Map pins have been employed as interactive tools for at least two centuries. They have been used on maps during war and in games about war, to help the vision-impaired learn geography, to engage and excite clientele at roadside attractions and to track sales managers' assets. The history of pins on maps reveals a societal compulsion to interact with maps--to participate and to make one's mark via the use of a pin. Semiologically, this compulsion can be explained through the designation of the image of a pin as an incitive sign. Perhaps after decades of being accepted as a cartographic convention for mapping point locations, seeing a map pin now calls a map-user to action and evokes the response-sequence of mapping. In an era of high proliferation of geographical information, hacking and mash-ups have made the GeoWeb a canvas on which base maps, data and post-production content can yield the clearest or muddiest of geographical visualizations. Among many modern-day cartographers, the image of a map pin is seen as unsuitable as a point symbol. One of the more disturbing and cartographically inappropriate examples of map pin use on the Web can be found on a simple Google My Maps page entitled U.S. Drone Attacks in Pakistan. In January of 2010, this map was one of the most popular in the blogosphere (Google Maps Mania 2010) and has been viewed over 13,000 times since it was made. On the map, a typical point location is labeled with an account of an attack, most of which resulted in several dead. The result is a map of war, violence and death that is emblazoned with comically bright, neon map pins.
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