On 14 Jul 2006, at 23:33, Annalee Newitz wrote:
I should be clear that by map hackers, I mean people who are doing real-time geolocation stuff too. In fact, that's going to be a big part of my article. Really, I just want to write an article about geowanking, but I don't think Wired will allow me to put "wank" in a headline. They might, though.
To be honest I suspect it's a movement without early seminal figures - at least that I can think of. I suspect it didn't need any. The Bond thing really captured how incredibly cool it'd be to have a device that knew where it was - when you need it it's like having an extra sense (and when you don't need it it's still kinda neat).
Neal Stevenson's CIC Earth is credited as a visionary prediction of Google Earth but I suspect that for many of the current geo community it was just kinda "Yes, that's it - that's what we've been imagining - when can we have it?" That sounds immodest - and it's not meant to be - it's just that nobody really had to evangelise about geo stuff - it's always been apparent that once the technology got cheap enough and ubiquitous enough geeks would be all over it.
-- Andy Armstrong, hexten.net _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
