Hiding Cities In Plain Sight

http://www.lockergnome.com/greaterworld/2011/01/18/hiding-cities-in-plain-sight/

In science fiction novels, a recurring theme is the idea of technology gone awry, which is the plot device for the entire story.

With the changes in our world today, we must understand that some of the things of which we were warned by those many science fiction stories could become true.

With the inclusion of so much into the public knowledge bank, it is surprising to some that other things are not known, in an age where knowledge of nearly anything is available if you have a connection to the internet and the knowledge of how to search.

As we have seen in the United States, there are those communities that want to keep themselves out of things like Google Earth, for a number of reasons. Whatever they are, their ability to keep observation from above out of the public’s eye has been only partly successful.

Today, a story coming from the BBC shows how an inner city, actually a slum of great proportions, was being kept off the established maps, undoubtedly for many reasons, but is now being brought into view by a group of volunteers, and a little application of technology.

In Africa, there are areas where much change has taken place, and where modernization is occurring at an amazing rate. In some of those places, it seems that the rate of change is not uniform, and the places lagging behind are being largely removed from the maps, as if their lack of inclusion would remove them from the greater landscape and make things better overall.

The area is known as Kibera, which we are told is a Nubian word for forest, and that is how it has been represented thus far on the maps of the larger city of Nairobi, Kenya. When being shown the place in the slide show, it is apparent that forest is being used as a euphemism for slum, and a place where the larger government wishes to close an eye to what takes pace there. (This reminds me of the barrios of East Los Angeles, and what might happen if the State of California began a whitewashing campaign, beginning with the inclusion of a new “forest area” where those barrios once were depicted. It might be a joke to locals, but those from the other side of the nation, coming to see Disneyland for the first time might get quite a surprise when looking for the forest area in the eastern part of Los Angeles.)

There are many small cities within Kibera, and the team of people doing what is necessary to map the city, and push its inclusion into maps, are showing that it is necessary to view a problem to be able to work on it.

The exposure will bring the world’s eyes to bear on the problem, and perhaps shame the government, which has, up until now largely ignored it, into some action to begin the Herculean project of integrating this inner slum into the greater city of Nairobi, also bringing the lives of its people into the 21st century.

When you make the jump, and see the size of the area, you may wonder how things like this are hidden from view.

After all, don’t we have the technology to view everything on this planet, save for the bottoms of the oceans?

Apparently not, for as in many of those science fiction stories, there are greater forces at work than the ones provided by developing technology.

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