CYBORG-CARTOGRAPHER BATTLES SPATIAL AMNESIA

We have been experiencing for decades the melding of humans with machines; think of artificial body parts, hearing aids, prosthetics, and so on. What if we could spawn bionic cartographers who have the ability to transfer spatial data that they see, directly (through thought-transmission) and tele-communicate to geo-referenced mapping programs?

In the case of disasters, when nobody knows at first what is going on--what has been destroyed, what has not, what obstructions are in the way of transportation routes, and so on--this capability would be extremely valuable (an understatement). Whether the cyborg-cartographer works from a helicopter or on the ground, he/she would combine reconnaissance with mapping (and disaster relief), as only the human brain could comprehend what is important to observe.

Even now here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast we are experiencing something of spatial amnesia (spatial dissonance?) almost seven months out from the Storm: we might not know what exists on the landscape only one mile away, in areas that we, personally, formerly traveled. Who has produced a current map of this area, carried out with groundtruthing, of what actually exists? No one, of course. [Written a few months after Hurricane Katrina.]