h a l f b a k e r yI like this idea, only I think it should be run by the government.
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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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What important information does this WCS thing provide that's not provided in a country name, or an ISO country code (for example?) Since countries don't generally drift about (tectonic plates aside) if you state your country as GB - for example, it's always going to be in N6W0 or N6E0. Meanwhile if someone states their location to be N6E0, someone reading that might not be able to determine whether to converse with you in English, French, German, Flemish, Luxembourgish, Danish, or Waloon. |
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I think it is more important what imortant information it doesn't provide... |
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Ah, ok - so why not leave it blank? |
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[edit] OK, because you want it to drive information local to you. |
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I get the point, you notice that people are defining some demographic ranges in terms of standard periodic values, and some in terms of more arbitrary boundary conditions and think we should use the same standard for everything. |
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It's an interesting argument and has been brought up by those who call it 'constructivism' in data collection relating populations. By defining how we determine our boundary conditions for inclusion in one population over another, we are also, 'constructing' those populations. Really, there's just a bunch of people wondering about, getting on with it - who's to say that some of them are X and others are Y? |
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At the same time, if some people are subject to a regime that's very different to another one, and the border between those regimes is an historical, arbitrary one - it can still be useful to make note of that information. |
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Say you lived in a country that bordered North Korea (or China) someone sending you email might write it differently if they thought the regime you live in might be monitoring your emails for dissident content. |
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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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