Atlases certainly contain a staggering amount of information, but with their usual size I would be hesitant to say that they are without equal in terms of information density. Unless perhaps we mean bits/page, but that seems like it's cheating a little.
I'm not fully sure what the author is trying to say here.
Is it that a small screen isn't as good for looking at geographic information? If so, then I completely agree. But large tablet screens, touch surfaces, pico-projectors, etc will all come, and be cheap in time.
Is it that there's a high density of information on an atlas? Well, yes, there is - but this isn't necessarily a good thing. It can be hard to focus on the information that you want. A large LCD surface, where you can choose which layers you do and don't want, is surely better: maybe I just want to see contour and topo information, and don't want to see political boundaries.
Maps are awesome, and were great technology. But we're starting to see digital versions that will far exceed the paper ones in almost every way.
At least in the short- to medium-term, it seems unlikely that we'll get tablet-like machines that are of a size to compare favorably even to a travel-size road atlas, much less a bookshelf or library atlas like in the OP. The physical size of it is useful because it can take up a larger portion of your field of vision, which better helps you get a sense of place within the mapped region. Even in a large browser on my 24" iMac I have a somewhat frustrating sense of looking through a too-small window that is blocking some of what I want to see. If I zoom out, I lose resolution.
So maybe eventually, but I don't think we're "starting to see" electronic atlases that uniformly exceed the paper variety. They are better in some ways and worse in some ways, and that will remain true for at least another couple decades, I think.
I don't know about that. For me personally electronic maps have enough advantages to completely replace the printed variey. That's with existing hardware.
It's often true: Perfect feature parity is not necessary to replace something. (Cars certainly don't have all the features of horses.) A few features that blow the old vareity out of the water are often enough. (I can think of a few: Price, accesibility, flexibilit, compactness.)
The Microsoft Surface is 107cm x 56cm.
I haven't done it, but I'd say the experience of looking at at atlas on it, with multitouch zooming, and the ability to turn on and off layers, compares favorably to using a library atlas, like in the OP.
Is it compact and portable? No - but neither is a library atlas. How long before this sort of technology is common place? Or a wall projector and multitouch setup?
I don't know - but I strongly doubt it'll take decades. Decades is an awfully long time these days.
AIUI the display resolution of the Surface is 1024x768. That's not going to be even slightly like using a large atlas, no matter how big it is.
(A display that large with substantially more pixels, plus all the wonderful interactive things you can't do with paper, would be a fine thing indeed. But the Surface isn't it, at least not yet. Maybe there'll be a Surface 2 with much higher resolution?)
maybe I just want to see contour and topo information, and don't want to see political boundaries.
well that's the thing - very few if any digital maps allow you to do simple things like this.
possibilities of digital cartography are much greater than paper one for sure, it's just that very few of them have materialized and gained widespread use yet.
You're obviously not into GIS. What you said may be true for commercial, largely deployed mapping. But isn't at all true about "Digital Cartography" as it exists today (actual as it existed for last couple decades).
I think question here is if Paper or Digital Format is better. The majority of arguements we know, but there is also one more interesting question. Online and Offline?
No matter currently how good digital copies of a map are, items like mobiles have technical issues and if i m stuck somewhere without signal or the battery is dead, a paper map is all we can use. Thinking of being stuck in the middle of nowhere with a potentially default phone , i would still always have a paper map in the car cause the pain of being without one when something like that happens is worse then the convience of it being on my phone all other times.
On the other hand, digital maps have a huge advantage in the level of detail they can provide over a much wider area.
I still carry a Thomas Brothers street atlas of Los Angeles in my car as a backup. If you haven't seen the old Thomas Guides, they're a wire-bound book of a couple hundred or so pages; mostly a grid of detailed map pages, each covering something like a 5x5 mile square of the city. They also have index maps, freeway maps that just show freeways and their off-ramps, dozens of pages of street-name indices, etc.
If I take a few hours drive (say, to Phoenix, or San Diego, or Las Vegas, or the SF Bay area), I probably won't have such detailed paper maps with me, but digital devices would be able to provide a similar level of detail in any of those places.
You're just conflating utility with pleasure. Whether or not such behavior increases with age is a different debate, but I will pose the question: is that a good thing? For your happiness, quite possibly. For everyone's...?
"... I have grave doubts about whether the “book”, I mean in its paper form, has or even deserves a future. ..."
Map nerd here. Bray is really talking about a subset of what you use maps for. If by book Bray means printed, this isn't true for navigation or traversing land, sea and air. When I go to places I don't know, I carry a printed topographic/thematic map. A digital map is no use
And the last case. Where am I at the moment in the city? ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5309444952/in/set-7215... This is what I think Bray is trying to say. Map coverage of urban areas is being disrupted. This I would agree with but I don't have his faith in the hi-tech approach. I always carry a printed description of the street names & a Melway page ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melway. I simply don't trust tech to get me to a particular spot at a particular time, 100% of the time. Don't even get me started on GPS.
* terrain data: if that map were scanned into digital form, would it be less useful? If it were in digital form to begin with, you could probably overlay others' data / have it calculate time for you. Is this worse?
* digital maps are far more likely to be up to date.
* terrain / vegetation: what if it were in an overlay? Or, going the Flickr route, how about geotagged photos appearing where they were taken? If a paper map has the info, so can a digital one.
* big 3D object: Google Earth? Though, granted, it's a 2D projection - there are intrinsic disadvantages there.
* GPS / guided routes: well yeah, route-finding is hard, building numbers aren't 1:1 with their location, and GPS often isn't high-enough resolution to really know where you are. But what about the map aspect in a city? My iThing shows me road and structure data that's far more detailed and up-to-date than any map you can purchase and reasonably keep with you, and tells me about accidents / construction in bigger cities, accurate to the hour or better.
So, the only real reasons being... bigger is better, and 3D is great (but immobile)? And battery life and durability, of course, though they weren't listed.
I would find it extremely likely that you can't find digital maps with the same information as paper ones you can buy - I still need to go to the DMV to do some things, for no real, rational reason. Such is the world. But that's not intrinsic to the medium, it's merely a consequence of it being newer. Less available doesn't count, that attribute will reverse itself in time. What is it about digital that you find less effective?
"... What is it about digital that you find less effective? ..."
@Groxx simple, KISS.
I'm not sure you go the kind of places I do. I need reliability not technology. 'Carry nothing new' is a motto that saves you from potential equipment failure. The argument you are giving is about ideal format. Mine is about reliability of use in the field. I'm more concerned about that hill I have to traverse on foot than finding "Joe's diner" or the cheapest alternative place to eat while driving a car.
"... digital maps are far more likely to be up to date. ..."
Agreed here cf: the digital examples I gave. Digital maps for display (phones, pda's, GPS) are really suited for showing directions from A to B & "thematic" layers of information that changes often, using the the cadastre & topography to define location. Thematic information changes often. The cadastre less often. The topography very little.
why nobody has managed to create digital cartography as beautiful as this yet?
I mean, ability to pinch zoom into satellite photo of my neighborhood is awesome and such, but I'd change it any day for beautiful (and correct!) offline cartography like Times Atlas.
The kind of information packing that you see in a good map (like the Times Atlas) is nontrivial. Deciding which features to show, how to label them, and how to arrange the labels is a knapsack problem. Plus, it often involves hard-to-quantify local constraints about what’s most important in a given area. (As a trivial example, a pond is a lot more important in the middle of the Sahara than it would be in Bangladesh. There are many more subtle versions of this.)
While it’s certainly possible to come up with good algorithms, and outfits like Google Maps and Bing Maps have, maps are judged by esthetics and practical usability as well as quantitative criteria[0], so the best results are likely to be hand-tuned.
0. Maps as opposed to the underlying GIS data, which is easier to judge solely by whether it’s complete, precise, and accurate.
I can't remember / find the artcle (proly on HN) that explained how google maps does (some of) the information packing, and visual display/emphasis of what's important.
I’m not sure what you’re asking. The Times Atlas design process is mostly digital now, but as far as I know, the flagship products are only available on paper. You can get a basic look at their workflow starting at page 10 here: http://fluidbook.microdesign.nl/geoinformatics/05-2008/ .
I certainly agree that onscreen mapping could be a lot more sophisticated than it is now without too much strain on even mobile devices’ hardware and connections.
> but I'd change it any day for beautiful (and correct!) offline cartography like Times Atlas.
Are you implying that offline cartography like Time Atlas do not come with errors? Both online and offline come with tons of errors, the difference is that online maps get corrected faster.
This said, I do love my old atlas.