First it was Atlantis, then came Brigadoon, and now we have ….. Argleton!
“Knowing your streets” is one of the basic responsibilities of fire and EMS people, whether they are drivers or not. You have to know the territory. But when you’re doing some map study, have you ever come across a small street on the map that isn’t there? Or more likely, is there a neighborhood or community identified in your area that you’ve never heard of before? These are copyright-protectors that map makers have been inserting on their creations for over a hundred years.
When they go to all that work and expense to create an accurate map that they want to sell, they will sprinkle some phantom landmarks or other locations all through the map so that somebody else can’t just copy it and then sell it as their work. The map makers (mapists?) constantly study other maps, especially in this digital age, looking for their phantom sites and if they find one, it’s a quick and irrefutable proof of intellectual theft. If you’ve really got some time on your hands, study a map of your area and see how many you can find. Unless it’s a government-produced map, I can guarantee that there are some. I worked in a fire station one time that was right in the middle of a “neighborhood” (Indian Springs) that hadn’t been called by that name in over 60 years.
This type of copyright protection is even more important with online and digital maps that are so easily copied. But Google Maps has seemingly had a rogue town planted on one of their maps without authorization. Somebody in the UK has spotted a non-existent town in Lancashire called Argleton, and it’s got the Google folk all knotted up. You see, there are ancillary services that provide online information, especially over iPhone-type pda’s, such as “nearest gas station” and restaurant recommendations. And when they plug in their locations using the postal code that includes “Argleton” people are getting road directions that lead them to an empty field. You can even get the current temperature and weather forecast for Argleton.
Visiting Argleton has now become a weekend sport in England as curiosity-seekers pack their picnics and set out to see this latest incarnation of Brigadoon. Google swears that they didn’t have anything to do with it because their mapping creations for that area were contracted out to a Dutch firm. But wags have noticed that “Argleton” has the same gutteral sound that “Google” does. And it has been pointed out that Argleton is an anagram of “not real G.”
And it had to happen: Somebody has already posted a spoof-website for the city, “Argleton – Gateway to the North,” HERE.
We’d better find our way to the apparatus bays now and get the equipment checked out. I’ll map out the path to the Bunn-O-Matic and get a fresh pot started. We’ll meet back in the day room in a little while for some map study.
