In light of the conversation on critical theory vs. positivism I thought folks might find the new Wired cover article interesting:
The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory It is a biased link to post on my part, but interesting reading all the same. The debate in the comments is probably better than the article. In the print edition there are some cool geo visualizations of massive datasets (crop production in Iowa and FAA flight tracking over a day). best, sean FortiusOne Inc, 2200 Wilson Blvd. suite 307 Arlington, VA 22201 cell - 202-321-3914 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan Keown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, July 1, 2008 11:19:37 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [Geowanking] Critical Theory >From what I can tell what Google had was a truckload of "spare" cpu capacity and the insight to apply their <http://labs.google.com/papers/mapreduce.html> "MapReduce" technology to the slicing and dicing required to make the imagery usable - that was the breakthrough. _____ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of M J Sent: Wednesday, 2 July 2008 12:54 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Geowanking] Critical Theory Just a thought... On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 7:23 PM, Eric Wolf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Google "solved" similar problems in Google Earth by taking a commonly known concept in cartography (globes are better than maps at representing the world) and throwing just the right amount of technology at it to create a platform that furthers their goals (world domination?!?). Google didn't actually solve that problem. It was Keyhole, a completely separate company who was at the right place at the right time when obtained by Google <http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/keyhole.html> . Keyhole had been peddling their wares since at least 2001 and imo lucky to survive. The company I worked for at the time (long dead) was interested in subscribing to their service (we were building 3D model of cities using photogrammetry, CAD, & GIS), but not enough to actually do it as it cost a fair amount of money to do at the time (for a start-up) and was a pretty intense program for the computers of the time too. I believe that Google by that point was powerful enough to carry it to the next level and continue development. Nif _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
