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Una conferencia sobre lo que los mapas dejan fuera

Nombre:Fecha:

Un profesor universitario sostiene que todo mapa es un conjunto de decisiones y que los espacios en blanco nos dicen tanto como las líneas dibujadas.

Audio y corrección de respuestas: https://joy-english.com/es/listening/cartography-silent-maps-lecture

Argumento, actitud e implicación

Escucha la grabación. Elige la mejor respuesta. Piensa en lo que se da a entender además de en lo que se dice.

What is the lecturer's central claim?
- a) Early maps were usually inaccurate
- b) Maps are neutral pictures that people misread
- c) Maps reflect choices about what is worth recording
- d) Modern maps are more honest than old ones
Why did eighteenth-century chart makers draw particular rocks?
- a) They were the largest rocks on the coast
- b) They were the rocks that had wrecked ships
- c) They were the rocks that fishermen avoided by habit
- d) They were the easiest rocks to measure
What does the story of Mr Pellham suggest about the marshes?
- a) The surveyor could not reach them
- b) They were too complicated to draw
- c) They did not interest the people paying for the survey
- d) Local fishermen asked for them to be left out
According to the lecturer, what separates a silence from a simplification?
- a) A silence can never be put right because the information was never gathered
- b) A silence is always deliberate, while a simplification is accidental
- c) A simplification is found only on small-scale maps
- d) A simplification hides information that powerful people want hidden
How does the lecturer respond to the objection about scale?
- a) He rejects it completely
- b) He accepts it only in part
- c) He says it supports his critics
- d) He avoids answering it
Why does he mention the navigation application and the narrow lane?
- a) To show that technology makes older maps unnecessary
- b) To criticise drivers who ignore local residents
- c) To show that what a map includes can have real effects on people who were not consulted
- d) To prove that algorithms are more accurate than surveyors
What is the lecturer's attitude to the student's word "lie"?
- a) He thinks it is too strong, because most selection is not intended to deceive
- b) He thinks it is exactly right
- c) He thinks it is out of date
- d) He thinks it applies only to commercial maps
What practical advice does he give for reading a map?
- a) Avoid maps made for profit
- b) Prefer larger maps to smaller ones
- c) Check every map against satellite images
- d) Ask who made it, for whom, and what is missing

Detalles clave

Escucha otra vez. Escribe una palabra o un número de la grabación para completar cada oración.

Mr Pellham spent ___ summers measuring the sandbanks.
The lecturer jokes that a map as large as the territory would be ___.
By an algorithm, the narrow lane was promoted from an afterthought to a ___.
The residents of the lane were ___ to find it crowded with lorries.
A map is described as evidence from a witness with an ___.

Respuestas

Argumento, actitud e implicación

c) Maps reflect choices about what is worth recordingDice que un mapa es una decisión sobre lo que merece ser recordado, no una ventana al mundo.
b) They were the rocks that had wrecked shipsDice que dibujaron las rocas que habían hundido barcos, así que la carta registra la desgracia.
c) They did not interest the people paying for the surveyEran muy conocidas en la zona pero no daban dinero a sus mecenas, así que sobre el papel no existían.
a) A silence can never be put right because the information was never gatheredUna simplificación se puede revertir con una hoja más grande; un silencio no, porque nadie recogió el detalle.
b) He accepts it only in partDice que lo acepta "up to a point" y luego establece otra distinción.
c) To show that what a map includes can have real effects on people who were not consultedEl callejón se convirtió en atajo por una decisión tomada en otra parte, y no se preguntó a sus vecinos.
a) He thinks it is too strong, because most selection is not intended to deceiveRechaza la palabra porque una mentira requiere intención de engañar, y la mayor parte de la selección responde a la costumbre o a la comodidad.
d) Ask who made it, for whom, and what is missingRecomienda preguntarse quién hizo el mapa, para quién y qué habría perdido al incluir lo que falta.

Detalles clave

three / 3El profesor dice que pasó tres veranos en los bancos de arena.
uselessEl viejo chiste es que un mapa así sería inútil.
shortcut / short cutEl profesor dice que pasó de ser una ocurrencia tardía a ser un atajo.
bemusedDice que estaban desconcertados por el tráfico repentino.
interestTermina llamando al mapa una buena prueba aportada por un testigo con intereses.

Transcripción

Professor Lindqvist: Good morning. Last week I suggested that every map is an argument, and several of you looked at me as though I had said something faintly indecent. So let me defend the claim. A map is not a window onto the world; it is a decision about what deserves to be remembered. Consider the humble coastal chart of the eighteenth century. Its makers did not draw rocks because rocks exist. They drew the rocks that had sunk ships, which is to say they drew a history of misfortune and called it geography.

Professor Lindqvist: Now, the interesting part is what these charts leave blank. A white space on a map is rarely an absence of knowledge. More often it is an absence of interest. The surveyor of a certain northern estuary, whom I shall call Mr Pellham, spent three summers measuring its sandbanks, and then, quite deliberately, drew the inland marshes as a pale, featureless wash. The marshes were well known to every local fisherman. They simply earned no money for his patrons, and so, on paper, they were not there.

Professor Lindqvist: You might object that this is merely a matter of scale. A map as large as the territory would be useless, as the old joke goes, and omission is the price of usefulness. I accept that, up to a point. But there is a difference between a simplification and a silence, and critical cartography begins with learning to tell them apart. A simplification can be reversed: give me a larger sheet and I will add the detail. A silence cannot, because nobody ever collected the detail in the first place.

Professor Lindqvist: Let me offer a modern parallel, since I'm told that anything older than a decade strikes you as antique. Navigation applications now choose routes for millions of drivers, and they quietly favour wide, fast roads. Residents of a narrow lane in a hill town I visited were bemused to find their street suddenly crowded with lorries. Nothing had changed on the ground. The lane had merely been promoted, by an algorithm, from an afterthought to a shortcut, and nobody had asked those who lived there whether they wished to be a shortcut.

Student: Professor, doesn't that make every map a kind of lie? If it's all selection, how can we trust any of them?

Professor Lindqvist: A fair question, though I would resist the word lie. A lie requires an intention to deceive, whereas most selection is made out of habit, convenience, or the wishes of whoever is paying. The remedy is not distrust but literacy. Ask who made the map, for whom, and what they would have lost by including the thing that is missing. Do that, and a map stops being a verdict and becomes what it always was: a very good piece of evidence, from a witness with an interest. And be wary of any map that looks perfectly confident.