I’ve imagined for a long time being able to consider a concept and then look up how a particular person contextualizes that concept into and around (and a bunch of other prepositions) their own life. I’d like to believe (and therefore subjectively experience) writing as a method to understand the definitions I have for words, the stories I have for ideas, and the changes I might like to make based on the things that I’m learning. Biographies go part of the way and autobiographies & memoirs go another part of the way, and fiction goes a very long way. But the lens is quite inconsistent. And I don’t claim that the Subjective-Wikipedia-Map project will solve the inconsistent lens problem. Subjective Wikipedia-Map and definitions as notions are different enough that we still won’t be looking through the same pair of glasses. But it feels like a few steps in a direction toward pointing at a bird that you’re trying to get someone else to see by getting closer to the place where the other person’s eyeballs are and pointing as if you were pointing along their line of sight.
So someone named Julie McManus had an incredible idea. She suggested using an interesting company’s framework for identifying locations more specifically (what3words) which selects three random words to identify every small square on earth (3 meter squares). These titles can then be used as titles for short stories, creating a refraction device for people’s experiences of places and the random words that what3words has chosen to use to identify that location. Way easier than coordinates, and way more fun that just having people go through the dictionary and Wikipedia and in alphabetical order write out the way they interpret every word and page (though this would be really cool to have). So a few of us are adding stories to the map, sometimes based on our location, sometimes based on locations where we’ve been, sometimes based on locations we’d like to go, and sometimes based on some other criterion. Check out our stories and add your own. Inquiring minds want to know how you interpret the earth, your story, and words. And also how your imagination works.
Roman Ryan 