ABSTRACT
Maps have never been so popular. The use of internet mapping sites for locating places and planning routes is expanding rapidly alongside growing sales of conventional paper maps and atlases. Maps are increasingly used for business, pleasure, advertising and art and the expanding availability of mapping software is democratising map making so that anyone can now make a professional-looking map with relative ease. Even books about maps have become best sellers, telling tales of geological jealousy and cartographic crime (Harvey, 2000; Winchester, 2001). Cartography and geo-information science is now a major sector in the information economy. Ordnance Survey data, for example, are estimated to underpin £100 billion of British economic activity annually (Lawrence, 2003). The number of people now using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) worldwide is more than 2 million and growing at 20 per cent per year. Locational technology has pervaded most aspects of everyday life so that few serious leisure time aviators, boaters, motorists and walkers are unaware of the benefits of Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers for satellite navigation.
