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Comment by dougmwne | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what the long term geopolitical consequences will be when we all stop looking at projected maps. That small peninsula to the west of Asia just got a little smaller. A certain island kingdom is now more clearly the size of Uganda. Maybe Google can also flip the globe "upside-down" for all users "below" the equator.

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I think it accomplishes the opposite of the intended political goal. Larger regions aren't more loved. Larger regions look more threatening. It is now far more obvious that people near the equator can't all migrate to the EU and US. The US and EU look much more vulnerable and precious.

Honestly, I doubt there will be any long-term geopolitical consequences. It's comforting to imagine that we can change the world just by more correctly representing a map, but I suspect the reality is that we can't.

Do we really think very much is really affected by map projections?

Korea looms large in people's imaginations for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with its occupied land mass size, and a lot to do with their history and cultural and economic power.

If Korea is not occupied by the U.S. and allowed to unite then it would take a decade or so before their economy would be number two in the world with them kind of needing to be on the U.N. Security Council.

The same can't be said about if Sudan was united again, Sudan would not be magically punching above India, Russia and Germany in international commerce.

The world where we see the world as it is, a sphere that we can interact with and with that sphere being the default view has been a long time coming. We will look back and wonder why we got the perspective wrong for so long. There are no other objects we display in Mercator Projection et al.

If we could go back in time with what the fine people at Google have achieved and give it to navigators of the past, in the days before aeroplanes got popular, then all the hacks that 'demand Mercator' would never have arisen. Maybe we would have to teleport GPS back to this fictional past too.

The none-sphere maps make as much sense as those paintings done before perspective was worked out, we have just ended up believing them out of familiarity and due to the navigation and other hacks devised for the atlas makers of the past.

As recently as twenty years ago the idea of just showing the earth as a sphere for things like weather broadcasting would have seemed a radical and controversial idea. Thanks to Google and de-facto Maps we have made a small but important evolutionary leap in understanding our world.

>Maybe Google can also flip the globe "upside-down" for all users "below" the equator.

I must be the only weirdo who wants the opposite: equator up. South-up in the Northern hemisphere and north-up in the Southern hemisphere.

Why? Because I want the Sun at the top of the screen (or more accurately, the sunny side of buildings/hills/anything).

Then you'd have to special-case maps that include the equator itself.

Indeed, but this is no different from "north up in Northern hemisphere / south-up in Southern hemisphere" proposed above. Since we're talking interactive maps, you can probably just go by the center point (barycenter) of the viewport.

W/r/t Sun angles, things are pretty weird anywhere between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.

A generation growing up on this will probably be less likely to believe in a flat earth, since the intuition will develop from the time they first start looking at maps.

Globes (the good old physical item) exists since ~150 BC

Australian maps are shown with Oz in the middle, and the pacific / indian oceas each side, with South East Asia and Antarctia surrounding, exactly the same way US maps put the US in the center.

Do you mean whole-world maps have Australia in the center? (I assume so, since obviously a map of only Australia would have Australia as the center...)

That's fascinating! I grew up in the US and I'm not sure I've ever used a world map with the US in the center. Curious where you got this impression. I can find some examples if I specifically search online, but they look very weird to me.

Every world map I grew up with has the US on the far left, presumably due to the convenience of splitting the map on the Pacific Ocean. The first example that came to my mind: https://i.imgur.com/FjBKD6k.jpg

Maps in Japan have Japan and the Pacific ocean in the center and the Americas off to the right. Which make the phrases "the west" and "the east" kind of interesting choices.

Example of a map poster for kids: http://happylilac.net/sekaitizu-mihon.gif

There is something weird going on near the poles still, so I'd not be surprised if its technically expensive to make an "upside down" map.

Upside down and mirrored should be simple though.

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