Potential Pitfalls of Internet Research

I was recently doing some research, looking at the island of Stronsay, in Orkney, when I noticed something interesting.

Using the internet for research is full of peril, fraught with misinformation and potential downfall, but it has become my principal default method, assuming I follow careful protocols…

This is a perfect example of said care. I wanted to look at a map of Stronsay, look at the outline, then the Ordnance Survey map, then a satellite image. For this I used Bing maps, as I find the satellite images to be a bit more up-to-date than others of the same area. Below I shall present these, each captured as a screenshot, in reverse order.

Perils of using the internet for research - a satellite image of Stronsay.
Satellite image of Stronsay, Orkney. This is a useful method of looking at the land, as features such as shallow water and tidal areas are visible. The smaller island to the north east is Papa Stronsay — home to a community of Transalpine Redemptorist monks.

 

Another research tool — ordnance survey maps, this one from Bing.
This is the Ordnance Survey (whom I love dearly) map of the same area. If you scroll back up you can see some of the low tide marks in the satellite imagery — but you can’t see the detail of the shallows, for example. Using different resources in research is essential. O/S maps are wonderful, packed full of wonderful things and promising adventure and exploration opportunities.
Another research tool - Bing road map - missing Papa Stronsay.
Finally, this is the Bing road map view of Stronsay. Being as it is only a small island, there is not much detail here at all – even the edges of the island do not seem to line up neatly with the O/S map, or the satellite imagery. But the biggest difference should appear obvious…

So there we go. A disappearing island full of monks… This does sound a little like a Famous Five story, or perhaps something from the X-Files, or the Twilight Zone?

Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun (a book I shall be discussing here in the future), has written about digital nomads and ghosts, here. In The Outrun she talks of the Holm of Papay, and the south-east corner, itself cut off, disappearing from Google Maps. The above screenshot is another prime example of a digital ghost, and I cannot help but wonder why Papa Stronsay has disappeared on this map. Is it a powerful monkish prayer, answered by the small gods of the internet? Or perhaps a more ancient magic? Something hiding the island, like the mystical home of the Finfolk, Hildaland.

Everything is circles, within circles, encircled by still others. Connections hidden everywhere. I write this piece, linking screenshots taken recently when I was still in the far north of Scotland, researching a place in Orkney, itself a central character in Amy’s book — in which she discusses vanishing islands on the internet. The book itself is published by Canongate — a district here in Edinburgh, a place where I sit as I complete this post, a stone’s throw from the road bearing the same name. Circles. Hidden things, subtle connections. Our world is built upon these things — yet so many walk with their eyes closed, they do not look, they do not research as they should.

Yesterday we sat in George Square, and a children’s choir from England came and sat beside our table, all gathered, heads collectively bowed over their individual smartphones. This choir was from the town where I was born. And my sister, Lydia, knew one of the people looking after the children.

Circles. Smaller, larger. Connections, hidden, obvious, tenuous and wonderful. I feel that, as the world lurches and staggers, we could all do with little reminders of how we are really all one species. And that should be all that matters.

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