When the world's at stake,
go beyond the headlines.

Welcome to Mid-Afternoon Map, our exclusive members-only newsletter that provides a cartographic perspective on current events, geopolitics, and history from the Caucasus to the Carolinas. Subscribers can look forward to interesting takes on good maps and bad maps, beautiful maps and ugly ones — and bizarre maps whenever possible.***As obscure mid-century ideological movements with a flair for graphic design go, Technocracy is having its moment. I’m embarrassed to say I’d never heard of it before. But when someone on the internet inexplicably tweeted this map at me and told me to find out more, I wasn’t going to argue.Wikipedia.Technocracy, it turns out, has been getting some attention lately because Elon Musk’s grandfather was a prominent member in the 1930s. Amidst the social and political upheaval following World War I and the Great Depression, Technocracy promised society economic abundance through rule by enlightened engineers. Democratic politics — indeed, politics of all kinds — would be replaced by technocratic management. Currency and the “price system” would be replaced by an alternative system of value based on energy. People would work a four-day week according to a shifting calendar and obtain goods with a personalized energy card. Judges, juries, and the “sparring of scheming lawyers” would be replaced by the “Sequence of Social Relations,” a body that used “the most impersonal and scientific methods available” to resolve all matters before it.Perhaps this sounds like the result of Utopian day-dreaming or even deliberate scheming. But as Technocracy In Plain Terms states plainly on page six: “technocracy is not the result of deliberate scheming or Utopian day-dreaming.” What’s more, “Technocracy is not a financial racket or political party.” Rather, it is a “Continental Organization.”The continent, as shown in the “Technate of America” map above, was important for the Technocracy movement. Technocrats believed that greater North