UN votes to adopt new world map to reflect Africa's true size | Hacker News Reader

UN votes to adopt new world map to reflect Africa's true size

bbc.com

4 pointsthunderbong7 comments

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> Africa's misrepresentation on world maps is not just a cartographic error - it's a narrative issue

> "world's longest misinformation and disinformation" about Africa

It's not a cartographic error, a narrative issue, misinformation, or disinformation.

The Mercator projection was used because it made it easy to navigate using straight lines:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection#Marine_nav...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhumb_line

> The Mercator projection was used because it made it easy to navigate using straight lines:

But, why should a map made for sea navigation continue to be the map used for everything else? The vast majority of us are not using a map for navigating at sea.

I am even of the view that there should not be one map that everyone defaults to. Use the map that is appropriate to your use case. But if there should be one general, default map, the Marcator projection ranks low in modern relevance for that.

And America was the only country to object. USA, USA! :(

> It was part of efforts to stop the "world's longest misinformation and disinformation" about Africa, she said.

Are they trying to say some negative outcome in Africa is caused by the Mercator projection?

Afrika has a lot of landmass around the equator, while the others are at the edges where in the mercator anything is stretched out. Europe and north america appear bigger than they are.

That is factually correct, but what is the impact of it? Why does it matter concretely?

Does it matter whether things are true, even if their impact is not readily apparent?

Now, as to impact, one could argue distorting the relative sizes of landmasses causes geopolitical ignorance. For example: do people understand how relatively small western Europe is, the ramifications of that for their political unity, transport system, and impact on the world?

Showing the true size of Africa helps to put into context its challenges with regional transport, political unification, flow of ideas, etc. It also shows that Africa is actually has a relatively low population density. It also makes it easier to understand why lumping everything there under an "Africa" moniker is weird.

As a side effect, the sizes of other regions like South America are also shown more accurately.

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