Schmidt, “New Media Writer as Cartographer”

After reading "The New Media Writer as Cartographer" by Christopher Schmidt, the main arguments were based around maps being able to communicate more than just the location of a place. The sort of technological revolution our society has gone through in the past 10 years has made it extremely easy for digital mappers to both represent, and misrepresent a place. 
In general, I agree with the arguments presented in this article. As our dependency on technology increases, writing and reading has become quicker and more mobile. Also, new tools have become available to writers, such as google maps which are constantly used by researchers, journalists, and writers as a “writing interface”. An emphasis is put on the importance of writing in and about a place. Mapping, and especially new ways of digitally mapping, can either represent or intentionally misrepresent a place or idea. For example, as shown in Fig. 4 of the article, “The Psalter Map is exemplary of the T-O map format, in which the position and size of the continents reflects Christian technologies” (308). Another example from our own Champaign-Urbana campus is a new kind of map - a heat map depicting the hottest spots for bikes to be stolen on campus. Neutral Cycle, a locally owned bike shop, collected data and put together this map:
While this map was produced thanks to technology and collected data, it doesn't exactly represnt the places shown. My apartment is in one of the red zones, but all the bikes this year have been completely fine.
I think that it is increasingly important in this growing technology-dependent society to remember the history of place-based writing, the history of art and rhetoric, the history of our society, and to apply that to current and future new media writing.
Citations:
http://www.neutralcycle.com/bike-theft-champaign-urbana/
https://wamfall14.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/schmidt-cartographer.pdf