Scottish isle from which Orwell warned of dystopia erased from map by technology

wfgodot · Jul 26, 2013

A great (and lengthy) read from The Atlantic, recommended to anyone who likes maps and cartography, or George Orwell, or tiny Scottish isles, particularly one called Jura. Oh, and/or the Google Maps system which caused it to disappear.

A Lost Scottish Island, George Orwell, and the Future of Maps
A 141 square-mile island vanished from Google Maps in early July, and the company
has yet to restore it. What do mapping glitches mean for little-known places?

You can't find the Western Scottish isle of Jura, a remote 141-square-mile mass of green and bog in the Atlantic's Inner Hebrides archipelago, on Google Maps any longer. Its name -- thought to be derived from the Norse term for "Island of Deer" -- and its single road now simply float in the middle of the pixelated ocean, unconnected to any actual geographic feature.

Rising seas have not swallowed the territory; its odd disappearance is merely a product of a data glitch somewhere on the computer giant's servers. Locals first discovered that their remote island -- which is 31 miles long and has lots of wilderness but only one real village -- had fallen into the digital abyss at the beginning of July.
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much more at the link

Herding Cats · Jul 26, 2013

I wonder if that happened to Avalon??

LOLing at the irony of Orwell's island disappearing.

Best-
Herding Cats

wfgodot · Jul 26, 2013

Orwell's choice of Jura for a home was always an odd one. Plagued as he was most of his life with lung problems - not helped a bit by getting shot through the throat while fighting as a Republican in the Spanish Civil War - the windswept and rain-friendly Jura was not exactly an obvious choice.

Scottish isle from which Orwell warned of dystopia erased from map by technology

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