Map of Lies

 

                              "World map" by Martyn Wright is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Mapping became a key tool in human succession. Whether it was mapping villages to understand your surrounding, or mapping oceans to have a route to your destination, or even trying to find Kingda Ka in six flags. Maps are just extremely simple and efficient. But throughout history, as countries started becoming more nationalistic and humans started thinking they were more superior to others, they would as a result present these behaviors through everyday life including maps. 

    In the 15th and 16th century as North and South America were just discovered by Europe, the world maps that we are familiar with were being concepted. However, because these maps were being drawn by Europe the scaling and proportion for the map was going to be propagandized for their benefit. Some of these benefits could be making Africa seem smaller to other countries in order to imperialize the most out of it. Another example would be putting Europe in the center in order to make trading routes more visible and easier to read. But could there be a valid reason to using these inaccurate map today?

    I love to use google maps. It is, in my opinion, one of mankind's greatest achievement. The ability to be anywhere you want on the planet by just a few drags is incredible. But after learning the world map are inaccurate put me in a little disbelief, so I experimented myself. I went to Google's 2D map and compared it to the 3D model from satellites point of view. To my surprise, I was wrong. The proportions on the 2D model make certain countries in the northern hemisphere such as Canada, Greenland, Russia appear much larger then the actual model.

    My take on this situation is actually to not change it. It might be a very biased take but in the current disproportionate map I can see all the northern countries much easier then the Gall-Peters projection. Europe becomes more visible to the naked eye. In my opinion, viewing a simple depiction of map may be more beneficial then viewing an exact replica.