EDITORIAL: 99 Problems and a Map is One
The views expressed herein represent the views of a majority of the members of the Caravel’s Editorial Board and are not reflective of the position of any individual member, the newsroom staff, or Georgetown University.
A world map from 1915. (Patrick Barry, Flickr)
Mapmakers have long grappled with the impossibility of projecting a three-dimensional reality onto a two-dimensional plane. Each attempt involves constant trade-offs between the objective and relative sizes, positions, and distances of and between specific places, countries, and even entire continents.
The modern map has stayed fundamentally unchanged throughout the past few centuries (updated, of course, with new information, new details, and newly recognized locations). Yet, it misleads us daily due to its foundations in 1500s navigational logic that prioritizes shipping and sailing routes and centers Europe and the northern hemisphere.
To correct this, Princeton astrophysicists borrowed from King Solomon and reinvented the map by splitting it in half. The new Double-Sided Gott projection developed by Princeton astrophysicist J. Richard Gott, Princeton financial engineer Robert Vanderbei, and Drexel University physicist David Goldberg shows each hemisphere on its own side, like a disc, to limit distance errors and minimize map distortions.
Attempting to respond to common criticisms of modern maps, the new format still fails in key regards.
Cartography & Its Discontents
History credits Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator with inventing (or re-inventing) the modern map projection, named the Mercator projection. This style converts the three-dimensional globe into a two-dimensional plane through the cylinder method. Using algorithms and mathematics, cartographers project each point of the globe onto a cylinder that, when unfolded, results in our modern-day two-dimensional map.
Mercator, the son of merchants, developed this projection to ease navigation. By preserving angular relationships and lines of travel, the Mercator projection map guarantees that any navigator can accurately travel from one point to another on the map using nothing but a compass and the angle of their line of travel to the North pole.
This system, however, severely distorts the map. Landmasses closest to the poles appear substantially enlarged, with the classic example of Greenland seeming roughly equivalent in area to Africa on a Mercator projection map despite being one-fourteenth its size. Besides blatant inaccuracies, including in the position of specific locations, the Mercator project has contributed to dangerous misconceptions of the world. It perpetuates Eurocentric perspectives by placing Europe dead-center and by dramatically enlarging the northern hemisphere relative to its actual size. It also makes areas of the world like Africa, Latin America, and South Asia appear less notable by decreasing their relative size.
Various mapmakers, cartographers, and mathematicians have attempted to develop new projection methods that correct for the distortions (including local shape, area, distance, skewness, boundary cuts, and bending distortions) and ensuing inequities and imperialist attitudes that the Mercator projection maps enforce. Among them have been websites and map projections that expose the flaws in the Mercator style, such as the Winkel Tripel projections and the True Size website.
A Series of Well-Meaning Attempts
So far, most attempts to minimize distortions and correct the flaws in the Mercator projection have failed in some significant regards.
The Double-Sided Gott projection map is the latest in a series of well-meaning attempts. The new maps separate the hemispheres onto different sides of a flat, round disc.
The first of its kind in using two distinct sides instead of projecting the globe onto only one, it excels at minimizing distortions, according to the formula developed by Goldberg and Gott to calculate map accuracies. Some experts and scientific outlets have already praised the map for its advances in the field of cartography.
However, while this map does successfully avoid the visual distortion that rendered other maps problematic, it does not escape the larger question of how maps are organized and how the way it represents the world speaks to a divided world.
A Polarizing Choice
The map developed by Goldberg and Gott still makes choices in how it visually displays the world as it seeks to present the world as accurately as possible, namely the incredibly visual creation of the “Global North” and “Global South.” While centering the poles on the map may seem like a relatively value-neutral choice (in contrast to the Western historic centering of Europe or Jerusalem, for example, both of which carry obvious ideological implications), it puts various states’ growing geostrategic interest in the poles in the center of the page, while relegating the continents of South America, Africa, and Asia to division across the halves.
Maps have always preceded empire and colonization, making lands that will soon be conquered and controlled knowable to the powers that seek to obtain it. The Poles are no different, particularly as global powers such as Russia, the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and others have tried to lay claim to sections of the ice. Particularly, shipping routes opened by melting ice have attracted attention as global warming reduces the amount of solid ice at the poles, opening up potentially shorter ways to send materials by boat. By putting the poles quite literally at the center of the world in this map, Goldberg and Grott inadvertently center conversations about polar territorial claims and the utility of these lands. Additionally, by centering the poles, the map creates the idea that they are static, stable landmasses that won’t change in the future, when in fact these rapidly thawing ice cap continents are the ones most quickly being changed by global warming.
Furthermore, by centering the poles, Goldberg and Gott’s innovative double-sided design visually divides a “northern” side of the globe from a “southern” side. This plays into the preexisting, moralizing ideas of a Global North and a Global South.
As a term, “Global South” came into popularity to replace the outdated and misapplied “third world” designation. It gestures to countries with lower levels of economic development while also locating them on the globe, though which countries it refers to exactly are unclear (Australia, for example, is not often considered to be in the “Global South” despite being in the geographic south). What is clear, however, is the dichotomy the term itself creates: a country is either, in these terms, part of the “Global North” (more economically developed countries, mostly north of the equator) or part of the “Global South” (less economically developed countries, mostly south of the equator).
The Goldberg and Gott map visually plays directly into these ideas, going further than just representing countries as higher on a page, but rather existing on the other side of the page, as if they were part of another world entirely, untouched by the choices and actions of countries on the “northern” side of the paper. While this projection represents countries and their sizes more accurately than previous maps have depicted them, it also obscures countries’ interconnected nature while visually dividing the world into a nebulous and, frankly, dangerous dichotomy that carries significant implicit meaning.
Down to Earth
Maps are critical tools that we use to visualize and understand the world around us, to plan routes and policies, and to position ourselves and our countries in relation to others. But, for all of their claims of objectivity, maps are as imbued with social relations and ideational power as any other social tool. While they are incredibly useful, we must understand the ways that they shape how we think about the world, and therefore the power that they can have over us.
The map created by Goldberg and Gott successfully minimizes the problematic visual distortions that plagued earlier maps, but it should not be heralded as a flawless beacon of neutrality. It, too, participates in a conversation about the world, dividing it into two halves that reinforce the existence of a “Global North” and “Global South,” with all of the implied economic realities that those terms carry.
Humans rely on maps in our everyday lives. But it is critical that we recognize the biases and motivations that our tools have in order to make them actually useful, as opposed to just holding us to the same status quo. We have centered our lives and our politics around using maps as tools. In turn, maps will only center what we want them to.
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