âThe map is not the territory.â
Alfred Korzybski
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Not all those who wander are lost âď¸ đşď¸
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The True Size of Africa
Africa is a massive continent. But for whatever reason, map makers make it appear smaller than its âtrue trueâ size. As Polish-American scientist Alfred Korzybski reminds us, âthe map is not the territory.â Lines are ultimately arbitrary.
Map design is deceptive. But computer-graphics designer Ka Kraise took it upon himself to âfight against rampant immappancy,â in particular the popular Mercator projection originated by Gerardus Mercator in 1569 which tends to exaggerate the size of continents and countries more than others. Greenland, for instance, is 14 times larger than Africa.
As you can see above, Kraise illustrates the reality of Africaâs size, that which is âlarger than the USA, China, Japan, and all of Europe, combined!â The Economist revisualized Kraiseâs map as well.
Kudos to Kraise for illuminating our ignorance about geographical knowledge, pointing the finger at Western and Asian students who tend to inflate the size of their countries when in actuality Africa makes everyone else look so small.
Read more in The Economist: ‘The true true size of Africa'
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Trust your internal compass
One of the oldest surviving maps (the Babylonian Map of the World) is âabout the size and shape of an early iPhone.â But it too was full of artifice and spin.
âThe map is not the territory, said Polish-American scientist Alfred Korzybski. Maps are deceiving representations of reality. To quote the author Mark Monmonier of How to Lie With Map, âNo map entirely tells the truth. Thereâs always some distortion, some point of view.â
Maps drive conquest, gentrification, taxes, and voting polls. Google Maps, as Google does, gives us the turn-by-turn directions to a final destination. But we trust GPS a little too much yet remain frustrated and bewildered when the software leads us into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on the way to Rhode Island.
And we thought Google had all the answers! Blame the humans, not the machines.
Faulty computer intelligence reminds humans that our devices are imperfect just like us and that perhaps, we should continue to leverage our internal compass.
image via giphy
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Orange is the new blue
If you use Google Maps, you'll notice that the latest version shows ‘areas of interest' in orange. These are places, according to Google, “where thereâs a lot of activities and things to do.â
Why orange? I'm not entirely sure, perhaps because green, blue, gray, and white are already taken — reserved for representations of water, grass, housing, and roads respectively. The patches also seem to indicate a real-life geographic divide between commercial and poorer neighborhoods as seen in the image below.
In any case, all this went through my head as I captured the image above just outside the Farragut West stop on the orange line in DC. But unlike Google maps, there appeared to be nothing to see or do (at least at that moment) in this orange space.
The use of colors, as it's used in visualizations online and off, appear arbitrary but may contain subtle intention. After all, the map is not the territory; not to mention, orange paint was once more popular than the color blue.
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Maps â Territory
Mindfulness acts as the parent-guardian to a brain in flux. It helps people take a step back from the false information they design in their heads.
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âThe map is not the territoryâ
Polish-American scientist Alfred Korzybski once said that âthe map is not the territory.â In other words, a map is an abstraction of land, a mere model of reality just as skeuomorphism makes an icon for trash look like a garbage can. Similarly, the medium is the message.
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Google Maps streamlines look and adds hotspots
Let's face it. Google Maps is bloated. It's like the MySpace of maps with a bunch of different custom options and toolbars.
But Google released an update yesterday that promises to declutter its design.
“So as part of this update, weâve removed elements that arenât absolutely required (like road outlines).”
Google also added a new feature to spotlight potential “areas of interest.” If there's anything we learned from Pokemon Go, it's that people want to explore new places.
“As you explore the new map, youâll notice areas shaded in orange representing âareas of interestââplaces where thereâs a lot of activities and things to do.”
Maps are essential to our mobile experience. Without GPS, we'd be lost. While Apple's Maps app has improved, Google still has more location-based data, something Foursquare is also optimistic about.
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Google Maps personalization will hurt public space and engagement.
The best way to do that is to actually turn us into highly predictable creatures by artificially limiting our choices. Another way is to nudge us to go to places frequented by other people like usâlike our Google Plus friends. In short, Google prefers a world where we consistently go to three restaurants to a world where our choices are impossible to predict.
You can't predict the unpredictable.
And remember: âDon't be Evil.â