Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

This map is not upside down

maps.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 540 posts

Re: This map is not upside down

#391

Post by jcattle »

vladms wrote: post #382
jcattle wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy is not quite appropriate. An upside down mug is "wrong". The mug looses its meaning and you have to turn it around to use it as a mug. That's not the case with a map. An "upside down" map is just as valid as a right side up map. The fact that it is upside down is not supposed to mind blowing, it's the fact that it isn't upside down at all. We are just used to it being represented this way up, but there's…

> An "upside down" map is just as valid as a right side up map. Is it as useful and/or efficient though? I could write a phrase in English from right to left and if you really wanted you could read it, but it would be highly inefficient. An efficient society sometimes has to pick conventions (how to write text, how to print a map, what characters to use, etc) and I find not interesting to point that other conventions…

I mean, to me at least it is also interesting. Like Japanese writing or Arabic. It's interesting because it is different, there's a different predominant convention. You can also think further about how the writing convention might have had an impact on culture and the society itself.

Also thinking of maps and Japan: where I am from (Germany) public overview maps of parks or street maps usually have north as up. In Japan however it is very common for those maps to have up as the cardinal direction you are looking at the map at. So if you are looking at the map in a western direction, the map will have west up. So for walking the map is straight up, backwards down, left left and right right.

Like that it is very easy to know which way to go. Want to go to some place that is on the left on the map? Turn left!

Re: This map is not upside down

#392

Post by jmkd »

jama211 wrote: post #106
jmkd wrote: post #102

Maps should have east at the top for a few reasons: 1. The sun (and moon and planets and many stars) rises in the east. 2. The east represents what is to come. This manifests in natural (day / night cycles) and cultural (timezones / dateline) aspects. 3. Orienting a map to such an easy to locate (day or night) direction requires no compass or other technology. 4. Orienting a map with such an impactful direction at th…

The sun doesn’t rise directly in the east though unless you live exactly on the equator, and it rises a different amount off of east every day. However, at noon, the sun is always either due north or due south depending on what hemisphere you’re in, so number 3 is quite arguable. Also the North Star being a thing is quite influential.

It does on both equinoxes, which along with the solstices have been universally marked days in every civilization. Consider those days as reliable calibrations for any kind of wayfinding or navigation system in ancient times. Aztecs, Mayans and Incans noted the sunrise position every day of the year in order to plan agricultural (and cultural) activity.

Re: This map is not upside down

#393

Post by brabel »

parineum wrote: post #330
whstl wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone from the southern hemisphere, the only thing more patronizing and infuriating than this is the insistence from the same moralizing group that my country isn’t part of “The West”, despite it being physically and culturally there.

"The West" is Western Europe and it's colonial/cultural derivatives. It hasn't been a directional term for centuries. Everyone intuitively knows this based on the usage but, every now and then, someone like you thinks they are clever and nobody else understands.

That’s why both Australia and South America were supposed to be integral part of the Western world. Only recently South America has become kind of unwelcome due to its political and economical misalignment.

Re: This map is not upside down

#394

Post by strken »

j4coh wrote: post #329
patternMachine wrote: post #48

The moralizing that always accompanies (not) upside down maps is so tedious. It's a genuinely interesting example of how something can look so wrong and yet not be wrong at all. To try to extend that "wrong" feeling to some kind of moral failure on the viewers part is just silly. You (or society) are not a bad or prejudiced person for thinking this way, it's just that nearly all maps produced have chosen a different…

I don’t seem to even get this effect, the map looks upside down not mind blowing. If I turn a mug over it’s not a mind blowing new thing, it’s an upside down mug.

Steady on now: there's an interesting psychological effect going on. A well known art exercise is to draw a subject upside down, particularly a person or a scene with a clear usual orientation.

When you take something you're very familiar with and turn it upside down, you see all the details - volume, shape, distance between points, geometric similarity, colour - with fresh eyes. With art, it becomes easier to draw a human figure because it discourages symbol drawing. With a map, I find it helps me realise how close certain points are to each other, how small politically significant regions are, which lattitude different climate bands sit at, and so on.

A mug is a pretty boring object which we're all used to seeing upside down and which doesn't have many interesting features, so of course turning it upside down will not reveal anything interesting.

Re: This map is not upside down

#395

Post by [deleted] »

CapsAdmin wrote: post #388
jcattle wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy is not quite appropriate. An upside down mug is "wrong". The mug looses its meaning and you have to turn it around to use it as a mug. That's not the case with a map. An "upside down" map is just as valid as a right side up map. The fact that it is upside down is not supposed to mind blowing, it's the fact that it isn't upside down at all. We are just used to it being represented this way up, but there's…

Maybe a better analogy would be English and why it's written and read left to right. To me at least, it feels very wrong to see English written right to left, but I also know it wouldn't be objectively wrong.

[deleted]

Re: This map is not upside down

#396

Post by Attrecomet »

vincvinc wrote: post #346
patternMachine wrote: post #48

The moralizing that always accompanies (not) upside down maps is so tedious. It's a genuinely interesting example of how something can look so wrong and yet not be wrong at all. To try to extend that "wrong" feeling to some kind of moral failure on the viewers part is just silly. You (or society) are not a bad or prejudiced person for thinking this way, it's just that nearly all maps produced have chosen a different…

Oh? I think the outrage over making the reader feel like "a bad or prejudiced person" that accompanies any invitation to challenge assumptions is so tedious. How come this culture war mindset infuses everything we do online now? Nowhere does this map or its description even imply you are a bad person. It's pure ... projection

"Deciding to put south, or north, at the top of maps is a decision of consequence. Psychologically, we tend to view things nearer the top as ‘good’ and those lower as ‘bad.’ This can influence our interpretation of maps at both global and local scales."

There it is, the implication that "North is up" is morally bad. Since it's an implication, it does not need to be read that way, but it's clearly there.

Re: This map is not upside down

#397

Post by t-3 »

blauditore wrote: post #381
t-3 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's wrong in any case. The center is the most important part.

Are you African by any chance?

Nope just an American old enough to remember real physical paper maps. You don't put the most important part on the edge. (I believe the Chinese also use "central" to describe the leader or foremost member of a group though. It's fascinating to think about how language might unconsciously influence behavior)

Re: This map is not upside down

#398

Post by ndriscoll »

matrss wrote: post #376
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North being up doesn't make left west because left is relative to front, not up, and front can easily change directions whereas up cannot (at least not relative to the direction of gravity). It happens that when you're looking at a map mounted on a wall with north up, west is left, but if you were to turn 90° left yourself, then west would be straight (front). This is all consistent with north being up.

But if you define "up" as the direction opposite to where gravity pulls things (which very much makes sense) then there is no possible situation in which north being up would be correct either. A compass needle never points up. You are mounting a map of something horizontal onto a vertical surface, it is just as correct - or depending on the alignment of the wall arguably even more correct - to put east up. You can o…

Obviously "up" is the direction of of the normal vector for Earth's orbit around the Sun. North is then tilted but mostly up.

Re: This map is not upside down

#399

Post by cogogo »

The interesting thing to me about this map is it allows me to see more easily how much of the Earth is ocean. With the conventional orientation my brain just keys in on the land.

Re: This map is not upside down

#400

Post by Attrecomet »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #293
pac0 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Islas Malvinas are Argentinian.

Not in these three fairly important ways: actual control, the wishes of the people who actually live there, de jure recognition by most countries. Otherwise, sure, totally and wholly Argentinian.

I've got another one: historically
Post reply on HN