There’s a very interesting report on the Resistant Maps conference, which I recommend you read in full.
The conference dealt with the subversive aspects of the new mapping tools:
“Maps are not granted anymore by structures of power, they are built by individuals who, drawing on the ideas of the psychogeographical movements, redraw the urban space according to fresh new coordinates. People can now share with others a more personal vision of geographical data (as opposed to the one traditionally in the hands of power.) Personal information can be added to the presentation of a given territory and thus come to be part of the collective memory.”
The report mentions a number of interesting projects and tools:
- Delocator, developed by Finishing School, an application that invites citizens to fight the homogenization of café culture imposed by franchised java providers.
- MapOmatix is a free software developed by Hackitectura as a collaborative environment for creating and editing maps. The maps can contain physical elements (oil resources, telecomunication antennas,etc), abstract ones (such as human organisations, web servers)
There are more references in the full article.
