Presented at the 1998 Student Association Dinner Department of Land Information Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Melbourne, Australia Thursday August 13, 1998
by
Dr. Michael P. Peterson Department of Geography / Geology University of Nebraska at Omaha
Good-evening Ladies and Gentleman.
A somewhat irreverent colleague of mine in the US ends his all of his e-mail messages with two rules. Rule #1: Don't sweat the small stuff. Rule #2, of course, is: It's all small stuff.
I suppose we could look at things that way. Yet, it seems to me that we define ourselves by the small things that we make large. Who we are is determined by what we think is important.
For example, it's important to me that I've been asked to speak tonight and I'm honored that the Student Association invited me.
It's also important to me that I was invited to the Department as a visiting fellow for these four weeks and I would like to thank the Department, particularly Dr. Cartwright, for doing so.
I think it is important to all of us here that RMIT University has a unique and internationally recognized Department of Land Information that integrates surveying, cartography, and geomatics.
Finally, I know we can also agree that it's important that we gather here tonight to honor the excellence among our students. I congratulate all those who will be so recognized.
In the US, we have a strange way of recognizing the achievement of our middle and secondary school children. We give their parents bumper stickers. These bumper stickers proclaim "My (son or daughter) is an honor student at (such and such) school." This message is broadcast proudly from the rear bumper of the family car. To every bumper sticker there is a reply. I have seen this one of late that simply states: "You child may be an honor student but you're still an idiot."
I have entitled my talk tonight: The Small Things that we Make Large. In making this point, we have to look no farther than a map. Maps, of course, are filled with small things that would remain invisible if features were not exaggerated in size. Indeed, if this exaggeration did not occur, many maps would be essentially blank.
Teaching is another example of making small things big. Instruction is largely a process of convincing students to value the importance of certain small things that the professor and others think are important. Exams are an instrument of persuasion.
In the remainder of my talk here, I would like to relate three small experiences that have happened to me in these last two months in Australia and make them large for you. There is a message in them all, but I am not going to be as blunt as a bumper sticker.
The first experience occurred just before I arrived in Australia on a connecting flight from New Zealand. I had persuaded a stewardess to provide me with a newspaper even though I was flying in coach class and normally would not be offered one. I guess it's been determined that people who fly coach either aren't interested in the news or can't read. The lead story was of a small, conservative political party that had made some inroads in an election in Queensland. I had not heard of the One Nation party before but I've heard a lot about it since I've been here.
When I was 18, I wanted to be more self-sufficient too. While I was beginning my university career and still working at a small grocery store, I bought 40 acres of woodland in northern part of my state of Wisconsin near the largest fresh-water lake in the world, Lake Superior. Two small streams flow through the land that is so dense with trees that I still become lost when I try to walk through it. In the following summer, at the age of 19, I hired a carpenter and together we built a cabin on a piece of the land that I had cleared. My one true desire in life, as I explained to one of my professors, was to subsist simply at my cabin while reading all of the books of my favorite author, Mark Twain. Although best known for such books as Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I was more interested in his other works including Roughing It, A Tramp Abroad, Diaries of Adam and Eve, and A Pen Warmed-up in Hell.
I still have the cabin and my wife and children now find it a great spot for a summer vacation. It has no electricity but that did not stop me from watching the last Olympics on a small television connected by a long wire to the battery of our car. Unfortunately, on one occasion I watched too long, drained the battery, and the car wouldn't start anymore. That was the first time that I started a car by pushing it in reverse. Last summer, I had the great pleasure of watching a black bear from the window of the cabin. This scene of wildlife wonder was soon interrupted by our small dog who caught scent of the bear and barked loudly from behind the protection of the window until it disappeared into the underbrush.
As you may suspect, I haven't read all of the books of Mark Twain yet. But, I've read a lot of other books, and have even written a book myself. In addition, I've been able to travel and live for extended periods in other countries, often with my wife and two children, daughters 11 and 15 years old. They are here with me in Australia as well. I consider it a vital part of their education that they travel and experience different countries and cultures. I could not have done these things, or provided these opportunities for my children, if I had remained, isolated, in my cabin.
The second experience happened a few days after we had arrived. My 11-year old daughter was already homesick and very alert to anything that reminded her of home. After seeing all her familiar fast-food restaurants and watching all of the American TV shows that are broadcast here, she surmised that Australia had stolen everything from the US. I explained to her that the truth of the matter was far worse. "You see," I said, "the Australians actually buy it." The subtlety of that point probably escaped her.
I remember once talking to a German about the relationship between the US and Germany. He was from the southern city of Munich from which the US imports a great many BMW cars. Yuppies in our country call them "Beamers" and buy them in great numbers. We also talked about television and the fact that many American TV shows are shown on German TV with dubbed-over translations. The most popular at that time was "Die Rettungsschwimmer von Malibu." A direct translation would be the "Lifeguards of Malibu." We know the show as Baywatch and it is, supposedly, the most watched TV show in the world. In case you haven't seen it, the show is about scantily clad, male and female lifeguards in California. "There you have it," I said glibly, in trying to sum up the relationship between our countries, "we buy your cars, you buy our Baywatch." The difference, of course, is that the car does not change the way people think. It's frightening but true, Baywatch does. So, when it comes to mass media, you pay for it and, in some way, you buy it as well.
The last of my three experiences in Australia happened in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. On one of the ranger guided tours of the aboriginal petroglyphs in the park, a park ranger explained how closely the language of the local aboriginal group is tied to the land. The livelihood of the people was so dependent on the land that almost every word described some aspect of it.
He went on to relay the story of a researcher who was driving a group of three aboriginal men on a country road where they lived. As they drove along, the three started to sing a song that described the countryside in which they were driving. When the car started to move along more swiftly, one of the men kicked the back of the driver's seat and shouted: "Slow down! We can't sing that fast."
"Slow down! We can't sing that fast."
I cannot even imagine a song that would describe a landscape, much less one where the speed of traverse would have any effect on how fast it was sung or even whether it could be sung.
"Slow down! We can't sing that fast."
From our highly trained perspective as surveyors and cartographers or students thereof, it would be easy to dismiss such a song as being primitive and useless. It doesn't mesh with how we describe the world, it probably lacks accuracy in our sense of the word, and of what use can it be?
I have been doing research on maps for over 20 years and, in the process, thinking about ways to improve maps so that they convey a better and truer representation of the environment. I have to tell you that I'm becoming increasingly skeptical whether our current cartographic products communicate any useful information, especially the kind of information that effectively captures a place. For example, I viewed a great many maps of Australia before I arrived here, but nothing prepared me for what I encountered. All those maps that I looked at could just as well have been of another continent. Beyond the relative locations of the larger cities, the maps provided little information that meshed with my experiences here.
It may be that our maps developed for other purposes and were not intended as a way for people to learn about the world. Denis Wood argues in "The Power of Maps," that maps developed as an instrument of governments to wage war and assess taxes. Indeed, the United States uses detailed maps of the terrain, prepared at great expense, to precisely guide cruise missiles to their targets. With this type of mindset about the function of maps, it's not surprising that they are not useful descriptors of place.
"Slow down! We can't sing that fast."
It's good to be reminded that we don't know everything. Sometimes our attitude about knowledge reminds me of a friend who admitted to once being conceited. But, he went on, he had worked on that minor personality flaw, and now he was perfect.
Finally, as Mark Twain would say, let me address my comments to the younger people in the audience because the old ones are past saving. Don't isolate yourself in a cabin or even a continent, don't buy everything that you pay for, and don't think you know everything. I don't.
That concludes my talk for tonight. Let the festivities begin, or as we say in the US, "let's party."