I had a great meeting on Tuesday with some gentlemen representing a tech company based in Taipei, Taiwan. One of the slides in their presentation completely surprised me. It was a map of the globe centered on the North Pole and looking down. It had China front and center on the bottom part of the map. But its most jarring feature was that North and South America were standing on their head toward the top of the map.
I had simply never seen such a thing–certainly not presented seriously as a map of the globe. In fact, someone in the meeting had the nuts to declare "certainly an interesting map!". The presenter defended it by pointing out that "it’s the most fair because it centers on the North Pole". Seems to me there’s still some room for picking an "unfair" map even given that view, but it’s not like global-projection-choice-fairness is something that I spend time fretting over.
I spent some time looking around to find the projection that was used so I could share it with the two of you who read this, and I’ve decided that it was based on a gnomonic projection onto a flattened tetrahedron. I say based on becuse the fragmented Antarctica was missing entirely, and concentric perfect circles and radial lines centered on the North Pole were substituted for the true grid lines. (The 108k PDF rotated 30 degrees clockwise is the one that most closely resembles what I saw.)
This got me to thinking about how pretty much everyone’s ideal map is the one that puts their home in some visually significant place. Seems to me that our usual view of the globe (northwestern hemisphere in the upper left quadrant) evolved naturally as maps of Europe, Asia, and Africa were augmented by new discoveries to the west during The Age of Exploration. Europe’s happy because it was a natural progression. We’re happy because we have prime real estate on the map, and pretty much everyone else feels shafted. This leads to Australians using 180 degree rotations of our map (partially in jest), and to Taiwanese businessmen using gomonic projections and flattened tetrahedra.
I really do like their map, though. I’ve already printed a copy and plan to hang it outside my office at work.