Tuesday, November 11

Maps are lies

I think I need a Tshirt with that phrase on it.
"Well, this is a cartography blog, and I’d like to go on a bit about the the relationship between truth and maps. The point being, in short, that all maps are lies - they are 2D renderings of a 3D reality, invariably containing some form of deviation of the ‘truth’." -StrangeMaps

It is essentially a blog for HIGHLY nerdy people and is really a perfectly good argument for there being far too much pointless information on the internet. I, however, think it's an interesting way to look at the world and I occasionally get little gems like the quote above.

I guess I thought this was interesting because it forced me to think about something (maps) that I pretty much take as "fact" on a daily basis and to re-evaluate that. I mean anyone that has used Mapquest more than a handful of times knows that their map data contains lots of lies. ("Turn left", err there IS no left turn here, this invalidates all other directions in this list!) (Ok, in MQ's defense I haven't used them since Google maps came out. I'm sure they aren't as behind as they used to be. (Hopefully))

I thought it was interesting to think about. What things do you take or granted on a daily basis as fact, that are in fact, not fact?

~B.

1 comment:

  1. Along the lines of trouble with maps. It bothers me more than it should that Australia isn't as big as it appears on a map. *sigh*

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