<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book;"><b class="">MIT STS Colloquium**</b></div><div class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book;"><b class=""><br class=""></b></div><div class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book;"><b class="">Monday, February 23, 2015</b></div><div class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book;"><b class="">4 PM Talk | 3:30 PM Reception</b></div><div class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book;"><b class="">E51-095</b></div><div class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book;"><b class=""><br class=""></b></div><div class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book;"><div class="" style="font-family: Optima;"><i class="" style="font-family: Avenir;"><b class="">Negative Networks, Zombie Projects, and Multigenerational Science: </b></i></div><div class="" style="font-family: Optima;"><i class="" style="font-family: Avenir;"><b class="">The Successful Failure of the International Map of the World</b></i></div><div class="" style="font-family: Optima;"><i class="" style="font-family: Avenir;"><b class=""><br class=""></b></i></div></div><div class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book;"><b class="">Bill Rankin, Yale University </b></div><div class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book;"><b class="">and </b></div><div class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book;"><b class="">Samer Alatout, University of Wisconsin</b></div><div class="" style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 11px;"><i class="" style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px;"><br class=""></i></div><div class="" style="font-family: Optima;"><i class="" style="font-size: 11px;"><span class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book; font-size: 12px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The International Map of the World was a massive collaborative project to make a uniform atlas of the earth in unprecedented detail; it was first proposed in 1891 and remained a going concern for nearly a century. By some measures it was one of the most successful mapping projects in history, especially compared to better-known collaborations like the </span><span class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book; font-size: 12px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Carte du ciel.</span><span class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book; font-size: 12px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> In 1913 its standards were given the force of an international treaty signed by nearly every country in the world, and thousands of maps were eventually published under its name. But by the 1970s the map was dismissed as “cartographic wallpaper” and is now seen as a “sad story” of naive internationalism. How should we evaluate this kind of project, which met or exceeded its initial scientific ambitions only to fade slowly into oblivion? My approach distinguishes the </span><span class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book; font-size: 12px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">network </span><span class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book; font-size: 12px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">of practitioners from the </span><span class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book; font-size: 12px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">project </span><span class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book; font-size: 12px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">of mapping – each had their own rhythms, and the intergenerational change of two World Wars and postwar decolonization affected each in different ways, both politically and epistemologically. At stake here is not just the fate of this particular project, but larger methodological questions about success, failure, and temporality.</span></i></div><div class="" style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 11px;"><i class=""><span class="" style="font-family: Avenir-Book; font-size: 12px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br class=""></span></i></div><div class=""><font face="Avenir-Book" class=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">**This colloquium has a pre-circulated paper component. If you plan to attend and would like to use the paper to prepare please email me directly at <a href="mailto:randyn@mit.edu" class="">randyn@mit.edu</a>. </span></font></div><div class=""><font face="Avenir-Book" class=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><br class=""></span></font></div><div class=""><font face="Avenir-Book" class=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><br class=""></span></font></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div apple-content-edited="true" class=""><div class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Optima; font-size: 11px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Optima; font-size: 11px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><br class=""></span></div></div>
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