On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 06:49:30PM +1030, stephen white wrote: > On 13/10/2008, at 5:52 PM, michael gould wrote: > > ...is that an important characteristic of neogeography (it's not > > JUST new > > geography) is that it breaks down the barrier between geo-expert and > > geo-novice. > > Only by reducing everyone to novices.
Bah. That might have been true 3 years ago, but it's not anymore. Sure, you don't see detailed geographic analysis being undertaken by novices, but people who clearly fall into the category of geo-novices have started using software like GeoDjango to create applications which use relatively complex geographic data analysis as the software has become available which makes it possible/easy. http://www.walkscore.com/rankings/Boston is an analysis performed solely with Google Local search results and PostGIS -- something which would have been impossible before the creation of 'neogeography'. The creator of the tool is definitely someone that I would say has much moe of a neogeography background than a GIS background, and regardless of his particular experience, simply using the analysis is definitely done by many people who are definitely not GIS trained. 5 years ago, this kind of analysis would never have ben published in a way that normal users could see it. Now, 30,000 people a day are looking at it. Using GIS-like output to make a decision seems to me like the entire thing that Neogeography has been helping to allow, and I don't see how this is any less "GIS-like" than much of the work done in traditional GIS environments. To me, this is what neogeography is about: Not, specifically, making the masses GIS analysts who build the data, but having a larger set of people using somewhat newer tools to expand the usage of GIS-style analyses to the rest of teh world who can use them without getting a college degree in the topic. To claim that doing this is 'turning everyone into geo-novices' simply sounds unfair as a description of reality, to me. Regards, -- Christopher Schmidt MetaCarta _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
