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New Lines: Critical GIS and the Trouble of the Map
New Lines takes the pulse of a society increasingly drawn to the power of the digital map, examining the conceptual and technical developments of the field of geographic information science as this work is refracted through a pervasive digital culture. Matthew W. Wilson draws together archival research on the birth of the digital map with a reconsideration of the critical turn in mapping and cartographic thought. Seeking to bridge a foundational divide within the discipline of geography—between cultural and human geographers and practitioners of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)—Wilson suggests that GIS practitioners may operate within a critical vacuum and may not fully contend with their placement within broader networks, the politics of mapping, the rise of the digital humanities, the activist possibilities of appropriating GIS technologies, and more. Employing the concept of the drawn and traced line, Wilson treads the theoretical terrain of Deleuze, Guattari, and Gunnar Olsson while grounding their thoughts with the hybrid impulse of the more-than-human thought of Donna Haraway. What results is a series of interventions—fractures in the lines directing everyday life—that provide the reader with an opportunity to consider the renewed urgency of forceful geographic representation. These five fractures are criticality, digitality, movement, attention, and quantification. New Lines examines their traces to find their potential and their necessity in the face of our frenetic digital life.
224 pages, Paperback
Published November 15, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 21, 2018
Aiming to inform cartographers by critically examining GIS-related practices and knowledge in the context of our (hyper-)connected and digitalized world and its representation, New lines nonetheless read more a theoretical manifesto than an empirical guidebook. More length may be required for the author to better elaborate his arguments and synthesize his multiple suggestions.
Truly, some of its analyses were fairly inspiring and touched upon problems of space, of drawing lines for that space, and of attending to those space in the making as what it is, what it has done, and what it can be.
Look forward to seeing the author providing more empirically grounded agenda to show the map users/makers, as well as those have been mapped, what can these lines newly drawn do.
Truly, some of its analyses were fairly inspiring and touched upon problems of space, of drawing lines for that space, and of attending to those space in the making as what it is, what it has done, and what it can be.
Look forward to seeing the author providing more empirically grounded agenda to show the map users/makers, as well as those have been mapped, what can these lines newly drawn do.
June 27, 2021
New Lines is a fairly thin book (about 140 pages excluding the notes and index) that raises many important points to practitioners of geographic information systems (GIS) but upon finishing it, I wonder who the target audience of the book actually is. The content of the book can be summarized into roughly three categories: an inquiry into where critical GIS should go as a field, a summary history of the academic development of GIS, and social commentary on how maps (and by extension GIS) are used in society.
Perhaps the biggest failing of this book is it's short length: it feels a bit more like a collection of manuscripts intended for journals that have been gathered together (with all of the constraints placed upon those manuscripts), as opposed a book length work that allows for more time to really explore an idea or concept. Conversely, this also means that some of the chapters can almost stand on their own and I can imagine them being assigned reading to students, practically in graduate workshops.
I note that one of the other reviews writes that the book is written with an "accessible style" which I would gently pushback on. While the writing is indeed much more accessible when compared to, say, Donna Haraway's "Situated Knowledges" (Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 575-599) the book is also written with the assumption that the reader already has a passing familiarity with the works of critical GIS scholars such as Nadine Schuurman, Eric Sheppard, or John Pickles to name a few that immediately come to mind. There is also a considerable amount of references to the works of various scholars with the presumption that the reader is already familiar with them. Accordingly, I would suggest that this book is written with an audience of advanced graduate students or scholars in critical GIS, geography, or cartography in mind as opposed to the broader community of GIS practitioners.
That is perhaps one of the biggest failings of this book, a lot of the points raised about how maps are being used are going to face a difficult path to reaching some of the GIS practitioners who might be a position to adjust their use of maps. Let alone those who are "doing GIS" (i.e., computer programmers) without any of the relevant background in the scholarship that the author is referring to in their writing.
Perhaps the biggest failing of this book is it's short length: it feels a bit more like a collection of manuscripts intended for journals that have been gathered together (with all of the constraints placed upon those manuscripts), as opposed a book length work that allows for more time to really explore an idea or concept. Conversely, this also means that some of the chapters can almost stand on their own and I can imagine them being assigned reading to students, practically in graduate workshops.
I note that one of the other reviews writes that the book is written with an "accessible style" which I would gently pushback on. While the writing is indeed much more accessible when compared to, say, Donna Haraway's "Situated Knowledges" (Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 575-599) the book is also written with the assumption that the reader already has a passing familiarity with the works of critical GIS scholars such as Nadine Schuurman, Eric Sheppard, or John Pickles to name a few that immediately come to mind. There is also a considerable amount of references to the works of various scholars with the presumption that the reader is already familiar with them. Accordingly, I would suggest that this book is written with an audience of advanced graduate students or scholars in critical GIS, geography, or cartography in mind as opposed to the broader community of GIS practitioners.
That is perhaps one of the biggest failings of this book, a lot of the points raised about how maps are being used are going to face a difficult path to reaching some of the GIS practitioners who might be a position to adjust their use of maps. Let alone those who are "doing GIS" (i.e., computer programmers) without any of the relevant background in the scholarship that the author is referring to in their writing.
July 4, 2018
One of those books that improves as it goes on. I'm surprised I finished it (but it was short). I may need to re-read it or at least re-read the first couple chapters.
August 8, 2018
Matthew Wilson gives a thought-provoking and lucid account of the social history of GIS and mapping.
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April 27, 2018An important overview of development of GIS technology, its dangers and critical implementations, written in an accessible style. Scholars from various disciplines would have great use of it!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews