Look Out

Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View by Edward McPherson (2025) 280 pages

Edward McPherson's book touches on many subjects that intersect with his love of maps, from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, to maps drawn by artists traveling from town to town in the 1800s, to photos taken from airplanes and satellites. 

McPherson interviews an official at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, as well as former homeowners who lived in the footprint of the new facility for the NGA. He also discusses the Cahokia Mounds, which in 1250 was a very large settlement east of St. Louis that was abandoned without any obvious reason. There's also a discussion of the Civil War battle at Gettysburg, and how a mapmaker came onto the battlefield two days later, sketching out what had happened based on the bodies of men and horses still lying on the ground. 

Some of McPherson's strongest views come from cameras recording citizens going about their day-to-day activities, including in our own city (St. Louis). He is concerned about Project Maven, an AI endeavor that attempts to harness machine learning and computer vision to teach drones appropriate targets to hit in wartime. He is especially concerned that drones piloted by AI make far less accurate guesses about targets than those that are piloted by humans: 60% (or much less depending on the weather) versus 84%.

McPherson teaches creative writing at Washington University. His book is thoughtful and somewhat lyrical, and a bit difficult to describe, but well worth the read.