We Need Globes

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2011/12/globes_in_the_age_of_google_maps.html

It’s hard not to wonder if the globe’s decline in prestige has anything to do with the dawn of geobrowser technologies like Google Earth. How can a spinning piece of cardboard stack up against a multi-terabyte virtual globe that includes 3-D buildings and trees, real-time weather and traffic, even underwater terrain complete with shipwrecks? I recently discovered that a bird’s-eye view of my Labrador retriever patrolling my backyard can now be glimpsed in the latest version of Google Earth. My office globe, by contrast, doesn’t even have room for Fresno, Calif.

But there may be hope for the humble globe. Bound atlases have stood up to digital encroachment much better than encyclopedias, because no screen can yet duplicate the tactile, immersive experience of exploring the Earth via paper maps. Globes have the same advantage, only in three dimensions. I’ve been typing these last few paragraphs amid constant interruptions from my 4-year-old daughter, who can’t keep her hands off the globe at my side. “Are these mountains?” she wants to know, rubbing her fingers over the relief of the Andes. “Why does this red line stay in the same place when I spin the world?” she asks about the equator.

A globe may be just an inexpensive cardboard sphere, but, more than 2,000 years after its invention, it’s still the real-life artifact that most closely resembles Jorge Luis Borges’ fictional “Aleph”—the object that makes all points of the universe visible at once. Google Earth may have the whole world, but to have the whole world in your hands, like the old spiritual says, you need a globe.