![]() ![]() ![]() On one hand, a world map concentrates in one image the broadest possible expanse of literal distance and all of the billions of lives, places, and experiences contained therein. “Almost” unimaginable is the caveat which saves our careers here at the Map Center a large part of the value in the quarter million items in our collection lies in their ability to encapsulate these distances and represent them in a form that can be visualized at a surface level. This 1913 map of Central America and the Caribbean Sea prominently shows the dense criss-cross of steamship routes linking cities and disparate countries. These distances can be literal-the many thousands of miles of communications lines or shipping lanes which belt the world-as well as more abstract, such as the distances that connect the almost unimaginable number of people and processes involved in the construction and subequent use of just one of Boston’s hundreds of high-rise buildings. ![]() Because the word ‘global’ has become an almost expected addition to much of what we discuss in the 21st century, we can fail to realize the significant and overlapping distances which are fundamentally embodied in our landscapes and implicated in our lives. ![]()
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