Recently I discovered the wonder and joy that is OpenStreetMap. This is the Wikipedia of geospatial information. Volunteer-led, meticulously tagged, it’s an internet artifact whose existence seems to defy common-sense. I’ve only encountered it previously as the ‘map provider’ for Mapbox, and now I understand their relationship a lot more.

Mapbox is a commercial map hosting provider which uses the OSM project for map information. A map can be thought of as a series of points, lines, and polygons(areas). These areas can indicate landmass, water, man made structures like buildings or bridges. These entities are then labeled by a team of volunteers.

For this information to show up as a map on a browser or mobile device, the map has to be rendered. To follow a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation like the one done here, rendering the entire world at multiple zoom levels results in up to 50TB of data. Mapbox renders the most up to date OpenStreetMap information, and hosts these map tiles. Mapbox also provides mobile and web sdks to render and display these map tiles seamlessly, like one might be used to using Google Maps.

This is the magic - OpenStreetMap also hosts map tiles, free for non-commercial use. If you go to openstreetmaps.com you’ll find a map like experience that is delightful. You get to see the parks in New York City or the tiny alleys in Istanbul. There are tiles that are translated into multiple languages.

There is also a host of open-source software that allows people to work with OpenStreetMaps data, including tagging, querying, and serving map tiles. There is even software to allow you to render your own map tiles. Other than making a donation, it’s not clear to me how we can make these enterprises more self-sustaining.

We need to have alternatives to corporate-controlled information - ma

I think we have begun to take maps for granted - they seem woven into the fabric of our world. We expect to be able to look up directions, and scour places of interest all around the world. We think we know what Greenland looks like, and we barely register that you can keep scrolling horizontally on the map, and Antartica looks like a single contiguous, unbroken landscape. We benefit from many years of mapping know-how baked into these tools, and if w do not continue to understand and learn them, we will

Unlike other very potent technologies that have since disappeared from public view, yet remains

When I think of fundamental technologies of our era, I think of encryption, networking, databases, but mapping technology has reshaped our relationship with the world around us. It has made easier travel to foreign countries, allowed us respond to humanitarian crises much more quickly, and it has both made the legality and politics of our borders both visible and invisible.