los mapas no son para dar direcciones, son para dominarnos!

el megablog de WE MAKE MONEY NOT ART publicó una reseña sobre la expo Cartography of Protest and Social Changes (Cartografia de protesta y cambio social).

Esta muestra examina el rol de los mapas en nuestra sociedad, no como "medios para orientarnos y preguntar direcciones" sino de las lecturas implicitas que van en el diseño de los mismos.

Por ejemplo...

The first version was drawn in 1946 by someone from the US department and had North America at the center of the emblem. The design was changed after some complains from other countries. But one question remained: how do you design a map of the world that has to be fair and display equality between the nations? There is always something on the top, something in the middle (and thus the center of the attention), even being on the left side is not innocent as our eyes are used to read from left to right, the right is also meaningful as advertisers have discovered that the eyes always seem to fall on that side of an image. The solution adopted represents an azimuthal equidistant projection centered on the North Pole. But that area which one would believe is blank and neutral is in fact a space for debate: the area is owned by Denmark, Canada, Russia, Norway and the US and it's unclear how it should be divided up exactly.

Continuen leyendo la reseña aquí, o lean la página de la expo aquí