Gosh — I’m not the most well-versed geographer, but I’ve definitely started to understand the unspoken power of maps these past years.

People can read a news article, and immediately jump to picking sides. But like, the map, as a medium in of itself, is rarely questioned! It’s usually taken as fact upon viewing, which is so dangerous — maps are simply another way to tell stories, and stories are usually told with specific intentions.

I’ve also been completely struck these days, too, how at least in my experience here in the US anyways, actual geographic location simply doesn’t matter.

I find myself in DAILY conversation with a cast of characters spanning at least 9 different states.

It seems to me, in the developed and industrialized countries, the real borders of actual importance are digital: who has access to what information?

reading this article, I’m like, oh, of course, the free, privately-owned spatial information that we have available as a public is globally conciliatory to autocrats.

In a perfect world, the most widely available spatial products would be generated through the democratically elected government, allowing us levers of public feedback and control over what global borders we as a people decide to honor and recognize.

Else, we cede that power of legitimacy-making to a for-profit multinational corporation!

I def have taken a Hippocratic oath to my husband that my maps and the borders I draw will never be used to separate a family, to plan a war, or, if I can help it, aid an authoritarian regime.

Instead, I just try to draw lines that separate the large groups of the white men surrounding me into smaller ones.

That way their hierarchical power games can’t have too many players, and the peak of any one man’s power can only ever be over a few individuals rather than a large crowd of them.