Posted on Wednesday 31 Mar 2021. 1,339 words, 7 links. By Matt Webb.

There is forever an unknown world within the known, forever more to uncover, and here is a creature dedicated to finding the cracks in reality. We would do well to learn from him, to cultivate seeing. Each script is barely consequential on its own, but in aggregate, the familiar grooves made by them pile up, and we forget how to see. and one must always be conscious when handling maps. It is easy to mistake them for all there is. All summaries are compression, and learning to see means looking for the valuable things that are lost in compression. Prosperity is found in seeking the asymmetries in a world that is forever being painted with artificial symmetry.

You could imagine a world where cartography never incorporated drawings of territories, and instead relied solely on written descriptions of land. “To the west is a mountainous range, with several large rivers emptying to a gulf in the south.” In such a world, there would no doubt be practised experts, capable of envisioning in their minds the described area. But these written maps would clearly suffer from a lack of depictions.

“Women’s geography,” Price tells her students, is made up of more than bridges and tunnels. It’s shaped by asking things like: Where on the map do you feel safe? How would you walk from A to B in the city without having to look over your shoulder? It’s hard to map these intangibles—but not impossible.

What should exist and doesn’t