A Lost Scottish Island, George Orwell, and the Future of Maps

You can't find the Western Scottish isle of Jura, a remote 141-square-mile mass of green and bog in the Atlantic's Inner Hebrides archipelago, on Google Maps any longer. Its name -- thought to be derived from the Norse term for "Island of Deer" -- and its single road now simply float in the middle of the pixelated ocean, unconnected to any actual geographic feature.

Rising seas have not swallowed the territory; its odd disappearance is merely a product of a data glitch somewhere on the computer giant's servers. Locals first that their remote island -- which is 31 miles long and has lots of wilderness but only one real village -- had fallen into the digital abyss at the beginning of July, according to an initial from the Scottish press agency Deadline. Lisa McDonald, an employee of the Jura Hotel in Craighouse, a small hamlet on the eastern shores, confirmed to the outlet that, despite their digital absence, Jura-ians were still very much alive. "It's definitely still here," McDonald . "I'm on it at the moment. We're all safe and