Cartography is fast becoming the most practical comparative basis for integrating and reducing the vast reaches of modern information. If the geographer seeks to define a domain in terms of space in order to discover regions, and if the historian seeks to define a domain in terms of space and time in order to discover civilizations, the cartographer can be said to use space in order to inform us about all conceivable domains.

— Jacques Bertin, The Semiology of Graphics (via lyzidiamond)