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<\/a><\/p>\nMaps are always political. Most maps show us something that we already believe, so its difficult to see what is being reinforced and what is systematically ignored. Even the most mundane AAA maps of highways and state borders are doing political work by recognizing the sovereignty of individual states and the obduracy of highways and roads. The near-infinite number of things, qualities, measurements, and people that have spatial characteristics (seriously, just think of all of it: temperatures, ancestral lands, endemic species, isobars, places to buy smoothies, locations of hidden treasure, and so on, and so on\u2026_) mean that map makers must always select what is relevant and what is not. This selection process\u2014a human endeavor\u2014is inherently social and deeply political. Google, a company that has taken upon itself to reject that selection process and \u201corganize all the world\u2019s information,\u201d wants to provide a single map and, instead of deciding what is relevant in any given map, will personalize it based on information it has about you and your friends. Evgeny Morozov, writing in Slate,[1] is rightfully concerned that Google doesn\u2019t quite know what they\u2019re dealing with when they say they want to organize public spaces in their databases right next to email and photos of cats. He is concerned that\u2013unlike books or weather forecasts\u2014Google doesn\u2019t \u201cacknowledge the vital role that disorder, chaos, and novelty play in shaping the urban experience.\u201d I completely agree that unpredictability is necessary for good urban space, but the biggest threat Google poses to public space isn\u2019t that its maps are\u00a0\u201cprofoundly utilitarian, even selfish in character.\u201d Rather, Google hasn\u2019t done enough to personalize maps in such a way that they become part of everyday social (and Social) life.<\/p>\n