Standardization

If 5 people were sitting around a table, each would see 4 other people. We can’t really say that each person sees the same thing, because none of the people sees himself. And, even though a sound in the middle of the table might be heard similarly by all, the coordinates of the sound are going to be different.

We get around this little trickery of perspective by creating standards. Maps, for example, make space absolute so that everyone can orient himself in the same way. But in order to create this standard, we have to abstract. And in this process we lose a dimension. A map, for example, is a two-dimensional representation of what we experience in three dimensions.