An introduction to my Google Maps essay

    

     I love the word "ephemera." It's pretty, uncommon, and both the title and an accurate description of my essay. Which isn't really an essay, per se, in the sense we think of essays. Which is to say that it isn't a linked, cohesive network of naturally-progressing ideas, built upon a foundation of reason, narrative causality, or the other things we generally associate with essays. It's essentially a lot of blather, a few contemporary-ish literary references, some memories, and bad jokes, set to geography. The geography is for the most part incidental to the essay, but it gives you something to do, with the clicking around and zooming and whatnot.


Orange gets off pretty easily, color-coding-wise. Why yes, pun intended!

     I like this concept of a map-based essay specifically because it lends itself to a certain freedom. We default, I think, to linearity in our prose, because when all you have is simple text to convey something, any sense of imposed order is welcome, just to make sense of things. With the visual cartographic spread of a Google Map, however, we're afforded a degree more freedom, both from linear conceptualization and from relying solely on words to get the point across. The map as presented wasn't written in the order the pins/shapes are labeled. I wrote them as they came to me, and then went back and shuffled bits around to (hopefully) create a flow that is navigable and pleasing.


For the hipsters...

     The experience was actually a bit like coding. While written code does generally require some logical progression, it jumps around a lot too, calling different procedures and functions and subroutines. Some of that may be thought of as mimicked in my piece, given that there are a few parts that directly link to and rely on each other for coherence, though not to the whole. Coding as a practice is mostly rhizomatic, and this piece lives up to that, I feel.


Hail Discordia.

     As I never actually saw any options to use the rich text editing for my map creating, I don't have the links or pictures that I'd like showing. So I'll take the time here to link the things I couldn't there, namely hanky code and Pandemic 2 (and the latter's meme). Also, I've thrown in some pictures, some relevant and some not, since the last few posts have been lacking in visual stimulation. Also, you should read the Illuminatus trilogy. Aside from getting the fnord reference, or the picture on the right, it helps to have read something so sublimely odd. Good for the brain.