Thinking about The Ghost Map

Some basic facts about Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map

1. (198-99) The map Dr. John Snow produced (to support his idea that cholera was transmitted by water) did not have a crucial or decisive impact on the debate. The fact is that opinion shifted only gradually to Snow's opinion.
   
   
   
   1. The stature of the map grew retrospectively
   
   
   2. The map was more important as proof of an idea once it had been widely accepted than as evidence which caused a change in public opinion


2. (67) Johnson sees Dr. Snow as a clear example of a researcher able to bridge different fields of science, a researcher with a rare and unusual perspective to bring to bear to a specific problem
   
1. (195) Johnson sees the great virtue of Snow's map as being the combination of the upper-level order of the map with the lower-level knowledge brought about by street-level knowledge and investigation


2. (220-221) Johnson views new online maps as capable of bringing about the same combination of digital maps with street-level, street-smart content
   

The difficulty is perhaps that the character of knowledge that Dr. Snow possesses
(2a) involves being able to see outside the boundaries of ordinary street-level knowledge, but the maps that Johnson imagines involve a mobilization of a democratic street-level knowledge (2b), and therefore could produce only an image of popular opinion, which in 1854 would have been the wrong idea