The ideology of maps

Below is The Blue Marble, a famous photograph taken by Apolo 17 on its way to the moon. As you'll notice, the South is up. In reality, there's no up nor down in space, so why is it that all the maps we study always show the North up? As you'll imagine, this picture was turned upside-down before being published. Does this action carry any ideology? This is one of the things we tried to debate last year. As a consequence of that discussion, I wrote an article in If I may say so... I'm sure you'll find it of interest. Click here.