From the Past to the Future. Geocartographic Heritages and Geotechnology: Critical Implications on Uses and Values

Abstract

A didactic wall map from the Italian Geographical Society, now part of the holdings of the Museum of Geography at Sapienza University in Rome, provides an opportunity to reflect on the pedagogical and didactic use of cartographic representations even in the age of geotechnology. The map, made by a teacher in the 1880s, responding to the need to transmit geographic knowledge, conveys the image of Italy whose unity had recently been achieved and which claimed lands pertaining to other states on the basis of its supposed natural boundary. The diffusion of geotechnologies and the ease with which cartographies and geolocalized narratives can be produced solicits a reflection that involves all the actors and stages of realization, from those who produce the representation to the source data, from the ownership of multimedia outputs hosted by commercial platforms to the messages that they more or less consciously disseminate. Aspects of this kind are not new to scientific debate that are framed here specifically in the pedagogical and educational sphere through a parallel between the 19th century school wall map and current geotechnologies.