Randall Munroe, Map of Online Communities, 2007

This map addresses the relationship between disparate online social networks and community sites, reflecting both psychological proximity, relative size, and their position on the subjective scale of practical vs. intellectual and focus on real life vs. virtual life. The blending of cartological tropes with internet memes is rendered in a witty and engaging style. There is also thematic references in the oceans which tie together the landmasses of sites and subjective information on the relative importance, in social terms, of the different communities at the time it was created. For example, the ancient Usenet is a sunken island, and Yahoo, Windows Live, and AOL (former social stalwarts) are still large, but relegated to “The Icy North.” The map elegantly demonstrates the complex, interconnected systems for community online. If I were to disassemble the map, I would first remove the compass, which definitely adds information, but is already easy to miss and is less critical to understanding connections between sites. After that, the thematic bodies of water could be removed, allowing users to draw their own conclusions as to the types of activity on the sites. Lastly, you could remove the actual land masses, just leaving the text labels, which would still imply thematic relationships between the sites, but without any respect for their relative importance or user base.

Ernest Dudley Chase, A Pictorial Map of Loveland, 1943

The purpose of this map is obviously more pictorial than the first, and, despite its overtures at cartography, seems to be primarily aiming to graphically represent different aspects of a happy romantic relationship. Topologically, though, the illustrations and their labels have little connection to surrounding pictures, and the entire thing might have more properly been rendered with fewer references to geographically representative maps. My first instinct would be to remove the dividing lines which crisscross the heart, since their labels are both difficult to read and inconsequential in meaning. Secondly the oceans and outbound islands could go, as they have little bearing on the rest of the image. In fact, you could easily remove all topology and render the images on the pages of a book without losing much of the content, I believe.