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Technically it does not shrink Africa’s size but it inflates the apparent size of northern and southern areas.
It seems clear that the problems of African developement can be fixed by topping the evil cadre of cartographers that keep it down. On the other hand, Africa has an obvious advantage by coming first in alphabetical order.
They will have to come up with a standard replacement for Web Mercator and update lots of GIS software to use the new standard, if they want to make a practical dent in how much Mercator is used.
Mercator maps aren't used because of ego but because they are the ONLY maps that have 2 properties:
1) straight lines in reality are straight lines on the map. Which enables the following: measure an angle on the map and walk in that direction to get to a destination (e.g. compared to THAT mountaintop, go 30degrees to it's right and walk in a straight line, to get to your destination)
In all other map types (including an actual globe I might add), you have to walk a curve. A "geodesic".
2) straight lines in reality are straight lines on the map. So walking a straight line actually gets you where the line on the map is going (meaning you don't need those absurdly huge compasses to construct ellipses to approximate your path on the map that you see in certain old paintings or in some movies)
But of course, the only reason someone might want these properties on maps is ego. That's the only thing.
Can we agree that the 16th-century map of Africa shown with the article, is not in the Mercator projection, as the meridians and parallels are not straight lines? Mercator did use different projections for different maps, depending on their purpose.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 44.6 ms ] threadAIUI the important word here is ‘nagivation’. If you use the other projections for navigation you’re going to have a bad time.
I bet you can even find some that are the correct oblate spheroid.
It seems clear that the problems of African developement can be fixed by topping the evil cadre of cartographers that keep it down. On the other hand, Africa has an obvious advantage by coming first in alphabetical order.
1) straight lines in reality are straight lines on the map. Which enables the following: measure an angle on the map and walk in that direction to get to a destination (e.g. compared to THAT mountaintop, go 30degrees to it's right and walk in a straight line, to get to your destination)
In all other map types (including an actual globe I might add), you have to walk a curve. A "geodesic".
2) straight lines in reality are straight lines on the map. So walking a straight line actually gets you where the line on the map is going (meaning you don't need those absurdly huge compasses to construct ellipses to approximate your path on the map that you see in certain old paintings or in some movies)
But of course, the only reason someone might want these properties on maps is ego. That's the only thing.