Ever since Ian immersed himself in this entrepreneurship thing, he’s spent a hell of a lot more time thinking about maps, geodata and all that goes along with it than he thought possible. The Panamap resulted from a fascination with an odd printing technique and mass info-complexity. The digital products UMI currently develops came from sheer need to *do* something. The ah-hah moment came sometime in 2005 at an Internet travel conference.

While carrying around one of the few remaining copies of the Panamap, somebody asked if the company had the neighborhood data in digital form. It wasn’t too long after that Ian began saying, “It’s the media, stupid.” Whenever people ask how the company was started, we return to the weary map. Their next question is “what happened?” to which the only answer is, “some people believe print is dead.”

Within that comment lies the interest–as a society, we have begun a generational period of shifting to a digital age. It will be another 15-30 years before we are really there–ebooks are nice ideas, but adoption is marginal at best. This isn’t going to change any time in the near future. The tactile is a fundamental to our experience. A conversation with Ted Stout got me thinking along these lines.

In a recent column in Metropolis Magazine, Henry Petroski argues that the printed book will endure because, well, because it has:

Still, the book is probably here to stay. Its resilience underscores what I call the power of maker tradition and user expectation. Proponents of electronic books argue that bound paper as we know it will eventually be replaced by newer technology, but that’s not likely to happen in the foreseeable future. The fact that some early e-books were designed to mimic the traditional reading experience by being about the same size as conventional titles and containing “pages” that “turn” emphasizes a kind of unwritten law of maker tradition: when replacing one technology with a newer one, the latter must resemble the former as much as possible.

Similarly, printed maps aren’t about to go out of style. The segment of the population that cries out for a techno-embedded solution is in the minority, but as in many other areas, the vocal minority (in this case the Digerati) expresses its will, somehow injecting this perspective.

What the Panamap can provide is a useful way for people to embrace interactivity without a chip (note to the Digerati: yes, interactivity can exist without silicon). Our excitement in this media stems from the fact that the user controls the nature of the engagement; the interactivity is directly controlled by a user, not an external interface (mouse, pointer, keyboard, etc…). The simplicity of the interface allows us to focus on a goal-seeking activity, not a process-oriented one.