Mappenstance.

It is impossible for maps to be neutral.  

Mapmakers decide what information to include and exclude from their maps.  Their choices reflect their personal values, beliefs, and knowledge of the world around them.  Therefore, all maps communicate their mapmakers’ bias, whether or not this is the mapmakers intention.

This is true for all maps, including the United States Interstate Highway Map by OnlineAtlas.us.  

President Dwight D. Eisenhower listed the benefits of an Interstate Highway System in a speech to the Governors’ Conference in 1954.  These benefits included increased safety, less congestion, a stronger economy, and better defense “should an atomic war come.”

On June 25, 1956, President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.  The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 established a 41,000-mile National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, which has become known as the Interstate Highway System.

The United States Interstate Highway System has allowed industries to spread and grow, encouraged rural areas to be further away from cities, and created a jump in U.S. employment since being built.  Over the past fifty years, the highways have authorized unprecedented economic growth and opportunities for millions of Americans.

At first glance, it may seem like the United States Interstate Highway Map is a simple map that shows paved roads in the United States, but this is clearly not the case.  

First, the mapmakers had to choose how to project the United States.  They chose to put the North at the top of the map and the South at the bottom.  Why not the other way around?  

There is no correct way to orient the United States – the idea of a “north” and a “south” is a social construct.  It would make sense, however, that the Americans who created this map would put North at the top of the map, as it hints at a superiority of their home country – the United States.

Second, the mapmakers saw it fit to include state names, as well as state capitals.  This could have been to show how the interstate highway created an interconnectedness between the different major cities of the United States.  

The United States becomes safer and more efficient as it increases its interconnectedness, and therefore, the impact of the interstate highway is clearer when one can see what cities it goes through.

The map also showcases the areas that are not connected by the interstate highway, perhaps hinting at the idea that those locations are not as important, or are inferior, to the interconnected locations.   

Third, the mapmakers selected certain colors to represent the different states.  How come Florida and Maine are colored red, while Nebraska and Oregon are colored yellow?  Is there some kind of similarity between states with the same color, or were the colors picked at random?  

It seems that the colors were picked at random to make state lines more clear, but that could be an incorrect assumption.  There could be a similarity between the same color states that the mapmakers are trying to convey in their map, though there is no way to know for sure by simply observing the map.

Fourth, the mapmakers chose to include the major lakes in their map.  Why would they do this?  What does that add to the map of the interstate highway?  Perhaps, it shows the power of the United States, since there seem to be more man made highways than natural rivers on the map.

Lastly, the mapmakers decided to include Alaska and Hawaii on the map, despite the fact they do not contain any interstate or U.S. highways.  It is possible they did this to show the unity of the United States, despite the lack of physical unity it has.

The United States Interstate Highway map shows how much power a map can contain.  Since the map seems to be straightforward, people may accept the map as truth, and nothing but the truth.  This map excludes as much as it includes, however, giving the onlooker a limited version of the truth.

People may observe this map and start to believe that Nebraska and Oregon share an innate similarity to one another, some areas of the United States are superior to others, and/or we have connected our country to a greater extent than have our natural waterways – but these observations lack a depth of knowledge that is required to make such claims.  

As people living in this map-filled world, we must be critical thinkers who question the knowledge that is presented to us.  If we would like to further the human population’s knowledge and exploration, we must be active participants in the dissemination of correct and unbiased information.

Maps are not neutral, but if we realize this and deal with them carefully, maps can become greatly useful to us and they can lead us to new and exciting experiences.

Resources

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Mercator Projection.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 16 Aug. 2013, www.britannica.com/science/Mercator-projection.

“Impact.” The History of the Interstate Highway System, highway.umwblogs.org/impact/.

Molloy, Antonia. “Gerardus Mercator: 3 Ways Influential Cartographer Changed the Way We Look at the World.” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 5 Mar. 2015,www.independent.co.uk/news/world/gerardus-mercator-how-the-cartographers-map-could-be-influencing-your-view-of-the-world-in-ways-you-10087386.html.

United States. Congress. House. Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Recognizing the 50th Anniversary of the Interstate Highway System: Report (to Accompany H. Con. Res. 372). [Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O.], 2006.

“United States Highway Map.” United States Interstate Highway Map, Online Atlas, www.onlineatlas.us/interstate-highways.htm.

Weingroff, Richard F. “Highway History.” U.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Highway Administration, 27 June 2017, www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/originalintent.cfm.

Few scientists challenge the notions of climate change and global warming. Although these fact-based, scientific theories have been thoroughly proven through countless years of evidential data, there still remains those who refuse to accept the prospect that humans may be the primary contributors to our Earth’s gradual decay. “The World: 4º Celsius Warmer” is a scientific yet hypothetical map which describes a world ravaged by severe global warming—one where two-thirds of South America is underwater, the entirety of Madagascar and Polynesia have disappeared, and the Amazon Rainforest is now known as the Amazon Desert—and may be a map with such strong underlying rhetoric that it might just spook a global warming skeptic into believing in a need for change. Published eight years ago by the prominent British journal, New Scientist, the map’s contents are extremely alarming, but how accurate can a projected map of a world in the year 2100 (or even later) really be if it was created in 2009? Regardless, any map published by a renowned and reliable scientific journal (and which therefore holds scientific backing) and depicts western Antarctica as a future metropolis demands to be heard and should be analyzed in detail.

The map presents a world almost unrecognizable in population patterns, energy distribution, and, most obviously, climate. As if the very conditions chosen to be represented in the key at the bottom of the diagram did not highlight the devastational changes loudly enough, the map’s creators also chose to include 18 additional blurbs detailing the vast and distinctive changes of chosen geographical areas, however the tone of these 18 blurbs throughout the map is composed of eerily negative rhetoric. Words such as repercussion, abandon, consequence, encroach, and vanish jump out at the reader as they scan the map, while even more evidently somber diction can be observed from sentences such as “the Colorado river is a mere trickle.” Was this sentence really necessary? The information stated within the “Southwest US” blurb is not changed whatsoever by the addition of this sentence—it was only made to have a more “doomsday” tone. Most likely, this is a reflection of the map’s creators’ underlying interests; being creators of a map that depicts the long term effects of global warming, they most probably side with the existence of global warming themselves, and thus, while perhaps subconsciously, made this map a type of propaganda urging others to believe and fear the same as them.  

Other inquiries can be made regarding the legitimacy of this map and the values of its creators. Over 50% of the world on the map is labeled as “uninhabitable,” but by what standard? An additional 4º celsius in the desert of Dubai will not make the desert any more desert than it currently is and will not increase the temperature to the point where it would be impossible for a human being to survive. Further, the choice to measure increase in temperature in celsius instead of farenheit could even have been a strategically deceitful decision, as an increase in 4º celsius is equivalent to a 7.2º increase in fahrenheit, making the drastic results of a world increased by 4º celsius much more believable compared to the same map with a title of “The World: 7.2º Fahrenheit Warmer.” Lastly, the sources/research behind the creation of this map are nowhere to be found on either the map itself nor on the New Scientist website. Without any provided proof that any of these potential phenomena are capable of happening in the future, the information behind “The World: 4º Celsius Warmer” could be completely fabricated, and thus, the map could have been made to serve the sole purpose of scaring society into believing in climate change and global warming.

But is creating a map that prioritizes emotional persuasion over scientific reliability or accuracy such a crime? Accuracy is a standard that is often placed onto maps in western culture, and consequently we tend to forget that a map may serve an overt purpose or function that is unrelated to accuracy. “The World: 4º Warmer” accomplishes its objective by urging the reader toward fear of a post-global warming world. It can even be considered refreshing to come across a map that openly aims to persuade rather than hide its true intentions or motives behind science or accuracy. Occasionally, overt bias is acceptable in a map where issues such as global warming and climate change are in dire need of increased social awareness and change—thus identifying the map of “The World: 4º Warmer” equally as legitimate as one constructed with accuracy as its central principle.

As scholars have pointed out since decades ago: a map is far more than just “reproducing” reality; it has characteristics, that define who it is and what it’s for.

Denis Wood stated in his The Power of Maps, “maps link the territory with what comes with it.” I assume there are three aspects in Wood’s idea. First, the Geographic depiction of boundaries that tie up with the spatial reality of a specific area. In this World Population Map published in 2005, the whole image is filled with regular squares of a grid. As the squares are colored according to the relative positions of the countries in the world, people can basically recognize which country a colored area represents.

World Population Map (2005)

Secondly, related information about the area, like demography or climate, can be presented on the map. It is the main focus of this Population Map to show demographic situation about different countries. While a square represents one million people, the map clearly shows the proportions of how many people are living in respective areas. It is especially useful when an audience can get numerical information from the graph directly, both the approximate figure of the population and relative proportions compared with that of other countries. Clearly, China and India, having the two largest populations in the world, are the ones to catch audiences’ attention at the first glance.

Among the various characteristics, there is one factor that stands out, and that’s the third aspect I like to point out: the representative of political power – the selectivity of mapping reflects mapmakers’ political view. On the one hand, the main presentation of population subverts people’s common cognition of the world to some extents: except for China and India having both huge area and population, some large countries with small populations are shrunken, while some others with inconspicuous size but a rather big population stand out and draw people’s attention. For example, it may take you a while to find Canada, Russia, and Australia as they have turned into thin lines or dots in the large picture. On the contrary, it’s easier to notice places as Singapore, Philippines, and Indonesia in this map when they are magnified because of the relatively large proportion of the population. Generally speaking, since the Asian part is prominent, it can be inferred that the cartographers want to emphasize the enormous human resource in Asia.

On the other hand, the choice of “color” also reveals the concept in a political perspective. When Taiwan and mainland China, Kosovo and Serbia are not in the same color, mapmakers demonstrate their standpoints that they recognize Taiwan and Kosovo as independent states, which other countries may not agree to.

In addition, by putting the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the map, which amplifies North America and Europe, it is obvious that the cartographers consider the West as the center of the world.

At the same time, I identify some advantages of looking at the world in this brand-new way: this map was published in 2005, and it tells the story of history. When audiences are looking from a present perspective of view in 2017, they are aware of what has changed during the past 12 years: The State Union of Serbia and Montenegro has dissolved; South Sudan declared independence from the Republic of Sudan… In other words, maps are reflections of the history. Just as Denis Wood stated: “When the map is produced, it’s already out of date.” Moreover, the vague border lines between areas avoid the controversies of disputed areas, like Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

All in all, as a tool that reflects both reality and ideology, the Population Map offers a great opportunity to look at the world in an innovative view, that not only provides detailed information, but also makes audiences think about the “hidden languages” behind the picture. Therefore, I chose it as the “Map of the Week.”