Two Continents in America (by Yanina Helvig)

As many of us were probably taught at school, the continents in the world are six. However, this idea is not longer sustained by most native English-speaking countries, such as the United States, Canada and Australia. In Wikipedia it is explained that for those countries, America is divided into two separate continents: North America and South America. The following map illustrates the seven continents in the world, mainly for English-speaking countries. Each color stands for a different continent: Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, North America and South America.

But the most curious thing is that the assumption that there are seven continents in the world does not appeal to Latin America and some countries in Europe like Spain and Italy. This means that the model of America as a single continent still remains for inhabitants in South America.

Probably, the division of America into two may be attributed to ideology, and therefore, to a sense of superiority. If this is not… why is it that English-speaking countries do not consider America as a single continent?

Do technologies have ideology?

Everybody felt moved to debate after Nestor's post on Facebook (here). I didn't want to be less -you know-, and, even though I opted not to intervene in the discussion, I took some time to write a post on what I consider my personal conclusions on the topic. The title of this post is The ideology of Technologies, and you can have a look at it in If I may say so... (here)

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.