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THE SPECTACULAR
LIES OF MAPS
PER AXBOM
Earthrise. Photo by William Anders, 1968.
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Raise your hand and keep it raised as long as you
agree with my statements.
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Raise your hand and keep it raised as long as you
agree with my statements.
I have lied.
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Raise your hand and keep it raised as long as you
agree with my statements.
I have lied to someone
I care about.
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Raise your hand and keep it raised as long as you
agree with my statements.
I believe I will continue
to lie in the future.
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Raise your hand and keep it raised as long as you
agree with my statements.
I’ve made design
decisions with
insufficient data.
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Raise your hand and keep it raised as long as you
agree with my statements.
I will continue to make
design decisions with
insufficient data.
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Raise your hand and keep it raised as long as you
agree with my statements.
I trust maps to give me
accurate information.
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Raise your hand and keep it raised as long as you
agree with my statements.
The Earth is flat.
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Earthrise. December 24, 1968.
Taken by astronaut William Anders during the Apollo 8
mission, the first crewed voyage to orbit the Moon.
The three astronauts were William Anders, Frank
Borman and James Lovell.
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Anders: Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! There's
the Earth coming up. Wow, that's pretty.
Borman: Hey, don't take that, it's not scheduled. (joking)
Anders: (laughs) You got a color film, Jim?
Hand me that roll of color quick, would you…
Lovell: Oh man, that's great!
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18 months after the Apollo 8 astronauts took this photo, 20 million
people took to the streets across the US to protest environmental
destruction in the first ever Earth Day.
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“It shows the Earth that we all live on, a little blue
sphere set within this black expanse. It suggests
everything from fragility to our uniqueness.”
– Michael Pritchard,
programmes director at the
Royal Photographic Society in the UK
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There are no lines in space.
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There are no lines in space.
Humans started drawing them to make sense of the world.
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Imago Mundi
2,600-year-old
Babylonian clay tablet
mythology,
astronomy, geography
discovered in Sippar,
an ancient
Babylonian city along
the Euphrates River,
housed at the British
Museum
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Properties of maps
Size
Dominance
Centricity
Omission
Exaggeration
Distortion
Mythology
Perspective
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Middle East
Doctor of Technoscience Studies
just very, very curious…
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Middle East
Doctor of Technoscience Studies
just very, very curious…
Middle
East?
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Geographically, there’s very
little ‘east’ in the Middle East.
The region known as 'the
Middle East' actually
encompasses some of the most
northern parts of Africa and
South-West Asia.
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“Really interesting
visual information is a
little bit like a puzzle.
You’re solving it.”
Rebecca Solnit
– Author of “Infinite City: A San
Francisco Atlas.”
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But are you solving it correctly?
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No content
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Cylindrical map projection
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No content
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No content
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W o r k s p a c e s l The True Size Of ...
@ thetruesize.com/
The True Size Of ...
eg... Australia
About | Clear Map | Privacy Policy
© 2022 The True Size. A
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If this happens to
size, what then
happens to distance?
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No content
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No content
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No content
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What is the
spectacular
lie in this
map?
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No content
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6400 km
7200 km
Chad
• Layers
United
Kingdom
Germany
Austria
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SomaliaYemen
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Kyrgyzstan
89. Path or polygon u
Click points o
n the map to draw a path or polygo
Length
6,401.59 k
m
Heading
10.67°
⼜Save to project
J a p a n
South Korea
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①
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© thetruesize.com
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Layers
Path or polygon
？
Click points o
n the map t
o draw a path o
r polygon
Length
8,423.46 km
Q Save to project
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No content
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No content
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No content
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The route of Emirates flight EK225, Dubai to San Francisco
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The route of Emirates flight EK225, Dubai to San Francisco
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The route of Emirates flight EK225, Dubai to San Francisco
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The route of Emirates flight EK225, Dubai to San Francisco
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No content
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No content
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I % The Irue size Of. G o o d l e z a r t h
earth.google.com/web/search/Kaliningrad,«Kaliningrad+Oblast,+Russia/@-48.89853083,177.47120488,-3923.87071485a,12728343.21976662 Q * S e a r c h DuckDuckGo V P N
Tools I H e l o
K a l i n i n g r a d , K a l i n i n a r a d O b l a s t , F
⽬
" P a t h o r p o l y g o n
P a p u a N e
c l i c k points o n the map to draw a path o r polygon
L e n g t h
20.711.47 km
s a v e t o p r o j e c t
" L a v e r ' s
G o o g l e . D a t a a t t r i b u t i o n
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“The problem was approached as
a purely mathematical exercise.
The authors do not recommend
sailing along the found paths.”
Disclaimer.
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Do try this at home.
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The video is without sound.
A Strange Map Projection (Euler Spiral) -
Numberphile, with Hannah Fry
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No content
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Goode homolosine projection
pseudocylindrical, equal-area
The orange-peel map
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No content
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No content
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No content
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No content
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Tissot’s indicatrix
Globe
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No content
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What are the options?
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Cylindrical
Conic
Azimuthal
https://www.mathworks.com/help/map/the-
three-main-families-of-map-projections.html
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Azimuthal
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Stab-Werner projection
pseudoconic equal-area
Cordiform
‘emotions’
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R E C E N S I N T E G R A O R B I S D E S C R I P T I O 2
E R T
O R O N T I V S F . DELPH. REGT- HEMATIC® FACIEBAT
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C
L
I
M
A
, Q
U
A
R
,
F AV O
SVESOLANVS
A F T I C V S
V I T U R A N S
E V R O N G I V S
N
O
T
V
S
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Robinson projection
neither equal-area nor conformal
(a compromise)
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Winkel tripel projection
goal of minimizing three kinds of distortion:
area, direction, and distance
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Gall-Peters projection
Cylindrical equal-area
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No content
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Sinu-Mollweide Waterman butterfly
Peirce Quincuncial
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The Authagraph
Hajime Narukawa worked for 6 years on this map, and won the 2016 Good Design Awards - Grand Award.
https://curiosity.com/topics/the-authagraph-is-the-worlds-most-accurate-map-curiosity/
made by equally dividing a spherical surface into 96
triangles, transferring it to a tetrahedron while maintaining
area proportions, and unfolding it in the form of a
rectangle: it is a polyhedral map projection
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No content
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The Authagraph map projection centered on Europe
Has been reverse engineered.
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From the short-lived
Globehead! Journal of
Extreme Cartography:
Catherine Reeves’
Equinational Projection,
allocates each nation
the exact same amount of
space by reducing them
all, equally, to a simple
square.
The UK is 178
The US is 179
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Map by Ken Myers
American ESL teacher, 2013
Radius: ~4,000 kilometres
Center: South China Sea
Winkel-Tripel map projection
with a Valeriepieris circle
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Map by Ken Myers
American ESL teacher, 2013
Radius: ~4,000 kilometres
Center: South China Sea
Winkel-Tripel map projection
with a Valeriepieris circle
What is the
spectacular
lie in this
map?
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Map by Riaz Shah
professor at Hult International
Business School.
Radius: ~3,300 kilometres
Center: Mong Khet in Myanmar
includes the Himalayas, desolate
regions of Siberia, and Mongolia,
the world’s least densely
populated country
A proper circle.
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Some theories suggest
that Australia is in fact
Scooby-Doo
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[W]e strongly urge book and map
publishers, the media and
government agencies to cease
using rectangular world maps for
general purposes or artistic
displays.
Such maps promote serious,
erroneous conceptions by severely
distorting large sections of the
world […]”
Resolution adopted by seven North
American cartographic societies in 1989:
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You won’t
believe
what
happened
next.
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The Web
Mercator
adopted by Google
in 2005
also known as Google Web
Mercator, Spherical Mercator,
WGS 84 Web Mercator or
WGS 84/Pseudo-Mercator
Spatial systems: EPSG
900913, 3857, 3785, 3587
Used by virtually all major
online map providers
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Globe
Ellipse
EARTH
Ellipse
Geographic coordinates (longitude/latitude are defined on curved a 2D
surface. This can be an ellipsoid (most data) or sphere (very rarely). Both
projections can have an equation.
+
ellipsoid
+
+
sphere
sphere
= Conformal
(correct angles)
= Conformal
(correct angles)
= Non-Conformal
(wrong)
PROJECTION/EQUATION
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“The Web Mercator is
a mistake that got out
of control.
It distorts everything*.”
*shapes, angles, areas, distances,
directions, rhumb lines, compass
bearings, etceteras…
– Bojan Šavrič – cartographer, PhD
in geography, author of
projectionwizard.org
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Use Literally Anything but
Web Mercator [YouTube]
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Not accepted by
standardisation orgs
"We have reviewed the
coordinate reference system used
by Microsoft, Google, etc. and
believe that it is technically
flawed. We will not devalue the
EPSG dataset by including such
inappropriate geodesy and
cartography.”
Geodesy subcommittee of the
OGP's Geomatics committee
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The unofficial
code EPSG:900913
came to be used.
EPSG Geodetic Parameter Dataset
(also EPSG registry) is a public
registry of geodetic datums and
spatial reference systems.
EPSG 1024–32767
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The unofficial
code EPSG:900913
came to be used.
EPSG Geodetic Parameter Dataset
(also EPSG registry) is a public
registry of geodetic datums and
spatial reference systems.
EPSG 1024–32767
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The unofficial
code EPSG:900913
came to be used.
GOOGLE
transliterated to
numbers
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“[I]magine if all of Google's data and
programming ability was suddenly in the
hands of a Namibian agriculturalist, a
Sahelian nomad or a Senegalese
fisherwoman
– the maps they would conjure up would be
completely different.
They might well prioritise soil types over
Starbucks, wells over Walmarts and the
state of land degradation over panoramic
street views of American towns.”
– James Wan, The Guardian
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With better ways to
visualize the world
humans are better
equipped to address
Earth’s challenges.
What would it
take to do better?
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Please pay a LOT of
money to make the
“top” world look
smaller.
AND to confuse your
constituents.
It’s a tough argument to make.
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Well yes
Would it be make maps
more accurate?
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Would it be make maps
more accurate?
Well yes
And no
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A cartographer is also…
a designer.
with deadlines,
insufficient data,
cultural biases, a budget
– and an agenda.
Can be an agent of power.
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Who made this tool, why
and under what constraints?
Whose power is being wielded?
What is the data source and is it the
right one for the job?
What is being left out, added or
distorted?
For all maps, please ask…
What assumptions are
being made and/or conveyed?
Who stands to lose from
the use of this tool?
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Who made this tool, why
and under what constraints?
Whose power is being wielded?
What is the data source and is it the
right one for the job?
What is being left out, added or
distorted?
For all maps, please ask…
tools
What assumptions are
being made and/or conveyed?
Who stands to lose from
the use of this tool?
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Hera Hussain – participatory design, how do we give
people more power over the maps they use?
Matt Jukes – working in the open, be a superhero fan
Alex Blandford & Katherine Wastell – change is hard,but
you have the tools to make it happen
Dr Zeynep Engin – it’s super important that we understand
trustworthiness in human-machine collaborations
Ignacia Orellana & Clara Greo – map the pain points to
understand the costs
Claire Dellar – imagine the potential of the 100%
perspective to mapping!
What did we learn today?
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"We set out to explore the
moon and instead
discovered the Earth."
William Anders
– Astronaut who took the Earthrise photograph in 1968
together with Jim Lovell and Frank Borman
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The Earth is flat.
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I have acted as if the Earth is flat
when I have underestimated how
much flat maps distort the world.
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Maps need lines.
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Maps need lines.
And you need to understand what the lines say.
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Understanding what the lines say will help
us all take better care of our home.
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Choosing new lines when you talk about the world
can help you talk about it differently.
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You can start changing the world today. Truly and literally.
Thank you.
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You can start changing the world today. Truly and literally.
Thank you.
Slides, links, videos, references and more:
axbom.com/cdmaps