December 17, 2020, via Zoom Deeper Dive Part 3 of 3: The Pursuit of "Mappiness" This three-part series will forever change the way you look at maps. We’ll use old maps, new maps, red maps, and blue maps to illustrate the ways in which scale, symbols, projections, and propaganda goals all influence how we perceive our world. We’ll peek behind the GPS curtain to understand the miracle of a global satellite network that makes our phones smarter and world politics more complicated. Do you associate local history with cutting edge technology? You may be surprised to see how dusty old maps from the archives are solving modern mysteries through online mapping tools. You will come away from our “Pursuit of Mappiness” as a more informed and discerning map reader seeing every map with new eyes. December 17: “Mapping the Past” Libraries and archives preserve incredible hand-drawn maps documenting our history. Many American towns, even the small ones, and their historic buildings were repeatedly mapped at an outrageous level of detail in the 19th and 20th centuries before drones, aerial photography, or GPS. Now these maps, and the gold mine of information they contain, are becoming available to a wider audience. Learn how online mapping tools combine maps, old and new, to answer important questions about our past. The speaker: Kelly Johnston is a native of Missouri, earning his undergraduate degree from the University of Central Missouri and a graduate degree in Geographic Information Science from Indiana University. He taught mapping on the faculty at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and his maps have been published in the New York Times. Most recently he taught Geographic Information Systems at Drury University.

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