Transforming Governance and Engaging Communities Through

Collaborative MapStorytelling

English

SocialScience

History

Humanities

Math

Geography

Science

Engineering

STEM

Crowd Sourcing

Story Telling

MapStory is a new dimension to the global data commons which

empowers people to organize what they know about the world

spatially and temporally, rather than encyclopedically, the way

Wikipedia already empowers us to.

TemporalSocialNarrative

To understand the challenges of today and tomorrow, you must understand the past.

We must self consciously think about change over time, and demand that all data be spatio-temporally enabled.

To understand the value of the data from the crowd, you must understand its lineage and the social context of its production.

We must self consciously construct a “high attribution” social platform that enables “structured dispute resolution.”

To understand the world, people use more than just an ordered accumulation of facts. They tell stories.

We must self consciously empower everyone to compose and spatio-temporally enable narratives.

Tribes, Clans and Nomadic Peoples

Villages, Towns, Cities and Slums

Armed Groups Empires, Kingdoms and Dynasties

Slavery, Diasporas and Remittances

Wars, Battles, Treaties, and Borders

Crops, Domesticated Animals and Trades

Genocide, Human Rights Abuses, and Human Trafficking

Hydrography, Waterways, and Transportation

Energy, Natural Resource Energy, Natural Resource Extraction and ProcessingExtraction and Processing

Finance, Manufacturing and Trade

Biological Stress, Extinction, and Invasive Species

State Failure

Empowering Participation

• tools.mapstory.org• Versioned editing• Temporal raster upload• Enhanced narrative capabilities• Continued investment in social features• …and on and on and on and on and

on…

Passionate Communities• 5000 years of evolving political

boundaries, globally• MapStory Local of many communities• Historical sequences of aerial imagery

and raster maps• Complex humanitarian processes (e.g.,

LRA, human trafficking, etc.)• Historical wars and battles• Longitudinal gazetteer• Evolving social networks• …and on and on and on and on and on…

Final Points

Global data commons and the collaborative platforms that support them help unleash the dark matter of the universe represented by the global cognitive surplus that we enjoy.

Change over time, in place, is the thing that can inspire future generations from every passionate information community

Every information community struggles with our rich past, complex present and uncertain future.

Final Points

Final Points

Storytelling is a preternatural human impulse, and it is inherently communal.

Empowering people to tell their stories, in place and time, and making MapStorytelling a collaborative and even communal process, will empower our global community to better wrestle with our complex present and uncertain future.

TellYourStory!Christopher Tucker | tucker@mapstory.org | @MapStory | 703-981-9373