‘The Map Men’: How do maps and Ordnance Survey data influence our every day life?

Where do maps and Ordnance Survey data take us? Well, it could be further than just for directions to the local supermarket…

Transcript

00:00It's reported that an average Brit actually uses ordnance survey data nearly 42 times a day without even realising it.

00:09This can range from ordering a takeaway to finding out bin day.

00:13But why else do maps prove to be such a pivotal part of culture?

00:18We made a very silly fun video about what life would be like without ordnance survey data

00:22and some of the things that we noticed were there'd be no broadband

00:25because all the internet providers use the data provided by ordnance survey to lay their cables and maintain their cables.

00:32There'd be no water because similarly the water companies, when they go digging for pipes,

00:37whenever you see people doing work in the street to dig up pipes and repair them,

00:41the first stage of their job is to look on the most accurate map available to find exactly where the pipes are.

00:47Looking to the future, how do you think that map will look 50 years time from now?

00:53I think it's really hard to predict.

00:55I think on the one hand, probably something that will still be there is old paper maps.

00:59So I don't think they're going to become completely outdated relics or anything like that.

01:02But at the same time, when you try to think about the future, where they will go from our phones,

01:07you know, whether we will have chips in our head that locate us.

01:10And so we don't even have to, I don't know.

01:11Jay, what do you think?

01:12I mean, you're more of a futurist than me, I would say.

01:15There's a thought going around, I've heard in a few places, that the map of the future is no map at all.

01:20And I think what they mean by that is, in the same way that these days,

01:24when you look at your phone to navigate, it's just a blue dot that tells you turn left, turn right,

01:28and you become unaware of your surroundings.

01:30And the future may well be that, you know, we don't even realize that we've traveled at all,

01:35let alone realize where we've traveled.

01:37You know, the future could be stepping into driverless pods,

01:39and we lose our awareness of exactly where we are.

01:42But even in that future, even in a world where we don't look at the maps as often as we do now,

01:48or as much as we used to, the maps will still need to exist.

01:52And there will still need to be systems that know the physical location of where everything is.

01:56As long as we are still physically moving around in the world, we will always need some sort of map.

02:01Say we were in some kind of strange parallel universe where no one had ever come up with a map.

02:07What do you think we would be doing?

02:09I think we'd probably be a lot better at finding our way around.

02:12Humans evolved without maps.

02:15I mean, you know, we wouldn't have the perspective that we get from maps today,

02:18the ability to zoom out and see where we are in the world or in a bigger area of space.

02:24But we probably would be better at finding our way from A to B.