The Tyranny of Ambient Location: Ephemeral Maps

Recorded January 28, 2019. This second lecture of the new three
year lecture series 'Out of the Ashes' will be presented by Dr Ed
Parsons, Geospatial Technologist, Google Maps are more used today
than at any point in history. Many of us use maps every day,
sometimes many times a day. Maps, delivered via apps on the mobile
devices we all carry, are as much part of our lives today as credit
cards and reading glasses. The term map is itself is perhaps no
longer appropriate as these maps are, in fact, visualisations of
massive real-time databases that mirror the world around us. Behind
these highly-interactive maps, a network of services provide a
real-time nervous system of road and rail conditions, weather, the
temperature of our homes and even how busy our favourite pub is!
This is the system I term ‘ambient location’ and it will form a key
building block of the future smart cities will we inhabit. But—and
there is, of course, a ‘but’—this real-time mirror of the world is,
by its very nature, different to the world-view reflected in
traditional cartography and the maps of the past. Maps on our
mobile phones are ephemeral in the extreme, only representing the
world as it is now, rejecting the past to analytical use at best
and in most cases to irrelevance. How we have reached this point,
to what extent it is a problem and how we might address it—these
issues form the topic of this lecture. The Out of the Ashes lecture
series is generously supported by Sean and Sarah Reynolds. Learn
more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/