Lost at sea.

Where to begin......
     Well, I need to provide an analytical defense of my KYHOI. Despite the lack of structure asking what exactly that entails, and ever fearful that I may not have written enough on the subject already, I suppose I'll write some more. We learn by doing right?

     The first problem, though, is that I'm having a bit of crisis in faith in this whole project. At the beginning of the semester, I was all for the idea of media mediating our lives... but the more I look at it, it really is just a correlation. I mean, sure, it's nice to say that the way that we communicate has fundamentally changed how we act, but could it also not be just as valid to say that the changes in how we act caused us to communicate differently? It seems to me to be a chicken or egg phenomenon. Not really though, because that one is easy - no one ever specified that the egg belonged to a chicken. In this case, however, we have to address the fundamental question of whether we shape our environment or our environment shapes us. Sure it might be tempting to say, "both," but in this case, it's too much of a cop out. Added to that, one cannot really prove either viewpoint - it's subjective. We must, however, move past these unsightly thoughts. It just so happens to be too close to crunch time to change course - in a course that stresses unconventional education - graded in a highly conventional manner. We must hold the line - we learn by doing.

     That out of the way, it's time to move on to the meat of the project: how maps impose boundaries and how these boundaries are arbitrary. I may extend this, however, to the human psyche (as previously discussed) with the implication that it's not really maps that mediate us, but our desire to create boundaries between ourselves. Of course, we choose to do this by means of making maps, but are the maps mediating us? Nicholas Carr would have us believe so. In Tools of the Mind, he associates the use of maps as a progression of mankind to more abstract thinking. "The map is a medium that not only stores and transmits information but also embodies a particular mode of seeing and thinking... The technology of the map gave to man a new and more comprehending mind, better able to understand the unseen forces that shape his surroundings and his existence." We understand that people can control space because we have mapped it.

     Well, things have changed a little bit. Sure, there is the development from the feudal estate to the nation state and all that comes before and in between, but there have been newer developments, and they follow the same pattern - spheres of influence. For the sake of example, this project will focus on a few details of the Cold War -> who could ask for more well defined spheres of influence? Quoting Klinghoffer in The Power of Projections, "The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as the dominant superpowers, and the blocs they established became known as the "East" and "West" due to the doctrinal differences and the geographical division of Europe." Protection was extended into Europe, according to Klinghoffer, because Europe was the hub of aviation by means of it's central location in flight access to the world. Polar projections were used to show how close Europe really was to the Americas - and also how close the Soviet Union was. Spheres of influence were in place, and this, in part, led to the adoption of "containment doctrine."

     So what we have here is a map, either a polar projection or geopolitical spheres of influence, defining Strategy. It's by no means a new occurance, in fact, it's so common, people often overlook it. America opted for containment because of maps. Also, maps became secondary in the face of a nuclear threat. Because of advances in military technology, time and space on the global perspective became irrelevant - you could destroy anything, anywhere, very quickly.

     This is all very broad though. Despite what might be said about maps allowing the person to understand global phenomena, I'm going to claim that the person really only notices those changes that come close to home. For that reason, I want to focus on Berlin. As the Iron Curtain dropped, it created a boundary. This boundary was mapped. And then this boundary became real. Once again, maps of ideologies influenced the creation of physical barriers -> and this was felt heavily in Berlin. The city was split in two (or four, if you want to be technical, but we're talking ideology here) and the Iron Curtain became a physical wall that divided families and friends. The Soviet construction is often described as a net keeping people in, and this definitely has some merit, but of importance for this project is the simple fact that an idea, once mapped, came to personally affect people's lives. I could go on discussing people's attempts to cross the wall, or talk about the differences between modes of living on the two sides, or give a heart warming tale of a family reunited, but this is all fluff.

     The interesting thing for me though, and it happens here at the end, is what happens when the Berlin Wall falls. As the Soviet threat is contained through diplomacy and the Iron Curtain lifts - physically and ideologically - what was the result? Families were finally reunited and freedom was gained, but was it really? Germany is still Germany as distinct from France or Switzerland or whatever. The German people are still distinct just as the Russians and the Americans. We as people are still separated by lines on a map, and none of us ever stops to think about it. The Sphere of Influence game is still being played. The names have changed, and so too the rules, but it's still the same game. I ask you now, when you hear of the wars overseas, they're just that, aren't they, those wars overseas? Sure, casualties have been taken on either side, and this can bring the war close to home, but I ask you, are you afraid to walk in the streets? When the United States decided to invade Iraq, what did they invade? Sure, there was a very sizable military in place and a dictator the US decided that it didn't like anymore, but the threat of WMDs is gone. And the military. And the dictator. We continue a war that is not political, and certainly not for the benefit of any of the locals, but ideological. We, with our predilection toward maps, have defined the thoughts of entire peoples based on lines of ink.

How is that for a Knock Your Head Off Idea?