of Aristotle. So we're talking about three
Speaker 1: and fifty BC. So this idea that you're going to
Speaker 1: map that space has been around and we know that
Speaker 1: humans have tried to Harn said, Um, it's certainly one
Speaker 1: of those things that if someone says that what was
Speaker 1: the first map, there's no way of knowing, because that's
Speaker 1: something that really vanishes into the murk of history. It's
Speaker 1: probably some you know, some dude with a stick and
Speaker 1: the dust or something. You know, it's it's not something
Speaker 1: that's going to survive. And then even if it is
Speaker 1: on paper, that it's not going to survive. And then
Speaker 1: a lot of the things we end up keeping are
Speaker 1: that we may think, we may interpret them as maps,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily the case. In our previous podcast, we
Speaker 1: talked about allegorical maps, maps of things that are not real,
Speaker 1: and you really get into a weird area with old
Speaker 1: maps where you have to judge, all right, to what
Speaker 1: extent is this a map of anything in physical reality?
Speaker 1: To what extent is this, say, a map of this
Speaker 1: more cosmological in its sense, doesn't have to do with
Speaker 1: religious matters, is it is it have to do it
Speaker 1: with ritual or is it just merely some sort of
Speaker 1: illustrative art. Well, into what extent is it our brains
Speaker 1: interpreting something that isn't a map, but looking at patterns,
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about is it depictogram, is a religious artifact.
Speaker 1: Is it just a landscape? Yeah, and describing our own
Speaker 1: meaning to it. I did want to point out that
Speaker 1: Greek and Roman cartography reached a culmination um with Claudius Ptolemius,
Speaker 1: and this was an a d around and his world
Speaker 1: map depicted the old world from about sixty degrees north
Speaker 1: to thirty degrees latitude uh south, and his writing was
Speaker 1: called Guide to Geography, and it was really the authoritative
Speaker 1: reference uh to maps in world geography until the Renaissance.
Speaker 1: So that's quite a bit of chunk of time there. Um.
Speaker 1: And then of course you can also fast forward to
Speaker 1: about eleven fifty four when an Arab geographer named Muhammad
Speaker 1: all the Reci produced his atlas and that actually was
Speaker 1: used quite a bit as well. Um. He incorporated the
Speaker 1: knowledge of Africa, Indian Ocean in the Far East gathered
Speaker 1: by Arab merchants. And this is something that we're going
Speaker 1: to see repeating over and over in history and matt making.
Speaker 1: Is this idea that maps really came about as a
Speaker 1: sort of crowdsourcing. Everybody else's knowledge dumped into this one
Speaker 1: document to say, okay, this is what my experience was
Speaker 1: in this landscape, and you had to trust that you
Speaker 1: had people who actually were capable of of contributing to
Speaker 1: the dialogue and weren't just gonna be like what he said.
Speaker 1: I don't I'm just gonna go along with what this
Speaker 1: previous person said, because then you end up keeping not
Speaker 1: only uh, this previous cartographer's successes, but also his inaccuracies.
Speaker 1: And we do see huge inaccuracies with maps even today. Um.
Speaker 1: But when you think about these trade routes um, you know,
Speaker 1: either by by foot or by horse or camel um,
Speaker 1: then you get to you know, well established points of
Speaker 1: reference and you can begin to make a mental mapping
Speaker 1: of the landscape. But this is one of those outrageous
Speaker 1: overstatements of the obvious, which is sometimes necessary in dealing
Speaker 1: with mind building content, because you have to actually step
Speaker 1: back and think about something that you already knew. And
Speaker 1: that is that until very recently, we were not able
Speaker 1: to look down at the earth from above and see
Speaker 1: that is the shape of that island, that is the
Speaker 1: shape of that peninsula, that is the manner in which
Speaker 1: that river cuts across the continent. This is all that
Speaker 1: is all really new technology, really new information to have,
Speaker 1: and prior to that, you had to to to deal
Speaker 1: with it all based on observation, mathematics and slowly pieced
Speaker 1: together this top side vision of the world. It was
Speaker 1: not possible. Yeah, it's true. Seventeen and eighteenth centuries really
Speaker 1: ushered in mathematics and technology. Clockmaking made it possible for
Speaker 1: travelers to determine their or longitude accurately, made it much
Speaker 1: more easier to make more accurate maps. Uh for instance,
Speaker 1: using degrees, minutes, and seconds. Meridians measure how far east
Speaker 1: or west a location is from the prime meridian, and
Speaker 1: parallels measure how far north or south of location is
Speaker 1: from the equator. So if you didn't have all this
Speaker 1: information mapped out in the first place, it would be
Speaker 1: very difficult to even try to figure out that journey,
Speaker 1: let along how long it would take. But thankfully we
Speaker 1: had that sort of technology coming online in the form
Speaker 1: of magnetic compasses, telescopes in six tons, which are these
Speaker 1: instruments that really measure the angle between two visible objects.
Speaker 1: So but as you say, it wasn't really until we
Speaker 1: could get above and confirmed. Yeah, and actually Joan Jehan
Speaker 1: Glenn said that when he first went up and he
Speaker 1: saw he was, you know, going he was traveling away
Speaker 1: from Earth and he looked down and he saw the
Speaker 1: state of Florida. He was really impressed because he thought, wow,
Speaker 1: our our map making is pretty accurate, because that is
Speaker 1: a really great representation of Florida. We're not so far off.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we're talking about the ability to obtain aerial photography,
Speaker 1: which of course one has to have the technology to
Speaker 1: at least send up a balloon um or or climb
Speaker 1: something very high, I guess, in a very simple, limited,
Speaker 1: not really aerial form of photography, and of course you
Speaker 1: need took graph It helps, it helps a lot. And
Speaker 1: we actually had the technology of aerial photography back in
Speaker 1: eighty eight, but it's kind of hard to believe that
Speaker 1: it wasn't until after World War One that we began
Speaker 1: to really use it. In earnest Um, it was used
Speaker 1: in reconnaissance missions. Yeah, so prior to that, we there
Speaker 1: was a huge chunks of the world that were really
Speaker 1: uncharted because we didn't have the aerial photography. And then
Speaker 1: of course you had satellites come online, and in the
Speaker 1: beginning of the US military, satellites were equipped with hi
Speaker 1: rese cameras for the purpose of aerial photography. But they
Speaker 1: had no way to develop the film or transmit the images.
Speaker 1: And we take that so for granted right now, right
Speaker 1: you think about you know, Mars curiosity beaming back these images. Um.
Speaker 1: But what they would do is that these early satellites
Speaker 1: would drop film packets into the atmosphere and these were
Speaker 1: outfitted with parachutes. Just kind of cute to think about, um,
Speaker 1: and then they were retrieved mid air by military mill
Speaker 1: terry transport planes. Yeah. So there, yeah, I mean, yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick little break here, and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to deal with a really
Speaker 1: ancient possibly a map, maybe not a map, you'll find
Speaker 1: out when we discuss it. And also are unstoppable need
Speaker 1: to see maps in the world around us? And there's
Speaker 1: actual term for this cartok kofies. All right, we're back,
Speaker 1: and before we get really hardcore back into maps, let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about apophenia. Okay, we've talked about
Speaker 1: this before. It is the spontaneous perception of connections and
Speaker 1: meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena. Yeah. Yeah, the coin was too
Speaker 1: the coin. The term was coined by k. Conrad in
Speaker 1: nine and neurologist Peter Bruger studied apophenia and patients who
Speaker 1: had psychotic episodes, and he noticed that they were they
Speaker 1: were finding meaning and random aspects of their lives. And
Speaker 1: his research actually indicates that high levels of dopamine effect
Speaker 1: propensity to find meaning. In other words, when you find
Speaker 1: a pattern, you get a little ding ding from dopamine,
Speaker 1: your reward system of your brain lights up a bit.
Speaker 1: So it would make sense that first that the human
Speaker 1: brain is hardwired to try to find pattern just really
Speaker 1: important in trying to survive, and too, that it would
Speaker 1: get rewarded for that. Yeah, So if you have enough
Speaker 1: dopamine in your system, if you listen to that Led
Speaker 1: Zeppelin song and you finally figure out what he was
Speaker 1: talking about, man, that kind of thing. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's essentially a type one error in which we are
Speaker 1: you're seeing patterns that aren't necessarily there. It's part of
Speaker 1: everything from our ability to see a smiley face where
Speaker 1: there isn't one to see, you know, because we can
Speaker 1: look at anything but even the vaguest human face pattern
Speaker 1: in it and we we sort of personify it. And
Speaker 1: so there's a little bit of it going on there,
Speaker 1: but been in it's more extreme cases, it's it plays
Speaker 1: into conspiracy theories, it plays into religious experience, paranormal experience.
Speaker 1: It's just drawing all these connections that aren't there where
Speaker 1: Suddenly you realize that whoa, this uh, this thing that
Speaker 1: happened with my car is something wrong with the engine
Speaker 1: and it's totally because of the government, and they're probably
Speaker 1: watching me through my TV. Meanwhile, you fellow dopamine release
Speaker 1: for making that connection. Right, So it's not surprising that
Speaker 1: there would be a little something called cartok cothies, which
Speaker 1: is this uncontrollable urge to see maps where there aren't none. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is which is pretty pretty pretty phenomenal. I mean,
Speaker 1: at one level we mentioned that, and I imagined a
Speaker 1: lot of you are thinking, wow, well, when when would
Speaker 1: one have the opportunity to make that mistake? Because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about just my daily life. How many times
Speaker 1: do I encounter something that's not a map that I
Speaker 1: could interpret as a map, Like maybe if I found
Speaker 1: like a scrap of paper and I was wondering if
Speaker 1: it was a treasure map. You know, I just I
Speaker 1: don't see this being a big deal for the average person. No,
Speaker 1: And I don't think it is. I think it's for
Speaker 1: people who are map minded and intend to gravitate towards
Speaker 1: Matt and particularly archaeologist and anthropologists were looking back in
Speaker 1: human history finding these relics, and in many cases it
Speaker 1: may just be some scratches on a on a wall
Speaker 1: on ancient cave site, and then trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what what was this ancient person whose mind I can
Speaker 1: barely comprehend, if at all comprehend what were they thinking
Speaker 1: when they did this? Well, and it seems benign until
Speaker 1: you start to consider that if you, if you tend
Speaker 1: to see maps where there are not, then if someone
Speaker 1: is an archaeologist and they're looking at something, they could
Speaker 1: perhaps uh perceive something that is not there and in
Speaker 1: doing so, really warp our understanding of that culture, of
Speaker 1: that period of time and history. Um and I am
Speaker 1: thinking about something called the Caltahyak Map. It was first
Speaker 1: brought to our attention in a nineteen article entitled Excavations
Speaker 1: at Katahayak. And this is by James Mollart, who at
Speaker 1: the time recognized it as a city plan. Yes, now,
Speaker 1: the original scratch, the original scratches, the original markings do
Speaker 1: kind of look like scratches on a wall, not not
Speaker 1: to discredit the work of an ancient people, but it
Speaker 1: hadn't really survived all that well, it's it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of abstract. But the popularized version of this though, is
Speaker 1: a sketch that he did of it. It's the sketch
Speaker 1: that's the problems because the sketch really plays into his
Speaker 1: interpretation of it. So you see in his sketch what
Speaker 1: really looks like a laid out city like grid work
Speaker 1: of the of the city and then above it interrupting
Speaker 1: volcano right and um now he is saying that this, uh,
Speaker 1: this sort of neolithic map dates back to six BC
Speaker 1: and that it would have been one of the first maps.
Speaker 1: Now that's really important because all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: have pinned in time when man started to really make maps.
Speaker 1: Um or you know, the surrounding areas are certainly just
Speaker 1: you know, you have one of the earliest examples of it.
Speaker 1: And that's that's amazing because we can actually put a date.
Speaker 1: You're right, that's more accurate that you can actually just
Speaker 1: put a date to it rather than trying to figure
Speaker 1: out when we started to make maps. And then you know,
Speaker 1: you start to think, okay, well that's older than any
Speaker 1: writing system, you know, four thousand years ago and older
Speaker 1: than the oldest known alphabetical writing system. And this really
Speaker 1: begins to shape this story about humans. Um, the problem is,
Speaker 1: as you say, is that this was a picture that
Speaker 1: he made of a cave painting, and so it's it's
Speaker 1: just full of I guess you could say, his impression
Speaker 1: of what he thought it was. Yeah, And like like
Speaker 1: I said earlier too, even if you're dealing with an
Speaker 1: actual map, uh from an ancient culture, you have to
Speaker 1: really navigate that gray area of to what extent is
Speaker 1: this just a person trying to figure out what their
Speaker 1: places in the surrounding space and what to what point
Speaker 1: is this a cosmological or religious work, To what extent
Speaker 1: is it are they just seeing things in the world
Speaker 1: around them and making pictures of them. You get into
Speaker 1: that gray area of what a map is to an
Speaker 1: ancient people, well certainly to a non language people, even
Speaker 1: even more difficult to the fathom. Well, archaeologist Stephanie Mice
Speaker 1: is the person who actually illuminated this problem because she said,
Speaker 1: first of all, it's been taking out of context. Let's
Speaker 1: go and look at this cave painting in the context
Speaker 1: with other cave paintings and see what we find and
Speaker 1: lo and behold. When she examined it, she said, m okay,
Speaker 1: Now in the context, I can see that this volcano
Speaker 1: it's spotted like a leopard skin, and if you look
Speaker 1: at it, it's not really a volcano. It's kind of
Speaker 1: two peaks. One peak is larger than the other. Now
Speaker 1: I'm going to compare it against this other cave painting
Speaker 1: in which they have stretched out tiger skins or excuse me,
Speaker 1: leopard skins, and you begin to see that this volcano.
Speaker 1: It's really funny. When you first look at it, you
Speaker 1: do see a volcano, but when you see her explanation,
Speaker 1: you see that it is a stretched out it's totally yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a volcano. And these other little scratches aren't,
Speaker 1: you know, necessarily the houses in that town or the huts.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the episode of Rest of Development,
Speaker 1: where there's a cell phone picture that they think is
Speaker 1: showing w M D S. But Tobias just took a
Speaker 1: picture of himself by accident in the bathtub. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: it's like Ken Jennings and map Head looks at Krishev's
Speaker 1: forehead and sees a country I think it's Thailand or something.
Speaker 1: Because he can't help it, and he's drawn the connections
Speaker 1: to in that book between the shapes of various states
Speaker 1: and the shapes of other countries. I mean, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can't help but think those connections in your mind. All right,
Speaker 1: So sent for doing some time traveling. Let's go forward
Speaker 1: into the way way future, which is now um and
Speaker 1: think about what maps mean to us today, particularly with
Speaker 1: sort of technology that we have. Are you know, recapable
Speaker 1: of making a similar mistake and misinterpreting information and layering
Speaker 1: information that we have now? Well, if a future society
Speaker 1: or alien culture comes back and looks at our maps now,
Speaker 1: they're probably either going to be a little confused by
Speaker 1: all the maps that we have of things that are
Speaker 1: not actually real, which we discussed in our previous podcasts,
Speaker 1: are gonna be like whoa, they have all these maps
Speaker 1: of Hell, like tons of them. And and then there
Speaker 1: are all these these other planets. I guess there's some
Speaker 1: place called Middle Earth. It doesn't match up with anything
Speaker 1: on the planet. There's the Hobbits. We don't see anything
Speaker 1: in the record. So again, on one level, there's the
Speaker 1: just the complexity of of our map obsession that we
Speaker 1: have maps of things that aren't real. We have maps
Speaker 1: that that deserve a purpose other than navigating the physical world.
Speaker 1: But then our modern day maps are rather unique in
Speaker 1: that they certainly something on your anything you're gonna have
Speaker 1: in your smartphone, you're dealing with a real time map.
Speaker 1: You're dealing in the map that not only charts the
Speaker 1: streets in your world, but also the traffic on those streets,
Speaker 1: how they're affected by weather, how they're affected by public
Speaker 1: transportation system. So you have a lot of real time
Speaker 1: data informing the shape of that map. Think about Google Earth.
Speaker 1: It uses satellites, planes, hot air balloons. I did not
Speaker 1: know that, uh, camera equipped kites and cars to capture
Speaker 1: their images and then create this this virtual Earth for us,
Speaker 1: and then you it has the keyhole technology UM which
Speaker 1: actually before Google acquired it, I gave that program to
Speaker 1: my dad because he's an early adopter of technology and
Speaker 1: that was like the one thing I knew he didn't have.
Speaker 1: So that gave them the ability to swoop in and
Speaker 1: out UM, you know, with two D graphics and try
Speaker 1: to make it even more accurate representation. UM. The goal
Speaker 1: of Google is to have a sentiment centimeter per pixel
Speaker 1: imagery for the entirety of the globe, So every square
Speaker 1: centimeter is its own pixel on the map. So now
Speaker 1: that's overlaid with real time data like traffic and weather
Speaker 1: and also crowdsourcing photos. Right, you can overlay virtually anything
Speaker 1: on top of that, and you begin to wonder, is
Speaker 1: this a more greate picture of of humanity in the
Speaker 1: places that we live or is it still could there
Speaker 1: be a bias in this, because some people will say
Speaker 1: that that maps are biased in ways depending on the
Speaker 1: sort of information that you share. Yes, And Uh. The
Speaker 1: interesting thing too about going forward and thinking about the
Speaker 1: information that shared in the map. We're talking about engaging
Speaker 1: the map with even more and more information. We talked
Speaker 1: in the past about the Living Earth simulator, this idea
Speaker 1: that will essentially create a simulated model of the Earth.
Speaker 1: Now it's it's not necessarily and it's it's least in
Speaker 1: its short term vision. It's we're not talking about a
Speaker 1: virtual Earth than which you could jack into and see,
Speaker 1: you know, what the Queen is doing tomorrow and how
Speaker 1: it's affecting Wall Street, that kind of thing. But you'd
Speaker 1: be able to take a virtual world, Uh, Q in
Speaker 1: the data that is essential to your problem, such as
Speaker 1: say I don't know how Hollywood blockbusters affect the global
Speaker 1: seafood market. You would put in the Hollywood data that
Speaker 1: you put in the seafood data, you put in maybe
Speaker 1: a few other data sets that play between those, and
Speaker 1: then you would let it roll like a weather model
Speaker 1: and see what the forecast is for tomorrow or the
Speaker 1: day after in terms of fish and Hollywood movies. So
Speaker 1: I think what we're talking about is the capability to
Speaker 1: have a mapping system that can tell you what's going
Speaker 1: on in the here and now, that can also extrapolate
Speaker 1: what's going on a year from now, thirty days, ten
Speaker 1: years predicated on these models for the Living Earth simulator
Speaker 1: that at least in the program in its present form, right.
Speaker 1: And then you think about Google's Liquid Galaxy, which is
Speaker 1: this cluster of computers running Google Earth to create a
Speaker 1: really immersive effect, and you begin to get this picture
Speaker 1: of the future where you would never have to leave
Speaker 1: your home to have pretty immersive experiences, right, because you
Speaker 1: can even go out into the galaxy. We talked about
Speaker 1: about the Internet, interstellar in net and how we're trying
Speaker 1: to connect our solar system and trying to get trying
Speaker 1: to figure out ways that will be connected. Think about
Speaker 1: what that means in terms of the images that we're
Speaker 1: getting from Mars curiosity, in that sort of data pace
Speaker 1: that we're building up. Yeah, the map becomes more and
Speaker 1: more complex. Ideally it is still providing a simplified model
Speaker 1: or view of the world to the user, but the
Speaker 1: map itself, that the technology and the information in it
Speaker 1: just swells and swells. I can't help but be reminded
Speaker 1: of your Hey, Leuis Borges story on exactitude in science,
Speaker 1: in which an empire that's obsessed with cartography creates a
Speaker 1: map of the empire that is that is one to
Speaker 1: one scale, so it's the map is the size of
Speaker 1: the thing that it's mapping, and it just lays over
Speaker 1: the earth um which which is an idea that the
Speaker 1: Boorhees took from or he adapted from Loose Carroll and
Speaker 1: something yeah, and and so borgyes Is was always up
Speaker 1: for some sort of mind twisting, magical realistic idea, and
Speaker 1: so he played with that in his short story and
Speaker 1: it was pretty pretty thought provoking. Silly but thought provoking.
Speaker 1: You know, well, it certainly appliable to a virtual map world, Like,
Speaker 1: what point does it become the equal of the thing
Speaker 1: it's mapping in terms of its complexity? Well, and what
Speaker 1: other frontiers are we mapping? Again, going back to Mars
Speaker 1: curiosity and just in September, they discovered an area where
Speaker 1: they think there was water and uh, the rocks are
Speaker 1: in this large canyon and NASA's team named this rock
Speaker 1: outcrop um Hotel. I believe that's the way to pronounce it,
Speaker 1: after Canada's Hota Lake. So I mean already we're beginning
Speaker 1: to take our history and propel it forward into these
Speaker 1: uncharted areas. And then of course we get into the
Speaker 1: area of augmented reality. Now um I believe it was
Speaker 1: umberto Echo and one of his essays and numberto Eco
Speaker 1: writes about everything from comic books to obscure things and
Speaker 1: medieval literature. Great writer, but he wrote a piece where
Speaker 1: he was talking about Borges story on exactitude and science,
Speaker 1: and he was talking about making the map um see
Speaker 1: through It would be okay so that you could you
Speaker 1: could lay it out over the thing that it's mapping.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't you wouldn't be able to you wouldn't say
Speaker 1: something like, oh, where's the park. I can't see the
Speaker 1: park for the map of the park that's on top
Speaker 1: of it. To a certain extent, augmented reality is exactly that,
Speaker 1: the idea of putting on a pair of enhanced augmented
Speaker 1: reality glasses that then overlay the world around us with
Speaker 1: information about that world. It becomes a c through one
Speaker 1: to one map of the world that we live in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've already seen the technology and play with surfaces too,
Speaker 1: so um, yeah, it's kind of interesting to to imagine
Speaker 1: walking down the street with you know, contacts that are
Speaker 1: super imposing information and map coordinates at the same time.
Speaker 1: You know, is this uh, I mean, I guess this
Speaker 1: is just another version of the map, right. You can
Speaker 1: kind of awful lies about it and be a Cassandra
Speaker 1: about it, but this is the reality of living at
Speaker 1: a different time in the world when map technology is
Speaker 1: now this instead of your Rand McNally tattered in your
Speaker 1: back pocket. Yeah, maps amazes. There you go. All right,
Speaker 1: let's call over the robot. Then we'll do a quick
Speaker 1: listener or email. All right, we heard from Adam, and
Speaker 1: Adam is of course the chief Happiness Officer that we've
Speaker 1: heard about before. He has a website Happiness plunge dot com,
Speaker 1: as well as crazy Hair fundraiser dot com and uh.
Speaker 1: He wrote into us in a response to our bat episodes.
Speaker 1: He says, Hey guys, great timing on the podcast. I
Speaker 1: was just on the island of Samal in the Philippines,
Speaker 1: working with the community fighting to keep its land from
Speaker 1: being deserved by business interests to make resorts. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: stayed just a short walk away from the Guinness Record
Speaker 1: biggest colony um of Jeffrey Rose's fruit bats in the world.
Speaker 1: There are approximately one point eight million there. I had
Speaker 1: never seen a bat before, so it was quite an experience.
Speaker 1: We went about an hour before twilight, so that the
Speaker 1: bats were active, flying around inside the cave and moving
Speaker 1: around upside down. The noise the bats make is quite distinct.
Speaker 1: It's hard to describe, but maybe like a high pitched
Speaker 1: mouse mixed with nails on a chalkboard. It didn't smell
Speaker 1: at all until one of the cave openings. Then the
Speaker 1: smell just kind of slapped me across the face and
Speaker 1: was horrible. I don't think their exit is quite as dramatic,
Speaker 1: since there are several openings in the cave, but it
Speaker 1: might be a site to see when they all leave
Speaker 1: from the same area. Thanks for the great podcast and
Speaker 1: information about these amazing, pollinating creatures, attached to some pictures
Speaker 1: and videos for your enjoyment. Uh And indeed he includes
Speaker 1: some really cool photos and video. I'm right after this podcast,
Speaker 1: I guess I will go and put it on the Facebook,
Speaker 1: so by the time you listen to this you will
Speaker 1: have maybe seen them already. But he took some really
Speaker 1: cool photographs, Like the beautiful creature. It's very uh, like
Speaker 1: the the color of their their wing webbing versus the
Speaker 1: wings limbs themselves. It's very distinct, really beautiful. I think
Speaker 1: in general bouts are elegant. That's probably not something people
Speaker 1: for around when they talk about bats, but they are.
Speaker 1: To me. Well, if you don't find that's beautiful, I
Speaker 1: challenge that you have not really stopped to look at
Speaker 1: the bat. Yeah, yeah, yes, all right. Well, if you
Speaker 1: have something to share with us about the beauty of bats,
Speaker 1: or about our obsession with maps, about our ability to
Speaker 1: see maps in the world around us, let us know.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear if any of you out there
Speaker 1: compulsively see maps where there are no maps. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: interested in anyone's personal experience with these new map technologies
Speaker 1: that we're dealing with, whether it's just getting lost due
Speaker 1: to some mishap with your a GPS, or some thoughts
Speaker 1: on how your GPS and your augmented technology actually informs
Speaker 1: your understanding and view of the world around you. Let
Speaker 1: us know about it. You can find us on Facebook
Speaker 1: and you can find us on tumbler. We are stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind on both of those, and you
Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter where our handle is blow
Speaker 1: the Mind, and you can send us a lot at
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at discovery dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com