Michael Jones of Google Maps gave a speech at Where 2.0 on "The
New Meaning of Mapping." Jones states that his Google products
are allowing people to use maps to explore places and create
"placesites" instead of websites. He gives the impression that
these new maps, with the ability to overlay data in a GIS format
that is easy to use, is a new way to allow people to gain
location-information on a place. Jones is both right and wrong.
He is correct when he discusses how many people are using these
tools for the first time to gain location awareness. However, he
is mistaken in his implication that this is all new. Maps from
the beginning of time have given information on the places they
depict. It is just that only a limited amount of people knew how
to read maps to gain the complete picture. My saying of "if a
picture is worth a thousand words, then a map is worth a
million" stresses the the knowledge that can be gained from a
map. Each symbol displayed, and the spatial relationship between
objects tells a sto