Popular Virtual Geography
The recent attempt at Microsoft to match Google’s online map function highlights the importance of space and place and the sensitivity people have about the representations of places important to them. By now it is famous that Microsoft’s Virtual Earth used out of date images - conserving the World Trade Centre and imaging Apple Computer’s head office as an industrial lot (30/07/2005). As opposed to the lag top-down approaches build-in, amateur cybercartographers are daily elaborating on Google’s system. Google has opened up their system to allow people to add their own overlays - subway maps, annotations, to trace paths, itineraries and give directions. We await the a simple 3rd party editor for busy people (money-making hint). The excitement at the potential of this tool is palpable. What a way to represent derives - ‘urban drifting’ and strolls - or other psychogeographic experiences!