Saturn-2

Mayukh Sen's article titled "Dividing Lines" argues with itself on the issue of Google Earth's failure in masking its colonialist nature. On one hand, Google Earth helped a lost son, Saroo Brierly, find his hometown and family after years of separation. On the other, the imaging provided is sub-par, to say the least, and implies an ongoing colonial power.

He points out that Google Earth fails to capture the authenticity of a non-Western nation such as India, stating that "it hadn’t mapped out a lot of India beyond its major cities" and the fact that a lot of the villages had Anglicized versions of its ethnic name. He also noticed that "for every town in New Jersey with an image so clear that it triggers a memory charged with sentiment, there is an Indian village with images that are barely intelligible", explaining that this further purports the inferiority of the global South, implying that "some people’s homes are more important than others" when that is clearly absurd.

This all proves that Google Earth reeks of colonialism. But it isn't just this specific platform that we must endeavour to somehow fix. It's our entire world mapping system

Gall-Peter's Map Upside Down

Gall-Peter's Map Sideways

| riding Saturn's rings | 2nd stop

References

Sen, Mayukh. “Dividing Lines.” Real Life, 17 Mar. 2017. https://reallifemag.com/dividing-lines/

Images

Mercator's Map: https://www.businessinsider.com/mercator-projection-v-gall-peters-projection-2013-12

Gall-Peter's Map: https://www.businessinsider.com/mercator-projection-v-gall-peters-projection-2013-12

The misrepresentation and reductive imaging of the global South are extremely apparent when examining the internationally accepted version of the World Map, or Mercator Map, created in 1569 by Gerard Mercator (Gaspar 2016). Yes, that's right—everyone is still staring at a map that was designed 452 years ago, back when technology like satellite imaging was most likely unfathomable.

This is all proof that the international mapping system is skewed because there's no right way to look at it—the earth is spherical after all so who's to say which direction is the top? The reason we still use Mercator's map is not that it's too hard to change it. It's because it continues to glorify the Eurocentric and Western point of view, subtly indicating self-importance that those in power historically want to hold onto that power.

The reduced land-mass of the Southern Hemisphere in Mercator's map is equivalent to the low-definition imaging on Google Earth. Although its interface allows for a satellite view of the entire Earth at any angle, not just a flat, Eurocentric view, the fact that the global South is being depicted as pixelated and fuzzy versions of reality also purports the North's self-importance.

I then became curious to see how my own home is represented on Google Earth as a way to discover the disparity between my home in Toronto, Canada and my birth town, Fuqing, China. It's been 16 years since I arrived in Canada as a four-year-old with my parents as immigrants and I've never gotten the chance to go back to visit so, needless to say, I was quite excited to see what Google Earth could see where I spent the first four years of my life.

I decided to pay a visit to the Toronto Zoo, dropping the little orange person onto one of the streets that wove between the animals and were able to explore one of the places I grew up visiting almost yearly as a young child. You even can see some of the animals in their entrapments and in high definition, no less.

But our technological landscape is much broader in the 21st century and we like to think we've gotten smarter. The real question is why we still hang maps in places such as bedrooms to classrooms to even the Prime Minister's office that look still like this:

When it looks more like this:

But why stop there? Why can't it look like this?

Then, I searched up Fuqing China. I was quite excited to see what may come up and whether or not any of the landmarks would jog a buried memory. With the help of my mother who understandably has a better memory of our home in China, I was able to track down the general areas I remember frequenting with my grandparents. Here some images that were presented as well as the popup that kept coming up as I tried putting the same orange-person icon into an area to no avail:

It was disappointing, to say the least, but after reading Sen's article, how can I be surprised? Some places are inaccessible even with the entire world literally at our fingertips and there is no coincidence between what is properly imaged vs poorly-imaged. Think about it—it's extremely bizarre that Google Earth allows you to enter something as trivial as a zoo in HD 2160p in one country while you're stuck looking at the pixelated rooftops of entire cities in others. The implications are clear—non-Western countries do not get the same attention and privilege as Western countries do and that is the epitome of imperialism and colonialism.

Sen concludes with the sentiment that "it remains to be seen what a humane approach to mapping this world in service of fostering connectivity entails" which completely wraps up this entire issue with the current mapping systems. It's so much more political and discriminatory than many of us even realize. Until we can all recognize that fact and appropriate evolve our use of technology in light of it, there is no way to move beyond seeing our world like we still live in the 16th century.