A Cartographer’s Lament; The Taj Mahal Story

This article is about the vandalism on map. First published on arkives.in by the same author.
License: This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.

Preface

“A map says to you, Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not… I am the earth in the palm of your hand” said Aviator Beryl Markham, the first person to fly non-stop across the Atlantic from Britain to North America. I know 90% of the readers disagree now with me. To become trustworthy maps should prove their authenticity. The authenticity of the maps is to be by default certified by governmental agencies such as Survey of India (in the case of India). But it’s not practical to have every map certified by these agencies as they don’t produce every thematic map required for the citizen. Also, their map updates are slow in the process.

Maps are said to be the two-dimensional form of the real world. In those sense maps are the living data which gets updated every minute in reality. Today technology has grown to such an extent, that every person has the map on their palm in the form of digital web map services which are faster in updation. The slippy maps in smartphones and computers have overthrown paper maps and democratised the use of maps enabling the common man too. The positioning system, regular updates, interactive usage and ease of usage helped them gain this popularity.

30 years ago in 1993, Xerox released the first map server and in 1994 the National Atlas of Canada released the first online Map(Atlas). In 1996 two online routing services based on maps were launched, Mapquest and Multimap (in the UK). Subsequently, various technologies were established in many parts of the world in the coming years. In 2004 seeing the success of Wikipedia Steve Coast founded OpenStreetMap which revolutionised the concept of mapping with the idea of crowdsourcing the data. Steve Coast’s vision was to create the world’s most up-to-date, complete and universal map, Oh yes for Free! The year 2005 was a golden year for mapping technology. Google launched Google Maps and Google Earth to create a virtual earth metaphor. Same year Baidu maps and MapGuide open source were introduced. The first version of open source library Open Layers was also released in the same year. In 2006 WikiMapia was launched. Nokia laid the foundation of maps for smartphones with the launch of Ovi maps. Apple then came up with Apple maps with a new technology vector tile-based application called Apple Maps.

You might be wondering why I took you all through the history of mapping technology. You won’t be surprised to know why I was documenting History! As we say a nation is not built in a day, so is technology and data. There are struggles, pains, brains and sweat of people who worked to build it. This article is a reminder for the people who always forget history and want to vandalise everything with fake mirages for upcoming users.

The Taj Mahal Vandalism

It was our regular map talk and Jaisen suddenly pointed out that the Taj Mahal in OpenStreetMap is renamed as Shiv Mandir. I urged and checked OSM and identified the change was made only 13 days before. The spammer just had 2 edits in his name (checked the other edit of him too and verified it for genuineness) and this can’t be a mistake too.

Taj Mahal named as Shiv Mandir in OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap edit history shows edit happened 13 days ago.

While other details and name in other languages remains the same.

OSM profile of the spammer shows only two edits.

Wait… wait… wait, before you question or doubt the authenticity of the crowdsource OSM, listen to the flip side of the story too.

My curiosity increased and I was sure the vandalism might have happened in Google Maps too. Opened and zoomed in to the Taj. Oh yes as suspected, vandalism there too. Below is the fake markings near Taj.

Spam markings of a parlour and some name marked over Taj Mahal in Google Maps

Spam markings of a Furniture shop marked near Taj Mahal in Google Maps

A POI marked in the Yamuna River near Taj Mahal in Google Maps

An additional POI marked over Taj Mahal as Tejo Mahalaya(Read on Tejo Mahalaya controversy) in Google Maps”

If Google Maps with all their so-called validity and authenticity checks couldn’t stop vandalism and the crowdsource open data platform identified and reverted things in 13 days!

This article is not to debate the propaganda behind the Taj Mahal or anything else, but to consider this as a Cartographer’s Lament! If this could happen at the world-famous location this can happen anywhere. Whatever the reasons, there is a lot of time and sweat behind the creation of passionate people behind generating such a big platform and database. If the platforms are giving opportunities use it for betterment and not for spreading hatred or your agenda.

Read Also:

• News report published based on this article (Malayalam, English)
• Payarumanni Island Story