Good points Pickle was ahead of his time on lots of good stuff. The intersting thing is the geographic critical theorists have not focused on the points you are making. Instead the literature has been focused on critique of how google earth skews perception of place and dystopian views of google owning all the data. While this makes for good headlines I think it misses the much bigger point that Chippy is making. Is it a case of google and spinny globes being an easy target or not wanting to bite the hand that feeds you.
Best Sean Sent from my iPhone On Oct 13, 2008, at 10:50 AM, "Tim Waters (chippy)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: > These recent discussions have increasingly reminded me of the > Introduction by Pickles in "Ground Truth: The Social Implications of > Geographic Information Systems", published way way back in 1995. On > two scales, those of experts and novices and those in power and those > without. > > The main message from Ground Truth is that GIS is power. The tools are > mainly used by those in power, and helps them keep their power and > privilege, and widens the social gap. > > The traditional response to this is Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) - > where the same tools are used to help those to make decisions without > such privileges and power. > > To me, PPGIS still exists within the same world of GIS that Pickles > describes - the tools and methods are the same - they are consciously > used in a different way, however. > > Neogeography stands for a decentralising or democratising of power, > the creation of new tools, new methodologies, and ecosystems. > > It could be said that within "the world of geo" those in power and > privilege are the academics in the ivory towers, and the GIS experts > with their arcane knowledge. It's easy to see there's vested interests > at work. Those without power is everyone else. VGI is seen as a > commodity, an output. > A bigger example are the countries were GPS ownership or map-making is > illegal (e.g Egypt)[2] > > Free software, open data & neogeography reduces somewhat the social > gap between those with the power and those without. Although of course > it's limited to the broader "digital divide" and access to computing & > internet resources, which is being focused on in other areas. > > It's by no means perfect (it needs quite high-tech know how to go > around and map for openstreetmap for example) but its on the right > path. > > [1] > http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Truth-Implications-Geographic-Information/dp/0898622956 > [2] http://www.gisdevelopment.net/news/viewn.asp?id=GIS:N_mtgnzhxuse > _______________________________________________ > Geowanking mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
