Here There Are Dragons
In 1967, Michael Falkov, wrote in his work “of Other spaces “
In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure and the police take the place of pirates.
This is a great landmark within the terrain of mystery, in our relationship to the exploration of its map. Our map, today, is in danger. Without knowing if there is an omphalos to this terrain - some central Jerusalem that was the wellspring all emerged from into light - we can yet place other major features on the map. One on the major features lost is the disappearance of mystery. Satellite-based searchable maps strip away any nook or cranny of the unknown. Street view and 3D rotate-able maps give way for even less mystery. Few places are off-grid and most, that do occur outside the omniscience of Google maps, cannot sustain any continuous living - except subsistence and transience. We may later return to reinvent these worlds as a special bastion, but for now they are equally searchable. Their equal ‘findability’ makes them indistinguishable upon the omniscient mapping. Our maps contain no ‘monsters at the edges’. There is no significator that shows where mystery yet resides. “Beyond this edge of the ocean, no person has traveled”… Is a lost concept. In times past our ships set sail - perhaps not toward these monsters, but past them. We charted routes that navigated past the mythical beasts within our hearts and minds, and the pathways of the soul. But to pull Foucalt back in: civilizations do not become absent of boats because dreams dry up. No chicken-and-egg debate exists here. Without oceans, no one dreams to build a boat - just as no giraffe would have grown a long neck were the trees not so tall. The power resides with the map makers. It was always the case, but we are in a unique time where all the globe has been mapped. Gone are the ages of an ill-defined sense of the world ‘out there’. Now you can zoom in and get wiki notes on anywhere. The lack with modern maps is in their hubris. They pretend to know all, in a strut of digital triumph. Our maps need to indicate where they lack resolution. Which areas have been observed the least. The monsters at the edges need to be resuscitated and made to stand guard once again. Perhaps we need new species of monsters.
