CHANGE OF THE MEANING OF THE TERM 'CARTOGRAPHER' IN THE LAST DECADES

摘要

Cartography is the science and art of making maps and charts according to a very short definition which has been valid for centuries. The discipline of cartography combines science, aesthetics, and technical ability to create a well-balanced and legible representation of the real world. The term 'cartographer' has been referred to the profession also for centuries (although the words 'cartography' and 'cartographer' were used first time only in the modern times). Although the real meaning of the term has changed time to time, the following activities were always considered as covered by the term: theoretical cartography (projections, map design), surv eying, map draw ing, reproduction. In the 20th century, the term may be taken broadly as comprising all the steps needed to produce a modern map: surveying and pl anning, aerial photography, field surveys, photogrammetry, map drawing and editing, reproduction technology. Maps of all scales have traditionally been drawn and made by hand, but the use of computers has revolutionized cartography. This paper deals with this relatively short period (comparing with the whole history of the term 'cartography'), which started in the last third of the 20th century. It is very interesting to trace how the topics of the papers of the International Cartographic Conferences have changed in these times to clearly show how the information technologies were incorporated into cartography. We have to understand and accept that cartography has never been so widely used that it could influence the development of information technology, although special hardware and software for cartographic application were developed when the technology has reached a certain level. Cartography, like most of the similar smaller professions, was very sensitive to adopting computer technology. This process affected all parts of cartography, but new professions (like remote sensing, geographic information system, global positioning system, location-based services) have also come into existence as the technology has managed to serve specific demands. It is also exciting to investigate the process how the terms GIS, geoinformatics or GI science have changed the term 'cartography'. The names of different institutes and departme nts have skipped the traditional term 'cartography' and begun to include modern te rms, like geomatics, geoinformatics, GIS. Sometimes the process was carried out in two steps: first just combined the modern term with the traditional one and after years the traditional term has been dropped. This was not only the simple change of words: the researchers and university teachers were very open to accepting new technologies. More and more papers of the ICC's were dealing with these new topics and some traditional topics (like map drawing, reproduction techniques) began to disappear. The curricula of university courses were also continuously changing at that time to include the new technologies as soon as it was possible. Teaching cartography in higher education has never been a simple task: it required special, sometimes quite expensive infrastructure, so the cartographers were ready to invest to get the necessary IT technology. It is difficult to predict how the meaning of the term 'cartographer' will change in the near future. Information technology is still developing rapidly creating new hardware and software to let us invent new chances for cartography: Internet, GPS and mobile phones are the most important topics which influence the development of cartography nowadays. They contribute to continuously changing the meaning of the term too.