Image: Wikipedia. John Snow’s original map showing the clustering of cholera cases during the London Epidemic of 1854, drawn and lithographed by Charles Cheffins.
For some years now, we have been witnessing the emergence of relational, cross-over, participative power. This is the territory that gives technopolitics its meaning and prominence, the basis on which a new vision of democracy – more open, more direct, more interactive - is being developed and embraced. It is a framework that overcomes the closed architecture on which the praxis of governance (closed, hierarchical, one-way) have been cemented in almost all areas. The series The ecosystem of open democracy explores the different aspects of this ongoing transformation.
Steven Johnson points out in The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World (2007) how John Snow, a physician working in London’s Soho, demonstrated with the help of a map that the cholera epidemic that ravaged the city in 1854 originated from the water supply and not the air, as local authorities believed. Snow's map (picture above) showed something which to him was quite obvious, but an image was needed – the image of the concentration of death cases in the vicinity of water wells - to change the mentality of the decision-makers.
