Saturday, May 29, 2010

Mapping the world makes it flatter

(No, not because three dimensions have to be translated into two, either.)

Backstory: Dennis & I are scoping out the kind of vacation that doesn't have a "base camp" for the duration. It's more like a series of bivouac points. But we're talking the kind of places that have a single stop-light. Places that, fifteen years and more ago, would have rated a sentence in a tourism brochure. Maybe. The result was a world that pimped gimmicks in lieu of embracing quirkiness.

Welcome to the world of Google Maps and Google Street View. Of community websites and Wikipedia. Of travel blogs and TripAdvisor. In short, welcome to a world where marketing budgets and brochure space limitations just don't matter. Where the would-be visitor can (and should) use their fingers for query-typing and mouse-clicking in lieu of crossing them for luck when they roll the bones with their vacation budget.

And, while I detest the Flat-Earther mentality all the way down to my toenails, I'm down with living in a world flattened by information.