Map Projections

Map projections all encounter the issue of trying to represent something out of its actual element. Whenever attempting to do this, things become distorted and information can be falsified. The consequences of such portrayals are influential along a negative trend and hazardous in certain situations. People use and trust maps for a variety of purposes; these include and are not limited to, political strategy, social analysis, geographical specifics, and simple navigation. If information on the map is flawed, politicians could use them for propaganda, inaccurate representations of populations could be made, landmarks could be misrepresented, and distance, trajectories and areas could be skewed.

For example, politicians used a map that displayed a massive Russia, completely out of proportion. It was used as propaganda to instill fear in Americans about the Soviet Union and its power. Although this may seem like something miniscule, the power of such a representation is grand and helped politicians gain support for an ill-purposed cause.

Also, as shown on the map projections displayed above, distances can be skewed up to two-thousand miles. In the Equidistant and Conformal Projections the distance from Washington D.C. to Kabul is 8,468 miles. In the Equal Area Projections that same distance changes to 6,934 and 8,763 miles in the Cylindrical and Behrman Cylindrical Projections respectively. Such a difference is astronomical and poses a substantial threat to simple navigation around the world. Angles, areas, directions, shapes and distances all become distorted.

The perks of map projections are found in the basis that it actually can display a three-dimensional thing onto a two-dimensional surface. This makes it extremely valuable in society despite its errors. The errors from this process will always be present but modern technology allows for those errors to be minimalized so the projections may serve a beneficial and informational purpose. While all projections distort things in some way, specific ones can be used for specific causes that makes the distortions acceptable and the map still useful.