pnyv!'s BUTTERFLY MAP SIGNET & WORLD MAPSWorld Maps are all around us and no one will doubt that they are necessary to understand the world we live in. We will also all agree that they have to be accurate, representing continents, land and water spaces in their relative sizes, like they truly “are” - on our round globe, on the planet we inhabit – and on which we now need to solve challenges of unprecedented dimensions. Yet, with high probability, this is the first time in your life that you DO see a “realistic” world map! Why? Because the one you see in television news programs, in your school books and on google maps does not show the continents in their realistic proportions at all. Rather, they show Africa in about half its size, clip off most of the oceans, blow up icy Greenland to continental proportions, almost fades out India... How come? Well, because the “Mercator Projection” map, currently used as a global standard, was not created as a world map in the first place! But only for navigating the oceans.
WHAT IS A MAP? LET'S BE REAL! Globes are 3-dimensional models of Planet Earth. Maps are 2-dimensional models and there is a science to creating them! For thousands of years, scholars have worked towards creating exact, true and fidel maps. Only in the 20th Century have they achieved creating equal-area maps. Your google, television news and school atlas map is from 1569! It shows Antarctica larger than all other landmasses together. Wow – how “professional” – Hahahahaha! Do they also still think it is a land of dragons? “The abuse of the Mercator projection in world representations led several American geographic societies to approve, in 1989-90, a recommendation rejecting the use of rectangular world maps for general purposes or artistic displays.” And still, politicians and citizens base their decisions on this worldview: it even coins the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals campaign's logo.
EQUAL-AREA WORLD MAPS ARE FINALLY TAKING THE WORLD STAGE Experts have long collected and provided a large variety of world maps – designed and available for different purposes. ODT Maps http://odtmaps.com is maybe the largest resource on the internet. Bob Abrams offers an excellent video on map making. We are hoping for an online edition of “Many Ways to See the World”. At last, change is dawning. UNESCO and some attentive international organisations have changed their websites’ world maps. Reasonable map projections have recently been discussed in good media, too. Carlos A. Furuti offers an outstanding dive into cartography http://progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/CartIntro/cartIntro.html and fun polyhedral map projections for free download and print-out http://progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjPoly/Foldout/foldout.html. Try your skills on "Dodecahedral Pseudoglobes" - they're great for surprising friends, for kids and classrooms, too!
EARTH-LITERACY Futurist Heiner Benking explores the substantial role Map and Model Thinking play for Earth-Literacy and earth-literate leadership in a globalised world faced with multicomplex, interdisciplinary and multicultural challenges. His presentations display concrete examples of wrong, misleading, even dangerous world maps laden with ideology in our media and political environments. He also shows cornerstones of the paradigm shift towards more complete worldviews and new models nurturing capacities in addressing systemic global issues http://in-betweener.org/flatworlds/maps/earth-literacy.html. See also professional Recommendations for Map Making pnyv!'s Earth-Literacy article, the Earth-Literacy co-Lab.
THE WATERMAN BUTTERFLY MAP Speaking of change - here is our favourite: Steve Waterman’s Butterfly Projection Map http://watermanpolyhedron.com is definitely one of the most beautiful – and accurate! - world maps. Its symbolic spirit of transformation in combination with Planet Earth, makes it a unique symbol for positive global change - and this is why it now decorates pnyv! publications as a signet!
© 2006, odtmaps.com; Waterman Butterfly Map reprinted with permission of odtmaps.com http://odtmaps.com/detail.asp_Q_product_id_E_WAT-26.5x38-V1-proto; Steve Waterman's websites: http://watermanpolyhedron.com/CART2.html and http://watermanpolyhedron.com/CART10.html
SETTING SEEDS IN EDUCATION – TAKE NEW MAPS TO SCHOOL So, if you are in school… you have science on your side! How about educating your educators on basic map issues? The links on this page offer a lot of practical items for discussion and activities. And maybe have a collective VOTE about WHICH MAP TO USE in your classroom and school!?!?!? Hey, set a seed to make people around you THINK! Try this in school, and let us know the results! Photos welcome!!! Or how about spreading it through Reverse Graffiti?
IMAGES: 1. pnyv! Earth Day Editorial 2. Mercator Projection: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator-Projektion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection 3. ODT website screenshot: http://odtmaps.com 4. In-Betweener screenshot: http://in-betweener.org 5. Truncated Icosahedron "Buckyball" Foldout by Carlos A. Furuti: http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjPoly/Foldout/TIcosahedron/ticosahedron.html 6. pnyv! Flyer
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