The exploration of the physical world would not have been possible without the skills of the map makers. There has not been any great discovery without a map that might have formed the basis for the exploration. In 2013, Jerry Brotton published A History of the World in 12 Maps, which described why specific maps were important in making history. Maps not only represent it, but they also determine our world. In 2017 following her GPS, a 23-year-old woman drove her Toyota Yaris straight into a lake in Ontario, Canada. Following in the path of Columbus who followed a similarly flawed map made around 1491 by Henricus Martellus, a German cartographers which had Japan straight ahead to the east of Spain. It was also third smaller, but compensated by using Arabian miles (1830 meters) rather than about 1,480 meters for Italian miles and which led Columbus to expect the voyage to Asia to be much shorter. He came across America by using a flawed map. Maps are the spring board to exploration, and in todays information overload, gaining a reference map helps in knowing where you are trying to get.
Today we need maps to navigate the information morass. We used to refer to this as the information highway, but there are no rules, no lanes, no order, different speed, erratic direction, unseen drivers, no drivers and many hope for sales. Everyone is selling. This is the Memorial Day sale of information, every imaginable interest pushing across their ideas. Fake news, fake science, conspiracy theories, shoddy research, pet theories and the awareness of relative truth presented together with the scientific and the spiritual.
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