How do we draw a map to where we are?Who can actually locate the self?
MAPS, TERRITORY of– Map Room Intro: 
“Exploring the Map, Mapping & the Map-making Mind”–Mapa Systems
It’s often said, The map is not the territory, but that’s only partly true some of the time. If it were a rule, this might be the exception that proved it.
Here the map is our territory, & this a rough map of it, where maps are subject & object, content & form, representations of the world (“reality”) & this imaginary room being mapped.
Transcending space-time & other dimensions, the virtual room shows up (if at all) only by means of many invisible maps rendered in a variety of codes, compressed & transmitted through the digital equivalent of a micro-pinhead, nano-pulse of wave-charge (measured in itsies &/or bitsies).
Put together with compatible devices, we see pixels, letters, spaces, etc., & the result of information organized on the screen. These days such things are mostly left to machines to digest, process, design, visually represent, translate & transmit more or less directly to the map-reader’s brain, where the final translation sometimes takes place in the appearance of meaning, whatever little differences might be made, however immeasurable at human scale.
A map can provide description, definition, directions, relative locations & dimensions (conventional &/or metaphorical), &, most amazingly of all, represent territories greater than itself in multiple ways. That’s obviously so in area, map compared with city, country, solar system, etc.. A two-dimensional map can represent three-dimensional space in various ways, topographical maps being only one kind of example.
Maps aren’t limited to known & recognized spatial dimensions, but can be used to describe, define & give directions to abstract, conceptual worlds, as well as psychological & dynamically changing ones. There’s an aspect of mapping wherever information is organized to represent something, as in language used to represent the world. On a material level, language can become part of a map’s content, as well as the primary vehicle of transmission (as here, mapping the territory of maps).
Map-makers, map-rappers, map-folders, & map-flappers have a couple things in common with you & yours crudely–namely map & mind, perhaps two folds, wrinkles, or sides of the same phenomenon, where meaning emerges (or remains as a potential). The process of finding (&/or imposing) order on the world (otherwise a chaos of sensory information bits of all the available sorts) is the essence of mapping.
We re-present aspects of one entity–shall we call it reality or world-as-experienced–in another form, by another means, & from an altered perspective, often crossing dimensions to represent relations with other conceptual entities. In a non-static universe, maps are dynamic, their power inherent in the nature of mind, where meaning is derived & stored in terms of representation & relation.
Although we may think of the representation as a function of language, that may require the broadest definition of language, since many non-verbal creatures clearly have highly developed mapping capacities & are certainly able to derive & store meaning from the elements of direct experience. The nature of their representations may be hard to grasp for those not familiar with their language. (How on earth do certain butterflies transmit & follow migration maps across not just stages of metamorphosis & geography but different generations taking different parts of the whole?)
DNA becomes road-map, with instructions for forms & unfolding, even for map-making. Its discovery by humans is certainly a grand story, including the mapping of its ostensibly simple structure, and then of the so-called genome, organisms more or less sequenced & supposedly represented as a whole (albeit with diverse elements & sources). At each stage of discovery, what most thought the ultimate breakthrough turned instead into a new beginning, with all the more wonder to ponder.
The fundamental mysteries of mind & mapping remain, where abstract & concrete meet, code & substance, language & DNA. If DNA is as concrete & substantial as a language/map can get, math may be most abstract & insubstantial, even more so than other written languages. (How abstract oral language may be is another matter.) Yet a mapping takes place.
Unlike a static map in two dimensions representing a geographical territory, which can be unrolled or unfolded from storage, a mathematical map, like a recipe, unrolls its ingredients in a process of more or less sequential functions through time–first do this with these & then do that with those, to get to the desired end, product or conclusion.
Actually, the conclusion of such a map need not even have an ending. Consider Mandlebrot’s formula as it carries mapping into fractal worlds of change, actively representing how many natural forms also develop, subject to variation in initial conditions, through feedback loops & across orders of magnitude. Nevertheless, we then find the inner dynamic represented giving rise to many entirely concrete aspects of the living world.
The fact that the mathematical map looks nothing like the world represented is not unusual. The multi-dimensional world of actual terra-firma (including its winds & waters, its temperatures & textures, etc.) has no more in common with the conventional map used to represented it. If you don’t believe this, take another look at the world you’re passing through. Not even the finest topo map bears the slightest resemblance.
Pictorial elements, like verbal, may be more or less representative abstractions–not very realistic in themselves, but potentially capable of evoking a more or less fleshed-in version in the viewer’s own imagination. Say the name Santa Fe, for example, even without a line-sketch of one of its places, and a wealth of memories may arise to draw from, the verbal or visual map simply a trigger or bridge.
An exception to the principle that the map looks nothing like the territory represented may presumably be found in some recent star-maps, in which the telescope, camera & computer convert information received into a more or less photographically visual representation. A difference between the visual representation & the visual universe represented remains, however difficult for us to distinguish the difference (even between looking up at the actual night sky & at the one portrayed in a planetarium)
While photography has had an impact on mapping from its beginning, its full use remains relatively recent–with advances in satellite & drone photography, the ability to zoom in & out, change focus & scale, add colors & contrasts & other forms of computer processing so the photograph doubles as a Hubble map.
With their own architectures, can a map of the brain be like a map of a map-room, a place that makes & stores its own maps? All language has a map-making aspect, with mentalized, more or less disembodied representations of the world. By naming anything, including a place, we can include it on a map (as well as in a sentence), adding a sense of context and degrees of navigational control. A very smooth topo-map of a square meter might represent (& so guide us across) an extremely rough & irregular wilderness many thousands of times larger.
The map-maker’s brain has this peculiar property of being able to represent–even in immediate perception–territories much larger than itself–up to, including & beyond the perceptible cosmos; up to, including & beyond its immediate environment; up to, including & beyond, other points of views, observations, processes, perspectives; even intentions, conditions, attitudes, beliefs & feelings. In that sense, we are all map-makers, orienting ourselves accordingly–the fish no less than the child, the bird no less than the pilot.
We inherit some aspects of our maps & map-making with our forms. Some birds navigate by an internalized magnetic field map, &/or one termed in angles of polarized light. In the mixed flock by my office, the individuals obviously have both an actively updated map of the neighborhood, but frequently update where family & flock-mates are within it. Some of this is managed visually, & by proximity, but quite a lot is conveyed in the audible chatter, where every chirp, cheep, peep & squawk carries both locational & emotional information, the two together being “relational.”
A case might be made that we are not just map-making creatures by our species inheritance, but that map-making is an essential aspect of the evolutionary mind. A relatively mindless creature still experiences sensations, and uses these to filter nourishment, gaining a major evolutionary advantage by translating perceptual sensation into a mental map of where it is in relation to what’s around, with some memory of where it’s been, along with some intuition &/or inference about better & worse directions for its particular needs & conditions. A bee’s map may be conveyed by dancing, an ant’s by pheromones.
In human terms, the map is usually a visual representation with some verbal content, in which a single word (e.g., the name of a place) shorthands a large repository of previously stored information (including maps at other scales). Animals show that human language is far from a pre-requisite for map-making ability, however, or even for the capacity to communicate map-related information to others, as shown by the dance-language of honeybees, the navigation of migrating birds, chemical tracks & other territorial signatures.
In some of these examples, the map information itself becomes part of the territory, in an overlap zone of creature & context (lifeform & environment). The language content is an organic product of the creature, communicating apart from the creature itself (& to some degree across time) in an externalized form that in some cases (e.g., territorial markings) may even represent a more or less intentional kind of “writing.”
Languages are as varied as the creatures using them, each tuned to its niche. Whether an audio-visual transmission of the moment only or externalized in a longer-lasting tangible form, the languages become part of the environment, each with a shaping influence. Environment is what’s read, more or less seen, listened to, more or less heard, interpreted, & mapped.
We may think humans are THE mapping creature, but that remains to be seen, perhaps simply reflecting our myopia. 
Imagine the whale’s map, & birds that ride magnetic field-lines, & the monarch butterfly’s map–generation specific, each picking up its own section of a larger route, its map presumably written via DNA.
The map may be an internalized representation of the world around, the world within which the organism navigates, but may also provides a blueprint for the structures, mechanisms & behaviors of the creature itself. The map may help form & shape the map-user & map-maker….
TIME is a factor only half-consciously built-into most maps, reflecting cyclical, seasonal & historical stage- &/or state-changes, with effects on the topography & relations represented. Most human maps on paper (including virtual) are snapshots in time, out of date in a short while or a few years. Most geo-political maps begin going out of date as soon as they’re made, a spur to new & revised versions. Others can last lifetimes & cross generations. Like photos, maps can last longer than what’s represented, yet change with how they & the worlds represented are imagined.
This imagination is no small matter, moreover, as no maps exist without it. A map may be considered the offspring of imagination & territory, e.g., reality. The territory needn’t be “real” to be imagined–& therefore mapped. The intention to map a reality-as-it-is meets its limits in the map-maker’s imagination, whether in conception of reality or representational capacity. A map of the map-maker’s imagination may not unroll flat on a table, nor fit in a frame or on a periodic table–an abstract attempt to locate elements in relation to each other within property-based classes. The fact that the elements are never located in that way in nature may be considered secondary to the coherent framework provided for the wealth of contained information.
The earliest map-making is much more immediate & sensory, based on orientation & relations (in space,to time, within social networks)–about as basic to life as one can get, whether in terms of location (informed by perception & memory) or in the organism’s formal assembly instructions, an internalized kind of map-capacity. Many aspects of internalized maps end up being time-crtical, at least time-sensitive, kicking in at a particular stage of development, cyclical state or set of conditions, remaining latent until & unless triggered by event experience.
Development may expand the territory mapped through describable stages, without necessarily replacing earlier with later. A seemingly linear stage progression may look more like a spiral, expanding loop by loop, when plotted on our map of mapping–itself unfolding origami-like, with its fractal irregularities coming into view the more detailed & deeper we look, peer & ponder. The fact that things change in time means that new maps must be made to catch up. A new map may encourage a fresh look at the territory, and fresh way of representing it.
If a blueprint can be considered a map, what about those from Escher Engineering? Or of the territory in Alice’s Looking Glass? Understood in the framework of a periodic table, these maps don’t necessarily look ‘literally’ like the territory represented–whether realm of paradox or of the imagination.
Now we have augmented reality, & new overlaps between territories & maps–phones with gps corrected for effects of relativity, cameras forward (here’s looking at you, kid) & back (at you), while the screen shows who you’re skyping with (far, far away) &/or supplements.
You can ask your phone, your household device, your wristwatch or pocket to zoom in & out at any gps location to show that point from increasingly near or far away, one blur & blackout to another. Or you can call your pocket from a remote location, take inventory, & save a conversation about granola for later. Until pockets went wireless, the only smart ones were those with: a) hands in them; b) buttons & billiard balls; c) little kangaroos; d) dictionaries; e) pinhead encyclopedias; etc.
A smart map may need more than a sharp imagination, including (but not necessarily limited to) an insightful language, an available medium or vehicle for representation, &, least critically at any particular moment, an interested “reader” (or reasonable facsimile)–where a caretaker, storage closet, cave with urns with scrolls inside, or group of pyramids may do, in human time scales. The languages themselves, vehicles in their own right, involve more than labels, but labels count.
Perhaps the whole territory is a blur until we start to name & then describe it, identify places, entities, people…. The “name” needn’t be phonetic, but can be any graphic, auditory, visual or olfactory representation that serves as a more or less distinct indicator, intended as such or not. Language in general needn’t be conscious or intentional to convey meaning, or for one thing to “stand for” (signify) another. Simple association will usually suffice.
One’s map of the world may expand in synch with one’s language, experience, exploration, education, and (levels of) awareness. Some maps constrict, however, by imposing a narrowed perspective (often prescriptive) on a reality better portrayed more holistically, more accurately, fairly, &/or usefully. One may say that all maps constrict, in the sense that they help define a set of relations & conceptual reduction, but the nature of the “constraints” vary enough to pass as opposites. Compare a dynamically free & compassionately democratic society to a goose-stepping authoritarian power-mongering dehumanizing beast of a machine. The world-maps of each include restrictions, yet couldn’t be more different in their language use & representations.
While the mapping function seems to be inherent in language, implicit in our attempt to conceptually represent the world around (&/or within) us, the conceptualizing function isn’t limited to “higher-order” neurological processing, but operates in DNA, the cross-over language between dynamic systems. Most of our biological processes depend on maps we are hardly aware of. The same may be said about our social processes, including language use.
In the more or less arbitrarily described realm of the “purely physical,” mapping efforts range from sub-atomic collision to big-bang, with planetary dynamics & galactic spirals between. At various degrees of scaling across orders of scope & magnitude, major shifts take place in our interpretive perspective. One shift gives rise to the Uncertainty Principle, realization that the act of observation can change what’s observed, with implications which may not yet have sunk in.
Another shift changes our conception of space-time itself, not just its shifting shapes & curves as in Einstein’s relativity & effects of gravity, but in fundamental characteristics not yet grasped about the basic nature of existence, including our part in it, a mind that maps itself, & wants to know…. From quantum squirt to concentrated all-in-nothing, that moment before time, before space, before being, enveloped in an emptiness far deeper than absence of stuff, being absence of any place or time for stuff to be, let alone fit. (Wrap your mind around that.)
On the most down-to-earth & seemingly mundane level, no map actually re-presents the territory represented; the map is a construct of world-&-mapping instrument, primarily reflecting the scale, direction & perspective of the latter. The perceived shape & ultimate length of any coastline both depend almost entirely on the measuring instrument, for example. You get one result using a mile-long yardstick, and another with a laser-sharp mini-micrometer, catching every indentation, though these are already changed a micro-second later. The actual length is dynamically alive with each wave, tide, fish-splash & clam-fart, each promontory, spit & rock….
Nevertheless, we conceptualize, abstract, & shrink our representations for functional reasons, or, in other words, because doing so helps us, is useful to our navigation. Or if not to ours personally, to ours as a community, however diffuse, virtual, self-selected, across time, space & circumstance. On the one hand, I (Yours Crudely) make this map for myself, the therapy of the process & sense of understanding gained in the exploration. On the other, I make it for you, as an aid to your sense of understanding. On the other other hand, I make it because that’s what a mapmaker does.
A library can have various maps–some of other territories, many of these rolled in tubes. Those of the library itself can take various forms, e.g., graphic signs, diagrams, verbal descriptions of content-organizing principles, and, of course, menu of contents with location information–the prime example of which is the card catalog. In the past, the cards themselves were conventionally organized alphabetically, by title &/or author. Today they may be organized in multiple ways, & correspondingly searchable–with instantaneous results.
The Bod-Library non-alphabetical card catalog is being designed for various kinds of shuffling, dealing & playing. At the moment, we are not yet working with a full deck–although some game-projects in the past did, even using a single common 54-card deck to map everything that could possibly happen, including extremely low-probability events, whether to companies, industries, & whole markets or to individuals, societies & their ecosystems.
The cards themselves had entirely different sets of meaning according to where on the board &/or how triggered, as well as “level of play” at the time, with ultimate reference on translating into game effects found in the booklet that went with it. The Chinese I-Ching, Book of Changes, represents another version of such a system, although yarrow-stalks or two-sided coins are used for the semi-random reference generator instead of cards.
Like the I-Ching, the Mapa System game expanded the theoretical possibilities many times over by including potential changes, even reversals in certain conditions. The booklet entry referred to could have further instructions or conditions, for example, as in do such-&-such IF certain conditions prevail; or, turn another card & IF it’s a such-&-such, such & such happens.”
What are sometimes called simulations usually aim to map a dynamic territory that changes according to choices, actions, conditions, &/or various inter-active relationships, as well as chance elements, generally used to introduce a simulation of more realistic probabilities. This may remind some of the quantum probability wave function that only becomes defined with collapse.
While we work on our collapsible house-of-cards catalog, here are a few more graphic maps–
one Miro, the rest Virginia.
maps of curved space
spinning & bend-
ing
contracting &
expanding
with/ through
time
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In the map-room of the mind
–nowhere is where it seems
if you know how/ where
to look.
[See From Nowhere to Now Here–& vice versa: searching for the meaning of life, death & absence, in which the search for the essence of being & nothingness leads the author from Alice’s Gallery…Altheia’s Art…the Absinthe Inn in Absentia…to Uncle Albert’s Near Absolute Absurdity, von Neuman’s Dog (Inverse)…&, ultimately, the Bod’s Unifried Field Theory.]
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