TwoThe Map Is Not the Territory

Empathy is an antidote to a world of abstraction. Faced with a deluge of information, people like to boil things down. This puts them in danger of making poor decisions based on incomplete or distorted information.

BY 1908, MOST TRAVELERS on the London Underground could agree on one thing: It was easy to get lost on the Tube. This was not surprising, since the system was really a bolted-together hodgepodge of what had been no less than ten different rail lines. In an effort to clarify matters, the operators of the Underground decided to publish a map to show how all its lines were interconnected. With great fanfare, they launched their new map through a citywide promotional campaign. Yet despite their best ...

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