JDMcDsblog

Having picked up Ollie Bray’s reference to musicians on Google Earth, I arrived, after many meanderings, via Alan Coady’s musings, to a site on TED blog that graphically illustrates the power of maps to record events as they happen. This map tracks the incidence of violence in Kenya, with each placeholder indicating a particular incident, colour coded by category. The spatial representation of data is a key way of offering firstly a description, for example of clustering or dispersal. It may also show chronology, tracking the spread of rioting for example over a period of time. From description comes explanation and then understanding. Depicting spatial information is straightforward. Solving the internicene, tribal and social problems which the map depicts is the difficult part.