Automated Mapping Cultures

Over the last 30 years, the digitalisation of map-making has given rise to the automation of cartographic processes, from the ability to ‘auto-complete’ addresses and automatically geo-locate devices, to the capacity to 'auto-generate’ entire navigational routes. Whilst these developments have arguably centred the human user, allowing the ability to place oneself ‘in’ the map itself and optimise cartographic practice, they have done so by backgrounding navigational processes, and offering greater agency to a host of machinic entities, from mobile platforms to satellites. Rather than contributing to the demise of cartographic craft or the human labour of making maps, these various ‘mini-automations’ can be said to have re-arranged, and re-distributed, forms of cartographic knowledge, work, responsibility and control. The result of these transformations has been the rise of new forms of cartographic supervision, the individualisation of cartographic experiences, the (re-)centralisation of cartographic production, and increasing environmental cost of digital infrastructures. In short, new automated mapping cultures are emerging. Each poses new threats and challenges in the coming decades.