"For Sale: The Arctic?" or Shifting Maps

With global warming jumping off everyone's tongues these days, you better be sure that the administrations that fervently deny it are gearing up to capitalize on its benefits. The world map we felt, had largely been decided, a few pockets here and there with shifting boundaries: Kashmir, Palestine, the Balkans, the occasional Pacific island, mere pockets in the sweeping map of the world. But with the Arctic ice caps melted: a whole new, massively difficult territorial conflict is cooking in the waters that are melting the glaciers and permafrost. The northern countries with claims near the Arctic circle: Canada, Russia, the United States, Norway and Denmark (through Greenland) are doing the kind of aggressive maneuvers and territorial disputes not seen in this part of the world since the Vikings and with these countries with each other in a long time. Substantial hydrocarbon reserves beneath the ice as well as shipping rights through the strait, that a few short years ago seemed forever out of reach are now up for serious discussion and substantial posturing. Who owns the land under the Arctic, currently not claimed under any international treaties?



So far the Northwest Passage above Canada (once a myth of adventures, now quickly becoming a reality) is not yet fully operational, but it's damn close and who lays claim to the minerals and oil lay is going to lead for sure to diplomatic spats and perhaps to a bit of saber rattling, to which the Russians have already started planting a Russian flag on the bottom of the sea in what Canada sees as it's territory.

In 2007, Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister had this to say:

This is posturing. This is the true north strong and free, and they're fooling themselves if they think dropping a flag on the ocean floor is going to change anything. There is no question over Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. We've made that very clear. We've established - a long time ago - that these are Canadian waters and this is Canadian property. You can't go around the world these days dropping a flag somewhere. This isn't the 14th or 15th century.

”

—Peter MacKay, former Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs

Or is it?

Read more on wikipedia about the bureaucratic mess and potential problems the Arctic will pose as global warming speeds up...

Territorial claims in the Arctic

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You are Here!

Amy McGuiness gets paid thousands of dollars to take tourists to the North Pole. What do they do when they get there? Take pictures. The only problem, the North Pole looks exactly like the hundreds of miles of white ice around it. The cost: around $30,000 for 30 minutes.

After deciding to visit a friend in the Peace Corps in Mali, John Bowe decided to hitchhike across the Sahara desert, which is probably the most difficult route imaginable. He carried only a bag filled mostly of books and a single change of clothes. One man's adventure to go off the map, off the grid, away from white people, away from technoculture, to the metaphorical heart of the middle of nowhere, almost deliberately

What's the pleasure of being lost, when you know your safe?

How do you map your own life?

Maps of all kinds in these radio stories to which CIA feels a great affinity which can be found here on This American Life. Don't let the title of the show fool you.. Though many of the stories involve Americans, very little of it actually happens in America. And when you're lost in the middle of the Sahara, like so many other travelers, the last thing you're thinking about is your nationality.

We're going off the map and into the airwaves.

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Mapbreakers

Hours of countless research (aka procrastination) by the Check-In Architecture think tank have turned up another internet jewel that we think is very interesting. So Google Earth, for those not in the know, is a program you can download from the Google mothership that allows you to navigate geography in a very interesting way, from photos blended into the map to Wikipedia entries so on so forth.

But intrepid programmers, innovators, drifter, and researchers (aka procrastinators) have both scoured Google Earth and manipulated it to create new interactions with time and space. From couples caught in flagrante delicto (always a favorite for the sex crazed 13-year-old lurking inside all of us) to much more complex monkey wrenches being thrown into human consciousness.

On Google Earth Hacks, you can search through a series of add ons, meant to enhance your Google Earth experience. For example, Google Earth is now largely flat, but many are using tools to render the earth in a searchably three-dimensional world. And though mapping satellites, international flights and football clubs are all good and fun, it's when they really fuck with it when things get interesting, like what the Earth would look like if a meteor smashed into in, or Google Planets, searchable maps for Mars, or global warming sped up just a little bit.

Though we've not heard any serious research on the topic, but we think that mapping technologies as they progress are completely shifting/warping/transforming our consciousness about space. Making everything somehow more immediate, easier, bigger, less foreign and somehow more strange. Mapmakers and cartographers are becoming kind of hip for the first time since Columbus, but what do you call someone who messes with map, changes it shape, plays with it to create new experiences, new worlds. Mapbreakers? Deconstructive Cartography?

Why do I feel theirs a sci-fi novel/new program at MIT somewhere in here.

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