Unintentional Distribution of Misinformation: The Globe
Another post got me thinking about unconscious bias through unconscious misinformation distribution. We often think of the US as being an enormous country and having such enormous impact on the world. And considering the crisis between Ukraine and Russia, the US and China, we think of them being physically large countries. They are, but not as big as we think. Despite the importance we place on the US, Russia, China and the countries of Europe, at 30.4 million kilometers squared, each of these regions pale in comparison to the size of the African continent.
Australia is almost equal in size to the US, as is Brazil. The entirety of the North American continent could fit neatly inside the continent of Africa. But when designers and business people include global maps in their links, presentations, corporate communications, planning sessions, by using inaccurate maps of the world, they are accidentally sharing misinformation about the world.
Google's desktop map app shows a very interesting perspective on the true size of the continents and countries:
There's not even a good reason for North America and Europe to be "on top". Not only is there no up or down in space, while the Earth revolved around the Sun in a specific way, as do all the planets in our system, not only does the Sun NOT have a top or bottom, but our entire solar system isn't a horizontal plate. Our solar system travels through the universe, on "edge". So, our North, is actually pointing "forward" or "backward". In fact, our planet rotates around the sun, and our Sun rotates around our galactic core, but our galaxy moves through space rotating ass-over-teakettle.
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Of course our perspective is relative. Unfortunately, it is based on maps created by Europeans when traveling by ship and taught in every school.
It would be great if all of this didn't blow so many minds wouldn't it? We can start by replacing all the maps in schools. That should be a boon to the map making industry and stock image illustrators, if anyone could convince them to draw maps correctly.
For a good laugh, and education, enjoy this clip from one of my favorite episodes of the West Wing, featuring Star Trek alum John Billingsley.