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Should this be a map or 500 maps? - by Elan Ullendorff

escapethealgorithm.substack.com · 1,382 words · saved by 1 readers

I want to tell you a story about a map that never came to be. When I first heard it, in an interview with Katia Naouri in Desired Landscapes,1 its metaphorical power nearly knocked me over. The story itself appeared to me as a map of sorts, the destinations of which were almost enumerable. Very little information of it existed online. Digging deeper felt like an expedition in a way that so little research feels these days. I found myself traversing obscure foreign blogs, academic papers, and niche tourism pages. I biked over to an academic library, where I eagerly passed a French map anthology through an overhead archival scanner. I puzzled over translations, plot holes, and unexplained images. And I'm excited to share it with you. The story goes something like this: At the end of the 18th century, Spain's official geographer, Tomás Lopez, was asked by the King to create an accurate map of the kingdom. In an attempt to delegate the herculean labour required, Tomás drew a series of circ

Should this be a map or 500 maps? 500 priests, cartographic n00bism, and the limits of scale Elan Ullendorff Jun 11, 2024 121 9 15 Share I want to tell you a story about a map that never came to be. When I first heard it, in an interview with Katia Naouri in Desired Landscapes , 1 its metaphorical power nearly knocked me over. The story itself appeared to me as a map of sorts, the destinations of which were almost innumerable. Very little information of it existed online. Digging deeper felt like an expedition in a way that so little research feels these days. I found myself traversing obscure

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