Because they are beautifully false. They emphasize some things and hide others. See the enthralling book edited by Denis Cosgrove, Mappings, published by Reaktion Books, London. The cover is decorated by one of the most beautiful maps in the Galleria delle carte geografiche at the Museii Vaticani... Never seen such surreally precise maps as those incredible Renaissance cartographic frescoes. There is also Jacopo de'Barbari's axonometric veduta of Venice titled Venetie MD, simply hallucitating. It is huge and so full of detail...

All maps create a "virtual reality", whether on paper or on the computer screen.

Nice question. Best regards, Lilliana

Having a large collection of both physical and digital maps and atlases, I believe I would have difficulty answering this question! As for as maps of the western hemisphere are concerned, it amazes me to see a map drawn circa 1740 that is so detailed that you could almost overlay it onto a modern map, but then see a circa 1820 map that looks like a child could have done a better job drawing it. The skill or lack of skill varies so much, as does the information imparted, that each map is literally different, often even when they look the same. Some have fake towns or mountains or rivers to catch to unwary copier, but so too do these false features fool the traveler.

For several years I have had about 40 maps of Louisiana and the southern United States dating from the early 1770s to the early 1900s that cycle through every 20 minutes as my computer screen wallpaper. To this day I still find myself seeing something new, sometimes something relevant, on those maps that I have never seen before. I find myself translating features that I have never noticed before that are labeled in German or French or Spanish or Portuguese. Show me someone who does not love maps and I will show you someone who is not a dreamer.

I think it's pretty simple. A lot of people perceive the world in the spatial-oriented way of thinking, and maps gives them spatial idea about presented phenomena. In addition, one map often replaces dozens of data tables and hundreds of text pages. That is the main argument how to present maps...

The research is mostly focused narrowly regarding popularity and user aspects. I recommend you outputs and research presented by the Commissions of the International Cartographic Association. You can find there some interesting topics and names, which will lead you to the research outputs you could be interested in. 

http://icaci.org/

Thank you for the link, Alena!

Best regards, Lilliana

Interesting question!

My short answer is because maps and geovisualizations are beautiful. By saying beautiful, I am referring to the objective beauty or structural beauty that lies in the deep structure rather than just on the surface. It means maps remain beautiful even one turn the color maps to black and white. This is the notion of objective beauty discovered and defined by Christopher Alexander in The Nature of Order. Or we could say beauty lies on the fractal structure of far more small things than large ones.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236887293_A_New_Kind_of_Beauty_Out_of_the_Underlying_Scaling_of_Geographic_Space

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272159333_Wholeness_as_a_Hierarchical_Graph_to_Capture_the_Nature_of_Space

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263316490_The_Fractal_Nature_of_Maps_and_Mapping

Article A New Kind of Beauty Out of the Underlying Scaling of Geographic Space

Article The Fractal Nature of Maps and Mapping

Article Wholeness as a Hierarchical Graph to Capture the Nature of Space

The question focuses on the meaning of visualization in people's way collecting information. Vision is a  sense having highest capacity for collecting information in five people's natural senses, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and vision. Vision has been keeping 70 - 80 % information collected by a person every day. Hence, people perceive and understand easy information implied in image, graph. Map as a graph represents visually objects and fields at locations. The visualization of locations and attributes of objects and fields on a map assists people to perceive easy and understand better the objects and fields at locations. This is why people like map and geovisualization.

About the role of vision in people's perception of information may be found in:

S. Few, "Tapping the Power of Visual Perception," Perceptual Edge, pp. 1-8, September 4, 2004.

My be, because the maps+geovisualizations gives us the opportunity to interpret a collection of objects and the relationship in between from different perspectives

Thank you for your answers! I think, you covered a lot of interesting aspects: Maps creating "virtual realities" (amongst others, here the maps accompanying Tolkiens books come into my mind), maps allowing discoveries to be made ("visual data-mining", detecting structures), maps triggering dreams, and much more.

Just a few days ago I found an interview with Frank Jacobs in the Web. There he says: "I [...] fear that to know exactly why something [notably: maps] fascinates you might be the death of the fascination itself." - Well, nonetheless I will continue looking for the answer...

Besides, I wonder why static 2-d maps often seem to be more attractive than innovative interactive, dynamic 3-d geovisualizations...

If you have more ideas about that topic, I would be pleased to hear from you here!

Benno,

Being one that works with and creates both 2-D and 3-D maps, there are a lot of people that get confused with what they are seeing or get disoriented in moving around in 3-D maps. My wife, a GIS professional, is one that gets dizzy when I am orienting or zooming in a 3-D map. I know others that have to get their "bearings" when looking at a map, and they have more trouble doing this with 3-D representations.

Static 2-D map is  traditional means everyone uses frequently  to find easily and fast  necessary ground locations for daily activities.  Few people utilize  interactive dynamic map or 3-D geovisualization which supplies with data relating ground location, elevation, and time to only find ground location because of its complexity in using.  Few people using interactive dynamic map and 3-D geovisualizations to join their knowledge and experience to process complicated problems such as analyze spatio-temporal data or answer complex questions relating location and time. As a result, the number of people using static 2-D map is much more than the number of people using interactive dynamic map and 3-D geovisualizations. This is the reason we feel that static 2-D map seems to be more attractive than innovative interactive, dynamic 3-D geovisualizations.

Shortly - because they are beautiful, and people like beautiful things.

And because they are curious about the world, hence the current popularity of all information portals and the entire global culture pictorial - in the reception of information and more important sight - the image than the verbal message.

Through old atlases, history of cartography, old maps.

For a better understanding we feel the need to "see" - the visualization of information. It is easier to perception.

Look at this books:

Campbell Tony, 1987. The Earliest Printed Maps. University of California Press, Berkeley – Los Angeles.

Harley J.B., Woodward David, (eds.), 1987. The History of Cartography. Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. Volume one. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago and London.

 Harley J.B., Woodward David, (eds.), 1992. The History of Cartography. Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies. Volume two, book 1. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago and London.

Woodward David, (ed.), 2007. The History of Cartography. Cartography in the European Renaissance. Volume three. Part 1 and 2. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago and London.

You can find a lot of collection of old and historic maps at internet

There are several reasons why people are fascinated by maps and why maps are very usueful.

First, we live in a geospatial context, so understanding what happens where, in which surrounding context is often of great value.

Then, there is often spatial autocorrelation in the data (referring to Toblers law) that is well visible when visualizing the data on maps.

Lastly, people are very good in reading maps since maps are used since thousands of years. Also, visually mapping space to space and not to an other visual primitive is kind of straight forward and natural.

I would recommend reading McEachrens books and papers about geovisualization as well as looking into publications from ACM SigSpatial and IEEE VIS.

Regarding online maps, the key factor is interactivity or simplicity of the interface. People can navigate online maps easily with the minimum knowledge of geography and information retrieval.