ABSTRACT
The evidence lies, as it were, in the images. Flash back once more to the Berlin Wall, taking its first hammer blows, President George Bush and Secretary of State James Baker appearing at a televised press briefing with a map of Germany in front of them, seeking in cartography what they could no longer locate in reality: the fixity of former borders and former times. For those with an investment in the status quo, when events were moving too quickly and too unexpectedly, the map became a more appealing, more plausible home than the world itself. Now flash forward to the twenty-first century, long after the End of History has been remaindered, The Coming Anarchy is the name of a retropunk band, and the X-Files are under subpoena by a special prosecutor: What maps will we inhabit? In search of some answers, I undertook a trip to the Simulation Triangle.
