maps colour our view of the world
The Concept
Section titled “The Concept”From human scale it is difficult to capture a complete view of the world physically. We conceptualise it based on representations, and so maps yield a disproportionate influence on how we conceptualise national borders, politics and geographies.
- cartographers hold a surprisingly huge amount of power
- by extension, the tech companies who now are the main source of maps
- projections
- centering different nations
- prioritising malling certain locations eg Google street view disparity
- prioritising collecting certain kinds of data, not utilising public local knowledge, or revealing private local knowledge past its usual bounds, etc
- we are unable to conceptualise the whole earth as it is so any representation essentially becomes it
- political boundaries made more concrete by mapping, and natural boundaries de-emphasised
- whoever makes the map makes the world
- indigenous knowledge, colonialism, erasing meaning and names and local identities, crushing all power and authority of indigenous people
- find an American map with indigenous groupings