When you see a headline of ‘Steampunk’ Infographics Beautifully Combine Past and Present, your first thought probably isn’t going to be that this article might mention Second Life, although Steampunk certainly has a thriving community in Second Life.
When you consider that this is an article on National Geographic, you’re probably even less likely to think Second Life is going to get a mention, but get a mention it does.
The article is about how information graphic designers are looking to the past for inspiration for their visualisations and in many cases using modern technology to do so. The author of the article, Geoff McGhee, links this mixture of old and new as :
When information graphics designers also look to the past for inspiration, the result—something I’ll call “steampunk infographics”—tells us a lot about the state of information visualization today.
So where does Second Life fit into all of this? Well the article has a few use cases of people creating maps and quotes the opinion of David Rumsey, who is impressed with the work. The article then points out some of David Rumsey’s work :
Rumsey is no stranger to adapting antique maps for the digital world. Not only are his maps available in Google Earth, but users of the virtual reality environment Second Life can “fly” through and around his collection of antique maps and globes.
Which led me to go and visit David Rumsey’s work and where I found myself getting lost in a virtual world representation of old maps, as well as viewing old maps as textures on flat surfaces too.