Writing Local Reality: Katrina and the Digital Emergence ofNew Orleans

J. TirrellPurdue University

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Steven Johnson (Author, The Ghost Map)

“That selective attack appeared to confirm every elitist cliché in the book:

the plague attacking the debauched and the destitute, while passing over

the better sort that lived only blocks away. […] Poverty and depravity and

low breeding created an environment where disease prospered, as anyone

of good social standing would tell you. That’s why they’d built the barricades

in the first place” (20).

Johnson, Steven. The Ghost Map. New York: Riverhead Books, 2006.

Steven Johnson (Author, The Ghost Map)

“Like Henry Whitehead, Snow brought genuine local knowledge to the Broad

Street case. When Benjamin Hall and his public-health committee made their

triumphant appearance on the streets of Soho, they were little more than

tourists, goggling at all the despair and death, and then retreating back to

the safety of Westminster or Kensington. But Snow was a true native. That

gave him both an awareness of how the neighborhood actually worked, and

it gave him a credibility with the residents, on whose intimate knowledge

of the outbreak Snow’s inquiry depended” (147).

Johnson, Steven. The Ghost Map. New York: Riverhead Books, 2006.

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Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC, Chairman of a House science and technology subcommittee)

“Google’s use of old imagery [in Google Maps and Google Earth] appears to

be doing the victims of Hurricane Katrina a great injustice by airbrushing

history. […] To use older, pre-Katrina imagery when more recent images

are available without some explanation as to why appears to be

fundamentally dishonest.”

“Google Accused of Airbrushing Katrina History.” msnbc.com.30 Mar. 2007. Microsoft. 27 Mar. 2008 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17880969>.

John Hanke (Director, Google Maps/Local/Earth)

“Given that the changes that affected New Orleans [maps] happened

many months ago, we were a bit surprised by some of these recent

comments. Nevertheless, we recognize the increasingly important role

that imagery is coming to play in the public discourse […]”

Hanke, John. “About the New Orleans Imagery in Google Maps and Earth.” The Official Google Blog. 2 Apr. 2007. Google. 27 Mar. 2008 <http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/about-new-orleans-imagery-in-google.html>.

Daisy Pignetti (Author, “The ‘I’ of the Storm”)

“How will [people] know what it feels like to return to a home seeping

with mold, then have to ‘gut’ it—to literally throw away their collected

past? How will they know what the city even looks like?”

Pignetti, Daisy. “The ‘I’ of the Storm: How Hurricane Katrina Changed My Life and My Methodology.” C&C Online. (2007). 27 Mar. 2008 <http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/Pignetti/title.html>.