By training, they aren't really cartographers at all. They're architects, designers, and machine-learning specialists who are mining human behavior to build maps that are more about people than places. Like traditional cartography, the new maps combine science, technical skill, and aesthetics to display information spatially, but the information they display is radically different. And the map itself -- dynamic, thematic, changeable -- has become an instrument of discovery. That's why everybody from epidemiologists seeking to understand how an infectious disease is spreading to advertisers wanting to know where an ad will reach the most eyes is interested in their ability to reveal previously invisible patterns and relationships.
There is more and finer information available now, a planetload of accessible, aggregatable, and anonymous location data out there, much of it originating from the spread of mobile phones, GPS systems, and other wireless products with "device discovery" functionality. "We have this condition where digital technology is becoming increasingly smaller and distributed in the environment," says Carlo Ratti, director of SENSEable City Laboratory and associate professor of the practice of urban technologies at MIT. "In a certain sense, this is the first time ever we can describe a city in real time."
Geographical maps are the preferred canvas on which to visualize all these digital bread crumbs, but they are anything but static. "It's not just latitudes, longitudes, and streets, but, Who are these people hanging out in this place?" Tony Jebara, chief scientist at Sense Networks, explains. "These ideas go back. Shakespeare said, 'What is the city but the people?' And instead of saying here's the city and the street grid, you let the people define the city." There are also simply more people creating and editing maps. Online mapping tools like Google Maps have spawned endless interactive mash-ups that do everything from rate a neighborhood's walkability to calculate cab fares.
The best maps, of course, are functional and pretty. Here, a survey of some of the best work in the field right now.