In Alex Kriger’s “As though in flight: 19th century American urban views”, I was really amazed by all those people who made the maps. It was before the time when planes or other flying transportations were brought into practical uses. It was already a great innovation for those people to come up with the idea of making maps at such angles. Not to mention they actually drew it out in details. Also, I think bird’s eye view map can easily demonstrate the special features a city has. Cities that conducted such maps surveys had great confidence. Through the maps, they wanted to convey an optimistic attitude for all viewers on the development of the cities, telling people to settle down, and invest. However, like the last part of the article mentioned, I think such maps, especially those we use nowadays, has one concern: security issue. Everyone could see the place we live in and gather lots of information, which might be used for other purposes. There should be more researches and discussions on how to find a better balance between giving people a good presentation of the city with bird’s eye map while security of the city is guaranteed.
In Robert Doty’s “Aloft...”, the author had given me a new understanding of the ballon history. My favorite part of the article is when the author introduced Nadar’s “Le Geant”. Instead of the normal size we are familiar with nowadays, that gigantic ballon had a two-story cottage as its car. Despite the purpose or the result, I think it was still quite an achievement back at the 19th century. The safety issue was never the first concern for all those pioneers like Nadar. I am really impressed by their courage and hope one day I could reach the same altitude as they did.
In regard to your comment about safety not being a concern, I completely agree. This was brand new technology at the time. I feel like asking somebody to stand inside a hot air balloon would be similar to driving a car that hasn't been crash tested, or maybe even test driven to see if it works. Imagine having to navigate a free flying balloon with no rope attached. It takes a lot of training today to do this even today, so having to train yourself in developing technology must have taken a lot of courage. I think Professor Kaplan mentioned that for one of the initial flights of a balloon, they placed a goat and a chicken in the basket to see if they would survive the flight and landing. I guess nobody felt very courageous that day lol. These people had guts!
ReplyDeleteI don’t know if I would call it an ingenuous or a new idea for people to make bird’s eye view maps, but it was a somewhat interesting idea. I like that you explain how these maps can show much greater detail of landscapes and how this detail can be useful for telling people to invest in some land. I think there are a lot of factors going into the psychology behind why this works. Maybe people could be made to invest in a dump if it was glorified and made to seem grandiose via unrealistic angles and by making certain attractions more prominent and by eliminating negativities. I think it’s interesting that you raise the point of security. I suppose maps could be used by an enemy, but I don’t think it’s such a big deal. I think that concealed carry, fewer gun restrictions, and a well-armed populace would reduce such issues immensely, and I would have too many arguments and statistics to post. I think that such bird’s eye view maps are more for show and to admire than to actually use for guidance. I don’t really know what your concerns are all about regarding maps being dangerous for our security (except maybe maps of which houses have guns and the like, as this would be private info). Very precise maps are highly useful tools that basically anyone can get ahold of, and it would probably greatly exasperate most people to be without them, to have less freedom in a so-called free country. If someone’s going to wage all-out war to regulate bird’s eye view maps or any maps, I think one would have to worry at least an equal amount about who is doing the regulating and where the powers and freedoms of people will shift.
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