I'm not sure why, Buckminster Fuller's dymaxion map[^0] always seemed so cool to me, would love to have something more like that. Though it's not "equal area", but the "no preferred direction" and the fact that it could be unfolded in many ways so no place is really privileged, sounds also a kind of fairness.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map

Why does it have to be a single continuous map at all?

Couldn't we use multiple circular projections centered at different latlongs? We'd give up continuity at the seams, but at least every region could be shown close to the center of the projection with little distortion. I would certainly prefer that in an educational setting (drawing the globe from ~6 different latitudes onto a 2d map should be sufficient).

And when drawing a map on the computer, the projection should be centered on whatever part of the globe is currently at the center of the screen.

I really like this square world map which has very interesting properties, made by a small french non-profit for educational purposes: https://nuees.net/planisphere/

I don't think they have an english version of the site yet, but Youtube does an ok job at auto-translating the explaining https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10rY7y5ys-g (it fucks up every other thing, but you get the overall meaning)

The Web thing which lets you drag a country or economy over any other and see how Mercator stuffs up their relative sizes is brilliant for getting a sense why people want this.

Like a lot of "colour the empire pink" schooled people (yes right up to the 60s and 70s that map was used in uk schools) I somehow I gained an initial impression NZ and JP were tiny.

Kinda pointless. Mercator is standard for marine and aviation. For education, they can just use a globe.

Obligatory West Wing “Organization of cartographers for social equality” clip: https://youtu.be/eLqC3FNNOaI?si=jpC37W8688qXu-Fb

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