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> It was part of efforts to stop the "world's longest misinformation and disinformation" about Africa, she said. Are they trying to say some negative outcome i
by hankbond 11d ago
> It was part of efforts to stop the "world's longest misinformation and disinformation" about Africa, she said.
Are they trying to say some negative outcome in Africa is caused by the Mercator projection?
- stop50 11d agoAfrika has a lot of landmass around the equator, while the others are at the edges where in the mercator anything is stretched out. Europe and north america appear bigger than they are.
- hankbond 10d agoThat is factually correct, but what is the impact of it? Why does it matter concretely?
- prmph 10d agoDoes it matter whether things are true, even if their impact is not readily apparent? Now, as to impact, one could argue distorting the relative sizes of landmasses causes geopolitical ignorance. For example: do people understand how relatively small western Europe is, the ramifications of that for their political unity, transport system, and impact on the world? Showing the true size of Africa helps to put into context its challenges with regional transport, political unification, flow of ideas, etc. It also shows that Africa is actually has a relatively low population density. It also makes it easier to understand why lumping everything there under an "Africa" moniker is weird. As a side effect, the sizes of other regions like South America are also shown more accurately.