A new kind of map: it’s about time

导读

什么时候我们能够有一张时间地图?不再像之前那样靠空间来计算距离?时间的加入或许能让我们的交通和枯燥的距离游戏变得更加有意思。

更多剧透

第一步:解决高频单词

estimate [ˈɛstəˌmet]

v.评估

digital [ˈdɪdʒɪtl]

adj. 电子的

pinpoint [ˈpɪnˌpɔɪnt]

v. 指出

feasible [ˈfizəbəl]

adj. 可行的 可用的

visualization [ˌvɪʒʊəlɪˈzeʃən]

n. 形象化;想象

overlay [ˌoʊvərˈleɪ]

v.覆盖在…上面

concrete [ˈkɑ:ŋkri:t]

adj.具体的 n.混凝土

delineate [dɪˈlɪniˌet]

v. 描绘;描画

prototype [ˈproʊtətaɪp]

n. 原型;蓝本

preserve [prɪˈzɜ:rv]

v. 保护;保存

60p

第二步:精读重点段落

(Tips: 双击文中单词可以查释义并加入你的生词本哦)

How would you describe your morning commute?
[1] If you’re like most people, it starts with a ballpark estimate of how long it usually takes. Or maybe several estimates, depending on when you leave for work, how bad traffic is, or whether you’re walking, driving, or taking the bus.
There’s something strange here: we’re answering a question about a trip through physical space, with numbers in units of time. Often, the trip itself — which roads to take, landmarks along the way, miles and kilometers traveled — comes up later, if at all.

  • ballpark n.棒球场
  • estimate v.评估
  • physical space 物理空间

An opportunity
[2] Almost 25 years into digital mapping, we’re at an interesting crossroads. Maps are useful for understanding (very literally) the lay of the land, and guide our direct interactions with that land. But computers have also gotten really good at these tasks: GPS pinpoints our current location, geocoders can look up the street address, and navigation apps plan cross-country trips in a split second. Together, they assure us that we’ll never really be completely lost, and every destination is somehow reachable.

  • interaction n. 互动 合作
  • pinpoint v. 指出
  • navigation n.航海

[3] At the same time, our decision-making around places — where to go for lunch, if a certain day trip is feasible, and yes, whether a commute is practical — have shifted toward how long it takes to get there. But we still rely on traditional maps to do that: eyeballing straight-line distances, and running that through some alchemy of guesswork and firsthand experience to how long that trip would take.

  • commute v.通勤
  • alchemy n.炼金术;魔力

[4] What would a more directly useful visualization — indeed, a map of time — look like?

  • visualization n.形象化
85p

第三步:攻克必学语法

复合句( Compound Sentence)
Beijing is in the North and Nanjing is in the South.
(特点:When two independent clauses, or complete sentences are joined together, they form one compound sentence.
复合句是由两个独立的句子组合在一起构成的。例句中,有下面两个完整并且独立的句子组成:
Beijing is in the North.
Nanjing is in the South.

复杂句(Complex Sentence)
My uncle, who is seventy years old, works on a farm.
(特点:When an independent clause and a dependent clause are joined together; they form one complex sentence.
复合句是由一个独立的句子加一个从句构成的。)
China is a country that its history is very long.
China is a country. (独立句子)
That its history is very long (从句)

100p

加分任务:精读全文

在之前的三步后,你已经完全具备了精读全文的能力。再多花半个小时,让你的学习效果达到120%!

查看/展开全文


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(Tips: 双击文中单词可以查释义并加入你的生词本哦)

A new kind of map: it’s about time

How would you describe your morning commute?
[1] If you’re like most people, it starts with a ballpark estimate of how long it usually takes. Or maybe several estimates, depending on when you leave for work, how bad traffic is, or whether you’re walking, driving, or taking the bus.
There’s something strange here: we’re answering a question about a trip through physical space, with numbers in units of time. Often, the trip itself — which roads to take, landmarks along the way, miles and kilometers traveled — comes up later, if at all.

  • ballpark n.棒球场
  • estimate v.评估
  • physical space 物理空间

An opportunity
[2] Almost 25 years into digital mapping, we’re at an interesting crossroads. Maps are useful for understanding (very literally) the lay of the land, and guide our direct interactions with that land. But computers have also gotten really good at these tasks: GPS pinpoints our current location, geocoders can look up the street address, and navigation apps plan cross-country trips in a split second. Together, they assure us that we’ll never really be completely lost, and every destination is somehow reachable.

  • interaction n. 互动 合作
  • pinpoint v. 指出
  • navigation n.航海

[3] At the same time, our decision-making around places — where to go for lunch, if a certain day trip is feasible, and yes, whether a commute is practical — have shifted toward how long it takes to get there. But we still rely on traditional maps to do that: eyeballing straight-line distances, and running that through some alchemy of guesswork and firsthand experience to how long that trip would take.

  • commute v.通勤
  • alchemy n.炼金术;魔力

[4] What would a more directly useful visualization — indeed, a map of time — look like?

  • visualization n.形象化

Prior art
[5] In city centers with a lot of walking traffic, you may see maps overlaid with progressively larger circles, to estimate travel time based on simple physical distance. But this assumes that people move like crows fly: that there’s a straight-line road for anywhere we want to go, through concrete walls and over lakes, without traffic ever to slow us down. In an urban setting, none of these are practical assumptions to make.

  • overlay v. 叠在…上面
  • progressive adj. 进步的,不断前进的
  • concrete adj. 具体的
  • assumption n. 猜想

[6] Isochrones get us a bit closer. With a starting point and a mode of travel, they examine the actual geometry of surrounding roads, to delineate an area based on how long it takes to get there. Areas within the same isochrone (Greek for “same time”) take a similar time to reach. Tendrils extend along fast-moving corridors, and squeeze to wrap around mountains, rivers, and other natural barriers.

  • geometry n.几何学
  • delineate v. 勾画
  • corridor n.走廊

A step further
[7] But at the core, these maps still serve double duty in visualizing both space and time. Recently, we’ve been thinking of a visualization that cuts directly to the way in which people make decisions about where to go: what would a map look like if we swept the physical world away completely, in favor of the time needed to move around it?

  • in favor of ….有利于

[8] We’ve been prototyping a simple discovery tool on this idea. We take search results from the Foursquare API and array them around the user at the center:

Pic1

[9] In this time map, we preserve the direction of each point, relative to the user. But the visual distance from that center point is determined by the time it takes to get there, whether driving, biking, or on foot.

  • preserve v. 保持
  • determine v. 决定

[10] By removing literal geography, we now have a map that more closely reflects the way we think about our environment: a cluster of restaurants “five minutes that way” versus “ten minutes the other.” We can watch our surroundings literally expand and contract with different means of travel. And only after choosing a destination do we think about roads, turns, and the specifics of how to get there.

  • literal adj. 文字的
  • cluster n.群 簇

Notes on tech
[11] Undergirding all of this, of course, is a bag of low-level tools that do the heavy lifting: Mapbox Geocoding API for positioning, locations from Foursquare, Mapbox Matrix API for travel time calculations, and Mapbox GL for visualization.

  • undergird v. 加强;从底层加固

 [12] From a design perspective, each piece is the smallest complete articulation of a solution to a problem. This modular format affords developers maximum expressiveness and flexibility to incorporate exactly the toolkit they need. It becomes ever more critical as we continually push, tailor, and redefine the user experiences we build.

  • perspective n. 角度
  • articulation n. 关节;结合;清晰发音
  • modular adj. 模块化的
  • flexibility n. 灵活性
  • incorporate v. 合成
200p

estimate [ˈɛstəˌmet]

v.评估

digital [ˈdɪdʒɪtl]

adj. 电子的

pinpoint [ˈpɪnˌpɔɪnt]

v. 指出

feasible [ˈfizəbəl]

adj. 可行的 可用的

visualization [ˌvɪʒʊəlɪˈzeʃən]

n. 形象化;想象

overlay [ˌoʊvərˈleɪ]

v.覆盖在…上面

concrete [ˈkɑ:ŋkri:t]

adj.具体的 n.混凝土

delineate [dɪˈlɪniˌet]

v. 描绘;描画

prototype [ˈproʊtətaɪp]

n. 原型;蓝本

preserve [prɪˈzɜ:rv]

v. 保护;保存

不要一时兴起,就要天天在一起

明天见!


下载音频

A new kind of map: it’s about time

How would you describe your morning commute?
[1] If you’re like most people, it starts with a ballpark estimate of how long it usually takes. Or maybe several estimates, depending on when you leave for work, how bad traffic is, or whether you’re walking, driving, or taking the bus.
There’s something strange here: we’re answering a question about a trip through physical space, with numbers in units of time. Often, the trip itself — which roads to take, landmarks along the way, miles and kilometers traveled — comes up later, if at all.

An opportunity
[2] Almost 25 years into digital mapping, we’re at an interesting crossroads. Maps are useful for understanding (very literally) the lay of the land, and guide our direct interactions with that land. But computers have also gotten really good at these tasks: GPS pinpoints our current location, geocoders can look up the street address, and navigation apps plan cross-country trips in a split second. Together, they assure us that we’ll never really be completely lost, and every destination is somehow reachable.

[3] At the same time, our decision-making around places — where to go for lunch, if a certain day trip is feasible, and yes, whether a commute is practical — have shifted toward how long it takes to get there. But we still rely on traditional maps to do that: eyeballing straight-line distances, and running that through some alchemy of guesswork and firsthand experience to how long that trip would take.

[4] What would a more directly useful visualization — indeed, a map of time — look like?

Prior art
[5] In city centers with a lot of walking traffic, you may see maps overlaid with progressively larger circles, to estimate travel time based on simple physical distance. But this assumes that people move like crows fly: that there’s a straight-line road for anywhere we want to go, through concrete walls and over lakes, without traffic ever to slow us down. In an urban setting, none of these are practical assumptions to make.

[6] Isochrones get us a bit closer. With a starting point and a mode of travel, they examine the actual geometry of surrounding roads, to delineate an area based on how long it takes to get there. Areas within the same isochrone (Greek for “same time”) take a similar time to reach. Tendrils extend along fast-moving corridors, and squeeze to wrap around mountains, rivers, and other natural barriers.

A step further
[7] But at the core, these maps still serve double duty in visualizing both space and time. Recently, we’ve been thinking of a visualization that cuts directly to the way in which people make decisions about where to go: what would a map look like if we swept the physical world away completely, in favor of the time needed to move around it?

[8] We’ve been prototyping a simple discovery tool on this idea. We take search results from the Foursquare API and array them around the user at the center:

Pic1

[9] In this time map, we preserve the direction of each point, relative to the user. But the visual distance from that center point is determined by the time it takes to get there, whether driving, biking, or on foot.

[10] By removing literal geography, we now have a map that more closely reflects the way we think about our environment: a cluster of restaurants “five minutes that way” versus “ten minutes the other.” We can watch our surroundings literally expand and contract with different means of travel. And only after choosing a destination do we think about roads, turns, and the specifics of how to get there.

Notes on tech
[11] Undergirding all of this, of course, is a bag of low-level tools that do the heavy lifting: Mapbox Geocoding API for positioning, locations from Foursquare, Mapbox Matrix API for travel time calculations, and Mapbox GL for visualization.
[12] From a design perspective, each piece is the smallest complete articulation of a solution to a problem. This modular format affords developers maximum expressiveness and flexibility to incorporate exactly the toolkit they need. It becomes ever more critical as we continually push, tailor, and redefine the user experiences we build.

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