Category Archives: 365DaysOfMaps

International Tiger Day (210/365)

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They’ll likely kill you if you get too close but Tigers are beautiful, magnificent animals. They’re also seriously endangered with a number of sub-species already extinct. And that’s why International Tiger Day exists to bring focus to conservation efforts and the plight of these big cats. In a twist you likely won’t see coming, the day was created by a certain Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit on Tiger conservation held in St. Petersburg in 2010. Putin has made it a mission to save the Amur Tiger, and one of the outcomes of the summit was to impose into law punishments and prison sentences for poaching, illegal trade and transportation of Tigers.

In support of International Tiger Day, here’s a map of the general former and current Tiger habitat for the nine identified sub-species. ChatGPT did a pretty good job which I verified against other, published maps. Labelling has improved significantly compared to what it was capable of earlier in the year, and our series of maps. What I like about what this map shows is that the same image generator can produce a VERY different aesthetic from, for example, yesterday’s Water Park map. This is largely down to the human input of crafting a prompt that directs the LLM to make the map within constrained guidelines. The point here, is if you, the human in the loop, know what you want, then you remain in control of the output. You are designing the map in your mind’s eye, and are asking AI to execute your plan.

Don’t lose your stripes if you’re perma-offended.

Tigers

Original Prompt (ChatGPT)

I’d like you to make a map of Asia that illustrates the former, and current extent of territories of Tiger habitat. The Tiger is a single species but the map should illustrate the range of the nine sub-species namely the Bali (extinct), Sumatran, Javan (extinct), South China, Indochinese, Malayan, Bengal, Caspian (extinct), and Siberian (Amur) Tigers. Current habitat should be in a darker hue than the former habitat and different hues used for different sub-species so it’s possible to differentiate the different ranges on the map. I’d also like you to be careful about how you shade each hue on the map. There should be no internal variation in each hue. It needs to be a block colour rather than looking like a watercolour. Please include illustrations of the different tigers, identifying how they differ, and with an indication of the number of each sub-species currently estimated in the wild. Add source notes to the bottom of the map to indicate where your numbers were found. Feel free to include the Latin name for each sub-species. I would like the background of the map to show landmasses in light grey, and water as a lighter grey. In other words, a neutral backdrop should help the reader focus on the thematic content. Please add a title ‘Tiger Habitat Range’. There’s no need for north points or scale bars so please omit.

National Water Park Day (209/365)

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While some online folks are arguing amongst themselves about the value of our little AI mapping experiment, continuing to label us as ‘slopmerchants’, AI proponents, and determining that we are incapable of understanding and accepting critique I thought I’d reiterate a few comments we’ve made elsewhere but which seem to have gone unheard.

If you begin your so-called critique threads with a statement such as “I don’t like AI maps” then proceed to simply say you don’t like what we’re doing you’re not actually offering anything useful. If you add personal and derogatory assessments of us, and our motives to that, you’re not helping move the discussion forward at all. In reality you’re starting an argument, then framing us, and our work in pejorative terms while continuing to try and provoke a response. As we’ve said many times, we’re simply not going to engage. We’ll be reporting our findings, what works, what hasn’t worked very well, where AI (and us, as operators) have failed, what works for cartography, what perhaps doesn’t (yet?) in good time. That’s the aim. That’s the point. That’s always been the point. And in that mix we’re now also likely to comment on the way in which people’s reactions to this project have verged on the intolerable at times. It’s been an emerging issue which is going to be important to reflect upon.

Today’s map is made using Generative AI because it’s a pictorial, or illustrative, map. I am fond of illustrative maps so I naturally gravitate towards this style. In looking around my home right now as I write this I can see Jasper John’s ‘Map’, Jo Mora’s ‘Yosemite’, Hal Shelton’s ‘Colorado – Ski Country’, The Tate Gallery ‘Tube by Tate’, James Niehues’ Ski trail maps, Stephen Walter’s ‘The Island’, Ruth Taylor’s ‘California’, MacDonald Gill’s ‘Wonderground’ map, Anton Thomas’ ‘Portrait of a Continent’ and ‘Wild World’ and many others. This style of cartography is not to everyone’s taste of course. But as a cartographer, when I see a theme entitled ‘Water Park Day’ I am naturally inclined to imagine a landscape where the map is a fun landscape surrounded by water in which characters are having fun. This is not much different to how Jo Mora envisaged the landscapes he drew. The difference is that I’m experimenting with Generative AI to assist me with the production of an artistic map. I can draw (though certainly not as well as Mora), and I’ve shared some of my hand-drawn maps before. But let’s say I don’t have weeks to put the map together, and maybe one can imagine a client demanding a map in very short order. In that sense, and for this purpose, Generative AI provides an opportunity. I don’t have copies of Tolkien’s maps but one could imagine him experimenting with AI to build his landscapes, and I’m sure many contemporary map-makers of fictional places are also doing so.

One criticism of this has been that this sort of art is derivative. Well, yes, to an extent, but so is most art. As humans we see things, and we build on the inspiration. This is really all an LLM is doing. I know people who openly admit nothing they do in their map-making is original and that they copy everything from somewhere. Yet they produce good work that is attractive, and widely praised. If creating work so derivatively is such a heinous crime then such people should be out of a job rather than being praised right? Instead, people turn a blind eye to some people’s practices, but if it involves AI, then that’s roundly criticised. Isn’t that double-standards? Other people in the industry are also using AI but they’re not admitting it, or explaining what parts of their work rely on AI. Maybe that’s where Ian and I have gone wrong in being totally up front about this particular project. We’ll never know. Though it is fascinating to see how some are evolving their work and using AI under the radar without any criticism.

Another criticism is that this will undoubtedly kill the careers of illustrators, and of cartographers, perhaps. Hasn’t this been an accusation of every technological shift in history? Again, some folks may find their ability to attract commissions is reduced. Or maybe they can harness AI in ways that they find acceptable and useful to assist in their design and production? Perhaps this is by training AI to understand their unique style and have the AI return work that mimics that style. This already occurs for the written word, but maybe Generative AI illustrations will develop in this way too. Ian has developed a lot of styles over the past few weeks and I intend to play with these a little more.

So, today’s map is a playful, illustrative map that imagines the world map as a water park. Generative AI is pretty good at these sort of highly saturated imaginary depictions. There’s plenty of maps from across the last few decades that take a similar approach. In particular, maps designed for children with bright colours, and lots of playful detail. They’re not trying to be serious. Just colourful fun. Nothing more. Nothing less. It’s designed to bring joy. Sometimes that’s all a map needs to do, and I like those sort of maps because I’ve made some of these by hand before too (remember Trump’s Ties?). I could have iterated the map more. I’m getting a little tired of these maps all having curved titles centred at the top. They sometimes look very similar but hey, if that’s a ChatGPT style, then that’s something recognisable right?

I hope you like today’s map too, but if not, that’s OK. It isn’t a reason to have a meltdown. Just move on, and save your judgment for when we bring our little experiment to a close and offer our reflections. And in the meantime remember the park rules – Be Kind, Stay Safe, Drink Water, and have Fun!

water parks

Original prompt (ChatGPT)

I’d like you to make a map for water park day, perhaps a world map depicted as a water park. It should be brightly coloured, with rushing water, and endless excitement filling the air. It needs to exude the joy of cooling off in a place designed for pure fun. Please include towering slides send riders speeding down into sparkling pools, with lazy rivers offering a gentle drift under the sun. Every splash, laugh, and thrilling drop makes these parks a favorite getaway for families and friends and reminds everyone of the happiness waterparks bring. They provide a break from daily stress, offering both adventure and relaxation. High-speed rides challenge the daring, while calm pools invite visitors to unwind. Please dive headlong into this mapping project!

Norfolk Day (208/365)

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Another day, another map. It’s Norfolk Day. If you peruse mostly tourist-trap stores around the UK you’ll almost certainly see tea towels designed as if ChatGPT had made them, but several decades ago. They’re heavily pictorial, and often show historical places, flora, fauna, people and anything linked to the county (or region). So I asked ChatGPT to make a tea towel in respect of the county of Norfolk in East Anglia, UK.

More generally, while it’s another week of making maps in this experiment the online noise about it continues by those who are upset about it. To reiterate – critique is perfectly fine and encouraged but we’re not engaging with people who call what we’re doing professionally negligent, unethical, or who lazily charecterise our experiment as ‘slop’ of some type. It’s noise. It’s unhelpful, and abusive. It’s not critique. Further, the notion of changing what we’re doing because, 7 months in, someone would like it done a different way is not really how experiments work. Please afford us the courtesy to finish what we are doing and have reported on it. While we acknowledge some very helpful comments by some, we would encourage the vocal minority to explore their own experiments in using AI in ways they find acceptable.

Norfolk

Original Prompt (ChatGPT)

Please make a map of Norfolk, UK to celebrate Norfolk Day. Please imbue the map with points of historical note that a casual reader may find interesting. Clearly the underlying geography must be accurate so I encourage you to check with published topographical maps of the region. I’d like you to style it in a similar way to the long history of depicting historical maps on tea towels in support of UK tourism. And just because I want you to show you can make errors that people will find fault with, please make sure you include a picture of a fish with two tails, one at either end.

All or Nothing Day (207/365)

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Forgive the lack of effort today (or don’t, I don’t particularly care) but I’m sat on my sofa, it’s 4:25pm on a Saturday, it’s 105°F outside, and I haven’t made a map for tomorrow’s post in this apparently divisive series. So I thought I’d just see if I can make a map using AI on my phone. And the day’s theme worked well for a cheesy, throwaway map-gag that’s been made before such as by Lewis Carroll in “The Hunting of the Snark”. Maybe the LLM has read it? I didn’t prompt it in this direction but it went there anyway.

Is it a map? Well, it’s got a border, title, subtitle, legend, scale bar, and ridiculous north arrow. Nice layout. Well designed.

It’s now 4:39pm. Job done. Not great. Possibly not even good. But maybe it raises a small smile from one or two people in passing. And frankly, that’ll do me. Enjoy the rest of your day, and seize what you can!

Nothing

Original Prompt (ChatGPT)

In celebration of ‘All or nothing’ day I’d like to see you create a map that literally shows nothing. The day itself is designed to encourage people to seize the day (Carpe Diem!) and for them to perhaps do things they may have been fearful of doing. The implication is they will end up with all, or nothing. But they will have tried. So what happens if the map I ask you to make is the exact opposite of every other map I make… It shows nothing. I’ve never tried that before.

National Wine and Cheese Day (206/365)

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Disruption often comes with a price. Over the last few weeks there’s been an extremely vocal online community writing inflammatory social media posts and misrepresentative blogs about the AI mapping experiment Ian and I have been undertaking. It’s like Lord of the Flies: The Cartography Years. Despite many more interested people (note – not necessarily positive, but open-minded) than not, there has to come a point where our side-project, done on our own time, becomes simply not worth it.

For decades, Cartography has faced numerous technological changes. The International Cartographic Association uses ‘Commissions’ as key instruments to explore how all manner of disruptions and developments might impact the domain. From work that people do, ICA brings forward ideas, and frameworks which help define cartography as it moves forward and reacts to change. Does it always work? No. Can you work outside of ICA and still offer critical ideas? Of course! Ian and I have been Chair and Co-Chair of the Commission on Map Design for the last 16 years (we flipped roles half-way through). It’s provided an avenue for work in the broad area of the design of maps that gives it some visibility beyond self-promotion. It engages an international body of professionals across the cartographic spectrum.

But we face a headache. At previous inflexion points of technological change Cartography has generally been slow to adopt or adapt. And then it’s almost too late. With the advent of AI, despite all its problems and concerns, we thought that a couple of fairly-seasoned experts jumping in to the mix to explore opportunities and difficulties might help us get ahead of the curve. We perhaps naively thought people would back the efforts we were making to at least try things out. We did so without an agenda. We wanted to explore, and to experiment. The simple idea of creating a map a day was born, using the sometimes serious, and sometimes frivolous ‘Day of…’ lists we always see. It was a convenient framework, and one neither of us had any particular reason to be biased about.

For several months at the start of the year it was difficult. The maps were tough to make. Generative AI was making some really bad mistakes, and web mapping was a challenge. But slowly AI Assistants have improved across the year and our ability to write prompts that do a better job of controlling the LLMs also improved. And just as we’ve been finding our feet along came the online backlash. No names, but the noise has become almost intolerable. We’re finding we have to defend very innocent motives from people IN the cartographic community who are making gross assumptions about our intent. Now, I get that folks will have opinions. But most are asserting those opinions purely based on the fact they “don’t like AI” (or similar), and if they can’t think of anything about the technology to moan about then they just don’t like our ‘tone’. That’s not really how science evolves. But since academic publishing is largely irrelevant any more, and codes of conduct make conferences an impossible forum for sensible debate, then blogs and social media is what we’re left with.

So, what to do… carry on regardless, with significantly decreased appetite, and either ignore or continue to bat away the haters (while trying to siphon out useful, mature critique). Or just end the experiment early. What is best for Ken and Ian? What is best for cartography? Are those two things the same? With upcoming conference presentations on the horizon we have commitments. And we’ve long-promised to report on what we find in our experiment to the wider community. But some already have us down as AI promoters so it’s largely pointless. They’re going to come to a conference presentation armed for a public take-down (except they won’t be able to do that due to the codes of conduct they were probably involved in writing in the first place). Ending a presentation by saying that voices from inside the community itself made it impossible to move forwards seems to me it would shine a very dim light on the way we act as a professional community. Let’s not wait until researchers have given us their conclusions, let’s shoot them down early, and often, instead! If no-one is interested in what we might have to say then the community has spoken, and we can just get on with doing other things. If there’s no interest in how AI might impact cartography based on a year’s worth of trying out what it has to offer then fine. That seems awfully narrow-minded to me but I could be wrong. What I do know is this experiment has eaten considerably into mine and Ian’s lives over the last 6+ months. Neither of us needed to do it. But having people so vocally shout-down our efforts has been surprising.

We haven’t made our minds up just yet because we believe what we’re trying to do has value for the wider community. We may even end up revealing that AI is a piece of crap for making maps. But that would be pre-empting even our own conversations and findings. It would be deeply frustrating to ditch this work just because of a few rather thoughtless souls but it does tend to be the case that the few always tends to spoil things for the many in most walks of life. Maybe this is just one of those occasions and we just have to shrug our shoulders and live with it.

So – if these blogs just end, or the posts on X, BlueSky, and LinkedIn fall silent you’ll know what happened. We just gave up, and gave in. If they continue then we’ll have persuaded each other that, for now at least, it’s worth trying to cut through the crap for a bigger end goal.

So…for now, here’s today’s map. It might be the last in our series. I don’t yet know.

A few years ago I made a wooden cheese board, and filled it with geographically appropriate cheeses that I served to a room full of geogeeks in London. It was a great, and tasty, success. I thought today I would try and prompt our AI map assistant to create a digital version.

Here’s the real-world version. Real wood. Real cheese. Taken with a real camera (with real sensors that captured the picture and converted them into glorious pixels)

cheesy

Although far less tasty it’s also way more easily produced in a matter of minutes, costs significantly less (there was over $500 of cheese on the original), and is far easier to share. But even though what I’m sharing today is no more than pixels, much like the photograph above, yeah – I prefer the original. I like maps. But I like cheese more.

cheesy 2

Original Prompt (ChatGPT)

A few years ago I hand made a cheeseboard in the style of a map of the United Kingdom. I then purchased different cheeses from different parts of the UK which I served on the cheeseboard to a room of geographers. It was a huge success. Could you create a digital replica of a cheeseboard of the UK with cheeses from across the map, positioned close to their origin of production. please label the cheeses (accurately and without spelling errors or hallucinations). Since cheese is most often paired with a fine wine please also show a glass or two of wine with the bottle and a playful label indicating fine taste in geographical wit.

National Amelia Earhart Day (205/365)

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Mysteries always leave us with great stories. They take on a life of their own as we struggle to make sense of the senseless, or the logic of the illogical. History is filled with stories of adventure with endings that perhaps capture the imagination more than if everything had gone to plan.

Maybe that’s the case with American aviator Amelia Earhart. Earhart was a pioneer and counted many firsts in her lifetime but she went missing on July 2nd 1937 while attempting the world’s first circumnavigation by a female pilot. To date the wreckage of her plane, and her remains, have not been found despite many searches. This has ultimately led to all manner of stories and speculation about her final resting place and what actually went wrong. But like most mysteries we’ll likely never know.

So, for today’s prompt-built map I wanted the 1937 route showing the stops. I wanted it in a mid-1900s style but because I know AI sometimes struggles a little with precise locations and labels I’m going to do this in two parts because route accuracy is paramount. Firstly, I gave ChatGPT a list of places for the stops (via a web site) and told it to create an accurate route map, which it did. Then I asked it to style the map it had created in a mid-century adventure map style. I also wanted to riff on a joke that my good friend Nathan Shephard tells that if only she hadn’t used a Robinson Projection she wouldn’t have fallen off the edge of the map. A lovely map projection flat-earth joke thrown into the mix!

Pretty decent results I think. Sure, we can be critical of the pointless north arrow compass rose but it adds to the aesthetic in this instance. Take it off if you want. I left it on. My decision.

Amelia map 2

Original Prompt (ChatGPT) Part 1
Could you make a map of the world using a Robinson projection that plots the route of the final flight of aviator Amelia Earhart. Please use the details at this web site to accurately position the stops she made along the route https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/MapsandPhotos/maps/worldflight.html

Amelia map 1

Original Prompt (ChatGPT) Part 2
Great! The route is accurate. Now, using that map as a basic structure I’d like you to re-style it to evoke the mid 1900s explorer style maps that you might see in an Indiana Jones movie. The route and stops Earhart made must remain accurate in terms of the actual route she took, and also the location on the map where you position the stops (I will be checking them again!) I’d also like to include a geographical joke and have it appear that Earhart literally dropped off the edge of the world, to be revealed as a flat earther, which is why the wreckage of her plane has never been found.

Vanilla Ice Cream Day (204/365)

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Everyone’s a critic baby, that’s the truth
Everyone’s a critic baby, that’s no lie

Wait – I just stole a lyric from Hot Chocolate. And modified it. Is that allowed? Whose permission am I asking? I’m sat writing this listening to the new Rolling Stones album. It’s actually pretty good, in my opinion. I’m sure plenty think it’s crap. That’s their opinion. And we’re all entitled to express opinions, until others decide we’re not.

I want to tell you a short story. Rewind to B.C. (Before Covid). I’ve been an educator my entire career. I’ve taught many people who then spread their wings and off they go to do their work in their way and forge new careers. It’s incredibly gratifying to help people learn. And as part of my professional responsibility I always kept in mind a Royal Society demand to call out where we saw people making mistakes in our professional domains in order to maintain standards and to support knowledge transfer. I have some level of knowledge, and experience, and felt able to use my position to carry a flag for basic standards in the way maps were designed as conduits for communicating a message. This was almost always in seeing scientific errors as opposed to the aesthetics of design. And I felt social media was a suitable place to engage with the community back when it was some sort of community.

Except the community (or some parts of it) felt otherwise. I was seen as wholly and solely responsible for using a hashtag to brand maps I saw as falling technically short of my personal ideals. Worse, the incorrect assumption was made that critique of a map somehow meant being critical about its author. And my, did I get cancelled over it. I don’t wish to rake over these coals but there’s no debating with those kinds of people. In trying to do my best in support of my profession, others felt that public critique of publicly shared maps was inappropriate, unwarranted, and damaging. They also had issues with the style I sometimes took. Understandable – we’re all different. But let me be clear – this wasn’t everyone and despite pointing to many who found my comments helpful, informative, and useful I relented. So you don’t see me bother any more. Cancelled by a community with a few vocal people who put me in their sights and literally shot down my efforts because they took a dislike. A lot of their distaste became pretty vitriolic too. I’m not going to name names but I’ve largely avoided these people over the last few years.

But I’ve been forced to revisit some of this recently.

This mapping experiment that Ian and I are engaged in has lit a fuse with some. On the one hand we’ve received many positive comments of support for what we’re doing in exploring the use of AI in cartography. Again, no names but some very prominent people in the industry as well as folks we’ve never met who are following with interest. Academics have expressed their shifting perspective. Folks in senior corporate roles have taken an interest. But… there’s also been a backlash, and what should be a mapping experiment has somehow become a social commentary on our behaviour. We’ve been referred to as ‘professionally negligent’, accused of simply creating ‘AISlop’ and ‘PromptSlop’, characterised as ‘AI promoters’ advocating for a technology that will likely ‘put folks out of work’, being ‘unethical’, ‘uncritical’, being ‘sinful’, making ‘shit maps’ (also ‘dogshit maps’) etc. You get the gist. Some have offered thoughtful and engaging ideas because neither Ian or I have ever set about saying we’ve figured this out. The only truth is that this is a huge technological change we’re all going to have to deal with and we’re experimenting with what it might mean for our professional domain with open minds.

But people continue to want detailed expositions to their particular criticisms in a few characters in a social media post, or they want us to do this, and that, in a way that they individually find useful as if it’s the first conversation we’ve ever had with people on the subject. Then, if you do write down something long-form we’re told tl;dr (probably much like this blog post I suspect)  We’ve recorded podcasts, written blogs and essays, developed new web sites, written a forthcoming book, are running a workshop at a forthcoming conference, have upcoming conference presentations on the horizon, have developed schemas, AI Assistants, and tried our best to reassure people that when we’re done with our 365 maps we’ll be trying our best to pull together our experiences; to figure out some best practices as things currently stand; and to share what we’ve learnt. What more do you want?

But some have already decided on where they draw the line with AI in cartography. For them it seems they liken it more to a social movement than the inevitable juggernaut of technological change that is going to happen happening. Their mind is made up, and they’re happy to express that opinion and use our efforts as irrefutable evidence they’re right. They also seem uninterested in the materials we’ve built across the year so far, preferring simply to pick on a map or two and tell us a border or label is incorrect. Seriously – there’s just no pleasing people. I could probably point out errors on most maps, made by most people, using most tools (except I can’t because I’ll get cancelled again). To the Tower! It’s tiring to have to constantly re-tread discussion when people can’t or won’t do some basic research and find out what we’ve already said on the topic. To date there’s 204 maps with associated blogs. Sometimes we’re rather busy with other demands on our time so it’s a brief, quick and dirty map. Other times the maps and thought that has gone into them are more involved. Much like all maps. Right? But – be damned AI cartography! If you want to think of our experiment in terms of client demands then the client has asked for one map, per day of the year, built using AI, each one on a theme relevant to International or National ‘Days of…’. They haven’t said ‘create a great map’, or even a ‘good map’. Just ‘create a map’. Much like an awful lot of clients I’ve come across over the years.

So let’s reiterate our motive – it’s an experiment. We’re creating maps every day for a year using AI as a major (or sole) tool in the workflow. We are directing AI agents that are publicly available or that we’ve built (well, Ian’s built!) to use LLMs to create maps. These are sometimes images using generative AI, or vector-based interactive web maps. We are directing the AI much like a Director frames the story but lets the camera crew, lighting, set designers and actors get on with interpreting the direction and delivering ‘an’ outcome. Producers and sound engineers do the same in a recording studio. Chefs do the same in a kitchen. Every creative endeavor results in an outcome which some folks will like, and others won’t. Monet? Constable? van Gogh? Hockney? Jackson Pollock? Banksy? All creative but in different ways. Every map is only one possible outcome of many different possibilities regardless of who made it or how it was made (said someone once, famously). For many, technology has all too often limited what we could achieve. The number of times I’ve envisaged something in my head but not been able to deliver it because of some technical limitation or other is a very long list indeed. And every time a big technological change impacts cartography it is ALWAYS one step forward and two steps backwards. New people jump on board because something new captures their creative imagination and they are skilled in the new tool. Whatever benefits are brought about are always offset by limitations that take time to come up to speed. So we could sit around moaning – or give things a go. We chose the latter path.

So, what of the maps? The design is largely under our control through our prompts. Sometimes we iterate if we spot errors. Other times we don’t because part of this experiment is not to simply say “hey – AI is great”. We explicitly want the examples that have performed less than we would like. It helps establish what’s working, what’s not working, and how similar prompts might yield different results as time passes and improvements are made.. Much like many others do with their maps made with whatever tools they use, they publish maps that may contain errors. Caveat Emptor! Sure, some are sloppy, but they are not ‘slop’ simply by virtue of being made using AI technology. That’s such a lazy characterisation. Sloppy maps have always existed regardless of author or technology used in design and production. But increasingly we’re getting pelters from the very community that called me out for trying to call out sub-standard web maps when web mapping, and coded maps were becoming ubiquitous, and often made by people with little background in making maps (often resulting in the naive errors that were abound). Some people think I should adhere to higher standards, or not get involved at all. I see that as a dereliction of duty. Why shouldn’t we get involved in such a major transformative change? I mean, I don’t really want to retire just yet so I probably ought to think about how I might navigate things going forward. But I’m learning through practice. I’m literally getting my hands dirty (read the original editorial for Issue 1 of the journal Applied Geography by my old PhD Supervisor), and stepping way outside my comfort zone. I’ve talked about this before – particularly in relation to attending conferences outside of the normal cartography ones to meet new people, share map knowledge, and learn from others in allied domains. It’s fulfilling, refreshing, and devoid of the boring perpetual inward looking discussions that have been going round and round for years.

Wait a minute – so the very same people who found my efforts at maintaining cartographic standards at the dawn of the last major technological innovation abhorrent are now directing their ire at me for giving this latest technology a go? I’m messing about with it as an early adopter. I don’t have the answers. But clearly I’ve transgressed a line in the sand that some find fundamentally objectional. They’re applying a premeditated bias on what Ian and I are doing based on the tool we’re using, and then, by inference, characterising our motive. They’re immovable. It’s an incredibly closed-mindset. They’re happy to call it out on social media too. They’ve become experts at the passive aggressive post or blog that hints at a wider discourse but never names names or provides any real evidence to support their beliefs. They sometimes dress it up as an ethical debate, or some sort of insider-threat, or doing the work of the devil in fulfilling the work of billionaire sci-fi organisations as they seek to control all that we do. I’m comfortable with my ethical approach. I’m open and honest to the point it sometimes gets me into difficulties. I’m not trying to hide in plain sight.

I’m guessing many of these folks are oblivious to the deep irony this exhibits. This is the exact same behaviour I was profoundly criticised for only a few years ago. What happened to the live and let live philosophy? What happened to protecting the map-maker and their right to make the map they want using the tools they want? What happened to giving them a safe, uncritical space in which to experiment and contribute? What happened to letting people finish what they’ve started before piling on? I’m truly amazed how rapidly some people have pivoted. People who framed my entire career as ‘roasting people’ are now happily deriding this little side-project that I’m involved with. Accusing me of claiming a moral or ethical high ground by demeaning others is now exactly what some of these folks are doing. That’s really quite something. As Rush would suggest – Time Stand Still.

I’ve long given up trying to have a discussion with these sort of folks on social media. It always just deteriorates. But I’m going to stop engaging entirely. It’s pointless noise because they offer nothing constructive. If you don’t like what we’re doing, maybe try your own experiments and contribute? Or maybe do something that supports your assertions. You may very well be right, and it may well be that Ian and I have got this horribly wrong. But prove it rather than just parrot the usual lazy critiques. And in the wider world, is Mick Jagger wrong? Is George Lucas wrong? Is Dua Lipa’s producer Ian Kirkpatrick wrong? Should we ban Ed Sheeran from using loop pedals? Maybe anyone who DJs using a Mac Air should be banned? And heaven forbid we ban drum machines. All have embraced technological innovations that have impacted the creative sphere in music or film, and have worked with it to their advantage rather than sit back and moan about it. Good enough for them to try new stuff out, but as with so many technological shifts in the past cartographers seem very happy to sit in their echo chambers and complain about change. I’ve seen it so many times. I’m reminded of the story of a prominent UK cartographer who was militant in expressing dissatisfaction at GIS becoming a useful tool in cartography, and how web maps were useless, and Google Maps wouldn’t last. They stuck with Macromedia Freehand. They soon had to retire. It’s sad. They were talented and had much to offer, but technology rapidly overtook them and their business. I genuinely encourage people with a distaste for this experiment to go and do their own work. Prove we’re wrong. That’s how to engage – not just criticise on social media using approaches, and personally targeted comments, you used to apparently be wholly against anyway. You literally cannot have it both ways.

So, every avenue in life and is impacted by technology. Does anyone want to give up their microwave oven? Electronic toothbrush? Cellphone? Cartography is an art, science, and technology. I’ve lived through the transition from pens and darkroom tech, through desktop publishing, and into GIS; from mainframe, to desktop, to mobile and the cloud. AI is next. What it’s currently good at, and bad at, where we are, and where it’s going as a community eventually draw the line in the sand is up for debate. And I do mean debate, not intransigence if you simply don’t particularly like what we (or anyone for that matter) are doing with it. So, I apologise if you find I no longer engage, and I also apologise to the few folks who have merely questioned, and offered perspectives. They have been acknowledged (I hope), and I truly hope you know this expression of frustration is not in any way aimed at you. I fully welcome mature interest in our experiment, but everyone, please remember this is a side-project. By necessity it has limits in what time we can devote to it, it’s not part of our day jobs, and we have no funding. Maybe just be a little nicer?

I nearly forgot – one last quick point I wanted to make was that some have (for good reason which they have explained) asked us to mark these maps as ‘Made with AI’ or similar. I understand why but we haven’t mainly because they exist firmly within the reference frame of our blog posts and social media posts that express that they are part of a specific project. In and of itself that has become a short-cut to dissatisfaction for some anyway, which is something we wanted to avoid by not badging them. I don’t badge work that I make elsewhere as ‘made with GIS’, even though that’s pretty obvious too.  I rarely, if ever, see maps badged with their mode of production. Why should we brand maps that use AI? It’s as if it gives people immediate and uncritical permission to pile on. The interesting fact is that I also use AI in my day job as part of the workflow of designing and producing maps. Not one person has spotted this, called it out, or objected to it. I’m not even going to tell you on what map I last used it, but I can tell you it likely saved me an entire day of effort which I could then spend on other tasks. Now, isn’t that a nice saving you can enjoy, or pass onto your client?

So, onto today’s map made using AI – it’s Vanilla Ice Cream Day. It’s also Sprinkles Day. The two go hand in hand. Depending on your perspective, what follows is either an entertaining pictorial map, rendered as a pixel infused image that I asked the AI to make using clear directions. Or, it’s the very worst of generative AI slop because you have an objection to the fact I didn’t make it using Illustrator or GIS and the word slop is conveniently derogatory. If the latter – good luck making something as trivial and fun in less than 1 minute 38 seconds. Trivial and fun is as much part of cartography as serious and informative. Different strokes for different folks. It’s a hell of a stretch to suggest one is ethical and the other isn’t. And before you suggest this map is un-editable well, it is. Photoshop would help with that (other pixel editing programs exist), and in case you’d forgotten, we’ve been dealing with raster data in GIS for half a century.

Oh – and let me save you the effort if you plan on trying to figure out if I used AI to help write this. I didn’t….but I could have, and that’s the beauty. Use it for what works for you. Its ability to help in many different ways in our day-to-day work is only going to evolve further and keeping an open-mind on the possibilities it might bring is surely a healthy mindset. But enjoy trying to stoke faux arguments, and rivalries if you want – AI is here to stay but no-one debates all of the tech changes that have gone before (jeesz, who recalls the fights at the famous copperplate engraving conference when the lithographers showed up!) so this will also pass and it’ll be something else that comes along that people get fundamentally upset by. I’ll have a “99 flake” thanks, with a cherry on top.

Vanilla Ica Cream

Original Prompt (ChatGPT)

Hi. I am looking to make an illustrative (pictorial) map in celebration of Vanilla Ice Cream Day. I would like the map to show continents as tubs of ice cream containing scoops of different flavours but as it’s Vanilla Ica Cream Day there needs to be a focus on this particular classic flavour. I would like the map to be covered in sauce and other ice cream related delights. Importantly, it’s also sprinkles day on the same day so the map needs to be covered in sprinkles of all types. Add chunks of fudge, candy, and whatever to make this a delectible dessert map. Finally – we’re aware of some criticism of the maps you’ve made in the past so make this good. Keep errors to a minimum, no hallucinations. This has to be top notch! And just for the British contingent, please include a ’99 flake’. Thanks.

Rat Catcher Day(203/365)

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If you’ve been following along with us on a regular basis, you’ve probably noticed that I can be quite nostalgic, particularly for the 80s and 90s.

To complete my Macromedia Flash nostalgia week, I present you with a video game to celebrate Rat Catcher Day.

It’s not the Pied Piper that many of you were hoping I would support. No, it’s about a literal Rat Catcher. And you need to catch all the rats in the house.

It’s designed as an old, web-based Flash video game. I remember playing similar games in my cubicle as an intern and then Planner back in 1998/1999 at the Arrowhead Regional Development Commission. I wanted to relive the magic!

To make this game truly accessible, I also created it in multiple languages. Because when a game is about catching rats, you don’t want to miss the narrative, right?

Have fun! Catch rats. Happy rat-catching day!

View Map Here

Original Prompt

See whole conversation here and download the sequel about a Woman’s Unpaid Labor at home… at the bottom. A better version, but not related to Rat Catcher Day! LOL

https://chatgpt.com/share/6a5fcb24-f72c-83ea-8a4b-1f4502617d38

National Junk Food Day (202/365)

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It’s National Junk Food Day!

As though the US needs an excuse to eat poorly.

Strange, I don’t think there is a Binge-Drinking Day—though many days in Wisconsin might qualify as honorary entries. Nor is there a Do-Controlled-Substances Day—though, admittedly, that one would be broad. I’m on prescription meds every day of the week. Sometimes when I write these blog posts, I wonder if they are really doing what they promise. And perhaps many of you, when reading my posts, also become paranoid. Apologies if so. Today’s post is a doozy…

As for junk food, my substances of choice are Kinnikinnick Vanilla-Frosted Gluten-Free Donuts. They come in a box of six, typically freezer-burned between the gluten-free lasagna that no one has bought in 11 years and the frozen tapioca bread that… well, no one has ever bought.

But these donuts—from Edmonton, Canada, nonetheless—sell fast, because they are as addictive as nicotine. My entire family concurs: these donuts are laced with something. Even completely frozen, I can gnaw through half a box in about two minutes and still be clawing at the back three like a rabid squirrel attacking acorns.

The downside? These things are kind of pricey. With inflation what it is, these small donuts come to about a buck-fifty each. And having grown up in the 1980s, when you could get a six-pack of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls or Nutty Bars for 69 cents at the local convenience store, this seems outrageous to me. I sure as heck didn’t give up smoking in my early 20s to splurge $8 on donuts that last two minutes instead. By comparison, nicotine was an affordable habit… though I haven’t looked at the price of tobacco since 2005—in Hungary. Perhaps cigarettes cost more than $1.50 a pack now, too?

Alas… I guess what I’m getting at here is that I have had and continue to have vices. (I presume most people do.) I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. But I am an All-American junk-food eater. It is my weakness. My cultural shame. And I’m sure it will soon be my undoing, as my heart can’t take much more cheese, donuts, and ice cream. Nonetheless, if it’s true that people trade one addiction for another, I’m happy I landed on junk food. Because in America, eating processed food that’s bad for you is not only culturally acceptable, it’s celebrated with its own day! Hip-hip-hooray!!!

Wait… what is Halloween then, you ask? I can see a non-American’s confusion about this. However, that is definitely not an official junk-food day. That’s an annoy-every-person-on-your-block-and-consume-mass-quantities-of-candy day. Very different. That’s why we have both, I imagine.

Which raises the question: are there Fruit or Vegetable Days? I don’t know. I guess Ken and I will find out. Stay tuned.

It’s hard not to assume Junk Food Day was developed by some cabal of fast-food executives, soda companies, and chocolatiers—and I know, I know… I’m going to cut some of you off here. I’ve heard about those studies. “Dark chocolate is good for you,” some say, so I shouldn’t lump dark chocolatiers into this mix.

Whenever my kids tell me this bit about dark chocolate, I remind them about that infamous “Danish study” my Danish friend Klaus talked about nonstop during our senior year at Duluth East High School. He cited it like gospel. “Ian, a Danish study says…” And you can guess what a Danish study about beer consumption might have said in 1997: drinking three beers a day is really healthy!

Here is the funny thing, though. “Scientific research” says whatever the hell you want it to say if you stop following the research the moment you find a statistically significant result you want to hear. I didn’t know that then, so I couldn’t tell Klaus while huddled around a fire and drinking my third beer to my health. I get it now. Blasted… I later read an article disputing the Danish study completely. I should have stopped learning.

Which, of course, brings us to AI.

On LinkedIn, I keep seeing people post education studies showing that students who used AI in college last year are “dumber” than students who came before them. I’m paraphrasing, but not by much. The accompanying posts usually imply that humanity is losing its ability to think, civilization is nearing its intellectual terminus, and whither humanity if no one can read a passage of *Moby-Dick* and explain what drives Captain Ahab – or a fictitious whale.

The studies come fast and furiously out of education research centers right now because there is ample funding—and ample angst—around AI in education. AI is definitely going to flip traditional education on its head, or perhaps more likely, knock it on its ass. Some of the anxiety is warranted. Some students will absolutely use AI to avoid thinking. I avoided thinking with Cliff’s Notes, cooperative learning assignments, and by sitting near my smart friend Darren in grade school. In Hungary, my half the dorm spent three days creating cheat sheets and placing them in every conceivable place on their clothing, pens, etc. It was madness. They told me it was part of the academic process. Every generation develops its own technologies for intellectual evasion. Ours were simply less efficient and more analog.

But I keep seeing several different questions collapsed into one:

  • Does AI help someone produce a better answer?
  • Does using AI help that person learn?
  • Can the person reproduce the result without AI?
  • And is reproducing the result without AI still the ability that matters?

Those are not the same question. Not even close.

A student can produce better work with AI and learn very little. That is possible. In fact, a large high-school mathematics experiment found that students using unrestricted GPT assistance performed better during practice but could perform worse once the assistance disappeared. (Shocker!) Yet, a more carefully designed AI tutor reduced that problem. In other words, “AI harms learning” and “AI supports learning” can both be true, depending on what the tool does and how the student uses it. How terribly inconvenient for LinkedIn.

There is also evidence that generative AI can improve higher-order problem solving, and workplace studies have found substantial productivity gains—especially among less-experienced workers. That fascinates me. AI may not magically pour wisdom into everyone’s skull, but it can make some forms of hard-won expertise available to people who do not yet possess it. That is not the same thing as becoming educated. It is not the same thing as becoming intelligent, either. But it is not nothing. It may turn out to be economically enormous.

Education studies evaluate educational achievement. Intelligence research studies cognitive abilities. Workplace research evaluates performance and productivity. These things overlap, obviously. Education can strengthen cognitive abilities, and intelligence strongly influences educational achievement.

But educational achievement is not synonymous with intelligence. A decline in math or reading scores does not, by itself, prove that an entire generation has become less capable of reasoning, adapting, inventing, navigating social life, or solving problems with the technologies available to it. It proves that performance declined on the abilities being tested. That matters, but it is a narrower claim than the cultural obituary people like to write from it.

The more interesting question is whether we are measuring the abilities people will need next, or perhaps more aptly, the abilities institutions needed people to possess yesterday.

Shocker: replacing schools with hastily assembled Zoom links, parental panic, social isolation, and two years of Fortnite did not produce a pedagogical renaissance. Math and reading scores went down. But I remain curious: if we had also measured eye-hand coordination, rapid visual processing, group strategy in distributed environments, and the ability to pilot a drone with an Xbox controller, might some scores have gone up? I’m guessing yes. Why do we assume the skills schools already measure constitute the natural borders of human intelligence? With the rise of AI, they are far less likely to measure the skills today’s employers will be looking for.

As a daily mapmaker of products like the National Retainer Day Map, I know better than to mistaken the borders on a map for the borders of the world – particularly gnomonic-projected ones.

This is where the philosophy gets interesting – or perhaps unbearable – depending on your tolerance for philosophy in a post that began with frozen donuts.

Humans have always placed parts of our intelligence outside our bodies. Writing stores memory. Mathematics stores relationships. Libraries store collective knowledge. Maps store spatial reasoning. A map allows someone who has never stood on a mountain to understand the valleys around it, at least partially. No one looks at a map and says, “Well, this is disturbing. Humans will lose their innate ability to survey a continent personally.” The map is understood as an extension of cognition. It’s not proof that human spatial cognition has ended.

Socrates reportedly worried that writing would weaken memory and give people the appearance of wisdom without its substance. The annoying part is that he was right. Writing did weaken the need to memorize. (That’s why we aren’t reciting The Odyssey to one another but going to watch it in cinema.) But writing made philosophy, science, literature, law, and this unnecessarily long blog post possible. Technologies very rarely make us simply smarter or dumber. They redistribute our cognition. We stop doing some things, begin doing others, and then pretend the new current arrangement has been natural all along.

Every major technology of thought has allowed humans to forget something; it’s wonderful! We use the freed cognition to think about something else.

There is an old philosophical idea wrapped in the Greek word “pharmakon”: something can be both a remedy and a poison. The dose, context, and relationship matter. Junk food is not poison in the same way arsenic is poison. A donut does not destroy nutrition. A diet consisting entirely of frozen donuts, however delicious and economically ruinous, is another matter.

AI is probably a “pharmakon” too. It can be cognitive junk food: frictionless answers, consumed rapidly, providing the sensation of understanding without much intellectual nutrition. It can also be a kitchen, a tutor, a laboratory, a sparring partner, a drafting table, a coding collaborator, or access to expertise that a person previously could not afford. The fact that it can be abused tells us almost nothing about whether it should exist. Most useful technologies can be abused. Have you seen automobiles? Social media? Your fellow humans?

The question is not whether AI makes humanity smarter or dumber. The question is which forms of intelligence it amplifies, which abilities it allows us to neglect, and which neglected abilities will turn out to have mattered.

That last part is important. I am not arguing that knowledge is obsolete. You need enough understanding to recognize when a machine is feeding you nonsense. You need judgment. You need context. You need skepticism, curiosity, and some idea of what a good answer looks like to you. If anything, AI makes those abilities more important because it can produce incredibly incorrect answers that sound… well, educated.

Personally, I think formal education will lose its monopoly over expertise – at least partially. For generations, education served at least three roles: it helped people learn, certified that they had learned, and rationed access to professional opportunity (i.e., career). AI disrupts all three, but especially the rationing. When expertise can be called upon in seconds, knowing everything personally may become less valuable than knowing what to ask, what to distrust, what to combine, and what to do next.

That does not mean math no longer matters. It means the economic value of manually performing certain mathematical procedures declines. Calculators did not end mathematics; they changed which operations deserved human attention. Spreadsheets did not end accounting. GIS did not eliminate geography—though it did tick off a bunch of human geographers for quite a while. AI will likely do something similar at a much broader scale.

Will my daughters need calculus if they become engineers or work on global map projections like my friend Bojan? Probably. Will they need to execute every derivative by hand for months to prove they understand the concept? No. The durable ability may shift from successfully executing procedures to framing problems, selecting methods, inspecting results, and noticing when the answer violates reality. Iteration… collaborating with intelligent systems. That will be important.

Writing will change in much the same way. I find it hard to believe that most consequential final drafts will not involve AI within five years. I may have written my last book using the archaic method of organizing, drafting, and writing every word one after another myself. Am I sad about that? A little, perhaps – kind of like I miss making proportional symbols by hand in Macromedia FreeHand. I look back on it fondly. I enjoyed the craft. But I try not to confuse my affection for past techniques as proof that everyone must preserve the workflow forever.

Imagine if I had spoken this free-write into ChatGPT and asked it to organize my thoughts, check the claims, streamline the digressions, and make sure I didn’t offend anyone. You would probably be appreciative right now, and what I’m rambling about might make more sense. We would both win: I wouldn’t get cancelled, and you would be able to understand me. What’s not to love?!

Well… something might be lost. The rhythms might become too smooth, right? The jerkiness of driving a Chevy Sonic stick shift giving way to a VW Tiguan automatic. The weird connections might disappear. The machine could politely remove the frozen donut and Socrates references I added here, because they do not appear relevant to my – or its or our? – thesis. The resultant write-up may be clearer for you but worse in affect. In writing, efficiency is not the only value, and polish is not the same thing as meaning.

That is why human direction still matters.

What about coding? Many software engineers believe coding is indispensable, which is understandable because it pays their mortgages. But the history of higher-level programming occupies a mere blip in human history. It exists largely to let humans communicate instructions to computers without arranging ones and zeros personally, which would be a terrible way to spend a Thursday.

Now we can increasingly communicate with computers in natural language. Why will everyone continue choosing a syntax-strict artificial language when ordinary language can express the desired outcome? Perhaps coding, as most people currently practice it, was a transitional stage in our relationship with computers—the first date, as it were. We have now entered the deep-talking phase.

That does not mean software engineering disappears next Tuesday. Natural language is ambiguous. Machines misunderstand us. Systems still require architecture, testing, security, verification, maintenance, and people who understand the machinery beneath the charming conversational surface. But the balance is shifting from manually constructing every instruction toward directing, evaluating, and integrating machine-generated work. I see no persuasive reason to pretend otherwise because the old arrangement made expertise scarce and salaries high.

Some people would say the future I’m describing is dystopian and ridiculous. Maybe. Four years ago, I would have said what I’m saying now was pure bananas. But I no longer believe refusing the technology will preserve human intelligence. Humans are technological animals. Our intelligence does not exist separately from language, tools, symbols, institutions, and one another.

The serious risks are not that AI is unnatural. The serious risks are that a handful of companies may control our cognitive infrastructure; that systems reproduce bias and error at enormous scale; that people surrender judgment for convenience; that surveillance becomes ambient; and that productivity gains flow upward while displaced workers are told to learn prompt engineering. Those are political, economic, and ethical problems. “Ban the chatbot and make everyone write five-paragraph essays again” is not an adequate response to them.

Perhaps the reason many of us – including my entire family, except me – fear this future is that we grew up when humans had to accumulate education to become the experts who built technology. Expertise lived in people and institutions, and access was scarce. Now more of it can be summoned on command. That does not mean the machine contains all human intelligence or possesses wisdom. It means the practical boundary between “what I know” and “what I can competently accomplish with assistance” is becoming harder to locate.

And perhaps that boundary was never as firm as we imagined. How much of my intelligence resides in my brain, and how much resides in books, colleagues, software, databases, maps, search engines, and the accumulated work of people I will never meet? If you remove all external assistance, are you measuring my pure intelligence – or merely placing me in an artificial and rather pointless survival game?

That is why I encourage my daughters to use AI regularly. Not to avoid learning, but to learn how to work with it while they still have teachers and parents around to tell them when it is bullshitting. They are already smart, and they are doing well in school. Education will continue to matter, although perhaps less as a gatekeeping credential and more as a foundation for judgment. They may enter an economy that rewards them not only for what they know, but for the quality of the questions they ask, the problems they can frame, the tools they can direct, and the compassion they show toward people affected by their decisions.

I hope so, anyway. Their parents have made a living largely from education and expertise, and we may be quite worthless in the market by then if I’m right and the human-expertise job market starts downsizing. Every utopian forecast becomes more interesting when the author’s own paycheck is fed into it.

What a trip… from Junk Food Day to Danish beer studies, Socrates, the externalization of human cognition, and my optimistic – though some would be forgiven for thinking dystopian – thoughts about life with AI.

This whole essay is speculation written to intentionally disturb coming to any comfortable conclusions, including my own. I go where the evidence leads; I hope others do too. And I”m often wrong; I chose Microsoft Zune over iPod, for example.

Should writing everything manually in a word-processing app and high demand for coding boot camps come roaring back, I’ll concede that I was way off. I would even bet against it right now, but gambling is not one of my vices. I have to draw the line somewhere.

Did I digress…?

A daily map. Which one is it again? Oh yes! Junk food, naturally.

For today’s map, I created a bivariate map of the two places where I most often access my junk food: convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.

I also made it using a Macromedia Flash MX map-design schema. And, strangely enough, the map demonstrates the entire argument I have just dragged you through. (It’s weird that if you write long enough, and it hits 1:30 in the morning as it has here, your argument may just naturally come full-circle.)

Notice – which will be particularly hard to miss if you are red–green colorblind, I imagine – that the map uses red and green quite inappropriately. Not good. Horrible. And I realize this fact.

But I left it because the schema was accurately reproducing what many Flash maps did in the early 2000s. ColorBrewer had not yet appeared, or had just appeared, when I made my first Flash maps. Red and green were still frequently placed together. Red meant stop and green meant go, after all. It seemed intuitive to many designers at the turn of the millennium.

The AI followed the design schema I fed it. It reproduced the period accurately. And the result contains a poor accessibility decision.

That is the point!

Successful execution is not the same thing as a wise outcome. A system can follow its instructions perfectly and still produce something we should question. Prompt cartography supplies capability. The human mapmaker supplies – or ought to supply – judgment, context, responsibility, and the willingness to say, “Yes, that is historically accurate, but perhaps we should not do it.” (And of course, when someone tell me perhaps we shouldn’t do it, even myself, I tend to say: well, let’s see what happens if we do do it. I guess I can’t get enough null-hypothesis testing in my life.)

We have come a long way in twenty-some years – and over the 20 minutes you’ve been reading, perhaps). We will presumably look back at today’s AI products with the same combination of nostalgia, embarrassment, and disbelief. I hope we do. It will mean we kept learning.

Please use AI thoughtfully and eat junk food responsibly. There are children about!

Tomorrow is Rat Catcher Day.

God help us all. You can’t make these days up!

A Studies Fueling My Ramble

View Map Here

 

Web Mapper Prompt (Link)

Attached files: Flash_2000_v2.json, census_dataset.csv (created with Spatial Data Doctor)

HI. Tuesday is National Junk Food Day in the USA! Woohoo!

I would love to create an interactive web map to celebrate this triumphant day.

I’m attaching a dataset showing how many fast food restaurants there are per 1000 residents by US county, as well as how many convenience stores per square mile or similar, I forget.

Can you create a multivariate map that shows both variables at the same time, please? When users hover over a county, or click, please have an info window show certain relevant statistics you find in the dataset about the county and state that it is in overall. Give the map a title that makes it sound serious: Junk Food Access by County, etc.

Exclude superfluous decision and methodology text from anywhere in the map except for a “?” Help and Attribution modal.

Oh, finally, I just created a super detailed new map design schema that I’d like to try out. Can you follow this schema to design the map overall. Please note that this should work on both desktop and smartphone devices, but how it is designed for both may vary significantly.

Thank you!

World Chess Day (201/365)

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I spent a lot of time thinking about this one. World Chess Day. Chess is literally a game about flanking an opponent geographically, wiping out their forces, and striking down the leader. Can’t get much more geographic than this, honestly.

Alas, how can I possible make chess look and feel geographic and mappy?

Sure, I could color the board as a map. But…

So I decided to create a chess-like game, because honestly, there are so many chess apps already, and you can ask Eric Losang at the next Euro Carto or ICC meeting, but I really, really stink at Chess. Like, even with two apps teaching me how to play, I don’t get it.

I like games of luck, where low-probability and outlandish outlier moves have a chance, and in chess there is none of that. To me at least, it seems there is one “right” move on each turn and infinite “hopefully-your-opponent-doesn’t-notice-what-a-dingbat-you-are-and-wipe-you-out-within-two-turns-because-you’re-so-bad-at-chess” move. Every single turn, I somehow almost always end up picking one of the latter – well, I suppose probability says that’s likely, but I’ve never picked the right move, even once. But I still enjoy the game.

There are many stellar tile and card games in production these days. So I thought, wouldn’t it be kind of fun to create a chess-like prototype game that mixes up elements of The Cartographers (imagine me owning that game?)), Carcassonne, and I forget what other game I was thinking of at the time, but it wasn’t Chess. Oh, Castles of Burgundy and Carpe Diem by Stefan Feld… two amazing games.

So I prompted Web Mapper GPT to please come up with a schema for this new quasi-chess game. It did. Then I prompted it to please make the game but I added a twist.

The other day I mentioned in a LinkedIn post or somewhere… I don’t actually remember where or when… that you can make new design styles and create maps with prompt cartography from almost anything, “even old IKEA furniture catalogs.”

Well guess what… this map uses a design schema inspired by the graphic design style (not the sofa images) of 20-some years of Ikea and similar Scandinavian catalogs.

I think you’ll see that reflected in the sharp corners, modular build, and very IKEA colors. Kind of neat, even if it’s not particularly “chessy.” Maybe it’s neo-chessy, retro-Swedish? Whatever, it’s modular chess.

I built the first iteration to be quite simple, only a 5×5 board. However, there are plans to push it to 8×8 in the future, maybe when I’m not making maps of Chess Day some year.

The game has a simple AI you can play against. Have fun! And happy prompt mapping! 🙂


Play game here

Web Mapper Prompt 

Can you come up with some chess-like game mechanics for a digital game where a player both moves pieces but also lays terrain tiles on the board to stymie the opponent and corner important pieces? The game board should be a map of some sort, or a chart that is map-themed similar to The Cartographers, Carcassonne, or Links and Rails, but also Chess of course, as this game map thing is being made for International Chess Day.

Please brainstorm and come up with some mechanic ideas and we’ll iterate from there. Thank you!