The book is the product of design researcher Dr. Christine Schranz. It is an introduction to the field of digital cartographies. It sketches out important influences, theories, and approaches and, with contemporary design and artistic project examples, represents how map-based interfaces might function. These sketches also offer an inspiration for critical and experimental approaches that are relevant for both designers and other practitioners in the field.
Depicting the world, territory, and geopolitical realities involves a high degree of interpretation and imagination. It is never neutral. Cartography originated in ancient times to represent the world and to enable circulation, communication, and economic exchange.
Today, IT companies are a driving force in this field and change our view of the world; how we communicate, navigate, and consume globally. Questions of privacy, authorship, and economic interests are highly relevant to cartography's practices.
So how to deal with such powers and what is the critical role of cartography in it? How might a bottom-up perspective (and actions) in map-making change conception of a geopolitical space?