It’s a curious contradiction. According to the National Geographic-Roper Survey of Geographic Literacy—as well as other sources—we could all stand to brush up on our basic geography, and yet it seems we adore maps. For the unconvinced, look no further than the July issue of Wired magazine. In a story called The Whole Earth, Cataloged: How Google Maps Is Changing the Way We See the World, Evan Ratliff observes that Google Earth, a digital globe that stitches together commercially available satellite images to create a 3-D representation of the planet, has been downloaded a quarter of a billion times in two years. What’s more, since giving anyone with a computer the ability to annotate an online map with text, links, images and sound, Google has added more than 50,000 mashed-up maps to its growing site.

The possibilities for cartographically-inclined travelers are, needless to say, considerable. Sure, finding businesses and getting directions might take less time than in the past, but online maps now make planning trips around specific attractions or activities—especially in relation to affordable lodging or public transportation—considerably easier. On a recent visit to Scotland, for instance, I was able to plot the locations of more than half a dozen brewpubs and microbreweries (none of which appeared in any of my travel guidebooks), and plan my driving route accordingly. This enabled me to work backwards to find restaurants, guest houses and idiosyncratic Scottish diversions a short distance from each beery destination so that I could enjoy a lunchtime pint at the Moulin Inn and still make it to Castle Menzies in Aberfeldy later in the day.

Before anyone goes cuckoo for cartography however, a caveat at the end of the piece is worth repeating. “Who controls the maps we use,” Ratliff asks, “and how much can we trust them?” Michael Goodchild, an expert in geographic information science at UC Santa Barbara who was interviewed for the article, has a ready answer for the second part, even if the first is still in question: “There is no such thing as an objective map.”

Which is precisely when some geography knowledge comes in handy.

Related on World Hum:
* You Can Find Your Bathroom in the Dark. Why Can’t You Find Namibia on a Map?
* Let Us Now Praise the Teaching Geography is Fundamental Act
* For the Love of Maps: ‘So Many Riches, So Much Color, and So Many Worlds Within Worlds’
* Straight Men Are Better Map Readers Than Straight Women, Study Says*