Anyone who knows me very well knows, one of my guilty pleasures is maps. I love maps and have loved them since I was a child. As
a kid, I would pour through world maps, street guides, subway maps,
nautical coordinates, globes, or anything else that broke the world
down to scale.
My favorite maps were the ones that included
terrain. I could run my finger over the Himalayas and know that they
were larger than the Alleghenies. One of the maps I owned even had a
gritty, sandy surface in places like the Gobi Desert, the Sahara, and
the Sierra Nevada.
I had copies of the Mercator world map, which
gives an unrealistic size bias to the Northern Hemisphere and copies of
area-proportional maps, which showed that South Africa is really seven
times the size of Texas and that the continent of Africa can
accommodate three North Americas.
One of the more interesting
maps I owned was a map of the Austrian U-Bahn, the subway system of
Vienna. The map included routes of the trains and street trolleys that
ran over it.
The system was so perfect. I was told by a teacher,
who gave me the map, that the U-Bahn, with only six subway lines, could
get people anywhere they wanted to go within the Vienna city limits in
under 30 minutes.
I guess the reason I loved maps so much is
because I have always had dreams of traveling to foreign places. The
desire to travel comes from the fact that I have spent most of my life
walking.
For the majority of my childhood, my parents never
owned a car, and even when I was in middle school and we did have a
car, we only had one car -- which my father took to work. It wasn't
until after college that I owned my own car, so I have spent many hours
walking for insane distances, waiting for inconsistent buses, and
scowling at people who drive cars.
When I got to college and
finally had the resources and means with which to travel, I got a
little travel happy, taking jobs and internships wherever my passport
would allow. Now it's been about six years since my first international
flight and I have seen my fair share of the world.
Traveling
anywhere outside of your neighborhood is enriching in many ways, but
world travel is life changing. There are many positives, such as the
ability to order food in several languages, a basic understanding that
the world is bigger than America, and an understanding (and even
tolerance) of cultures other than your own.
I guess the only
negative is that it makes you an extremely nostalgic person. My home,
car, desk, desktop, key chain, and even my MP3 player all bear
keepsakes, given to me by precious people, who made the biggest
difference in my life for small increments of time.
At times,
when I am staring into the blankness of my computer screen, I imagine
being able to travel and see those people again. Sometimes when I come
home from work, I sift through my world atlas and retrace the steps I
have taken.
That is why I was so intrigued when I recently
discovered Google Earth. I had heard about the software several months
ago, when it became available to the general public.
It took me
a couple of months to pick up on it because I got busy with the job I
currently have. However, about two weeks ago, I downloaded the software
and I've been hooked ever since.
Google Earth does what no other
map or mapping system has ever done, in that it really breaks the world
down to scale. With a few simple mouse moves, you can zero in on any
place in the world.
The technology is incomplete, in that the
pictures are dated and there are many geographical areas that have not
been clearly mapped. In many of the metropolitan areas, however, the
detail is such that you can make out individual cars and even large
trees. The potential for the technology is great. I'll be
waiting for the day that I will be able to see one of my friends waving
to me from another country, or look at my father's car in the driveway
to make sure that he made it home safely.
Anyone who knows me very well knows, one of my guilty pleasures is maps. I love maps and have loved them since I was a child.
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