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World's Neutral Map
A World's Culturally Neutral Cultural Map: A map with information organized into WGS-defined areas instead of country names. | |
In Wikipedia and elsewhere, I see that historical time-line is objectively and equally separated into centuries, decades, and other equal periods of time rathe than into periods of reigns of emperors. However, knowledge about world's geography is still quite commonly organized into information about
countries rather than objectively divided areas.
World Geodetic System provides an equally natural way to organize information about various world's regions into regularly-shaped areas, which can be referred to quickly and conveniently by naming the tens of degrees longitude and latitude. For example, I come from the area 6th ten Northern latitude, and 3rd ten of Eastern longitude (N6E3), meaning the area defined by the intervals of (50 deg, 60 deg] and (20 deg, 30 deg] of latitude and longitude respectively. With the need, one could switch to more precise numbers.
Potential uses:
- Reporting economical development of each area,
- Reporting disasters, and other natural events in each area,
etc.
Benefits:
Making people more peaceful, less discriminating each other, less concerned about international competition, more concerned about overall progress of mankind, detached from politically sensitive names, such as country names.
Wikipedia
https://secure.wiki...rld_Geodetic_System World Geodetic System [Inyuki, Oct 12 2010]
Illustration of a similar map
http://www.gisnotes...007/07/utmworld.gif (not exactly what is proposed, because some areas are irregular) [Inyuki, Oct 13 2010]
N6E3...
http://en.wikipedia...er:Inyuki/Area_N6E3 Started a sample description on Wikipedia userpage. [Inyuki, Oct 15 2010]
[link]
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I think it is more important what imortant information it doesn't provide... |
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- or, as you tangentially suggest, why not have people give their allegiance to tectonic plates, rather than to countries, demographics, locations or nationalities? |
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it doesn't make sense. Laws and governments are
different by country, laws and governments effect
demographics. |
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doesn't make much sense except in the context of history of the weather. |
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Even aside from politics and social borders, geography is quite important. |
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It makes a lot of sense if you are trying, as the writer seems to be, to remove the old socio-political labels we attach to certain nations and nationalities. |
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The idea appears to be an effort to recognise everyone as simply world citizens rather than "inscrutable Chinese", "warmongering Germans", "lazy Australians" or "burger-munching, invasion monkey Americans". |
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Won't anyone think of the Gypsies ? |
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tend to think that if somebody wants to portray themselves correctly that they'd choose their own pigeonhole to do so; maybe geographically related, maybe not. |
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I can see this gaining some acceptance in scientific
fields such as geology or palaeontology. Other than
that, I don't see much value. |
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