S2: Episode 1:

First Impressions:

For my second assignment of Communications through Creative Cultures (CCC). We have been set a task to choose a question.  The question I have chosen is:

Whats hiding behind the map ? 

After reading Chapter 4 World at War of Mirzoeff’s How to See the World, there were a few ideas which came to mind about my question. The ideas of how a map to a general or commander of a battle was essentially a way of planning and knowing the possibilities of a battle/conflict which would occur.

The map was their way of knowing what was ahead and planning for it which would give them strength over there opponent. This can be seen throughout history from the Hun Dynasty in China through to the Cuban missile crisis. The development of ‘mapping war’ evolved as technology advanced. From crude drawings of the landscape to images taken above the battlefield as the ability to flight and photographing the landscape became easier. From cameras mounted on air balloons during the American civil war to the American recon Spy Planes during the Cold War, the ability to photograph areas in detail and map them became much easier . Till the spread of images online in modern society.

In a modern age the stereo-typical ‘era of battlefield’ (Mirzoeff 113) has changed. Mirzoeff paraphrases Napoleon saying how his visualising tactics did not work in cities or mountains; Which are the terrain of todays insurgences. The map no longer has the power to sway the tide of battle, especially in the digital age where any part of the world can easily be accessed through images or ‘Google Maps’ on the internet.

Furthermore more people in todays modern society live in the city, expanding and making it harder to see the ‘insurgents’.  The expansion of these cites are getting so big that if you were to look at a map of the world they are becoming corridors and clusters of people living together, surpassing borders and different territories. Parag Khanna shows perfectly how it is no longer single cities but Mega Cities and City Corridors forming from this urban expansion.

Sovereign borders from the colonial age are slowly becoming a thing of the past as it focuses more around where the people are than who controls what area.