The New Frontier of Mapping

For most of history, maps helped us navigate physical space: coastlines, roads, cities, borders, and terrain. But today, many of the most important spaces we need to navigate are not geographic. They are spaces of ideas, technologies, organizations, communities, industries, and opportunities. The New Frontier of Mapping is a participatory talk and workshop about a new kind of map. We will explore a long history of people turning abstract things into landscapes - from medieval maps of salvation and Botticelli’s Map of Hell, to Playfair’s political and commercial charts, to modern AI embedding spaces. Along the way, we will ask a simple question: when the world becomes too complex to understand as a list, a feed, or a search result, what new forms of navigation become necessary? The talk will cover map-like ways of organizing information. We will look at how modern embedding systems can act like “GPS for abstract space,” making it possible to localize text, images, organizations, or ideas in semantic landscapes. We will also discuss the politics of mapmaking: what gets represented, what gets ignored, who gets to name the regions, and what is lost when messy human reality becomes legible. After the presentation, participants will take part in a group activity using a Toronto Innovation Ecosystem Map. Together, we will navigate the map, contribute what we know, identify missing pieces, and discuss how this kind of technology could support discovery, coordination, community building, and collective sense-making. No technical background is required. This workshop is for founders, researchers, artists, civic technologists, community builders, designers, policy people, and anyone interested in how we might make complex ecosystems easier to see, understand, and shape. Schedule for the Evening 6:15–6:30pm arrivals & informal mingling 6:30–7:15pm presentation: New Frontier of Mapping 7:15–8:15pm collaborative mapping workshop platform exercise 8:15–8:45pm discussion, feedback, and reflections This workshop is part of a research initiative. For those interested, check out www.embedora.com .