Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Sometimes I wonder whether remote/armchair mapping has similar effects as imports to the growth of the local community. I think we have recognized that imports has a place in osm provided it follows community principles and guidelines. Maybe its time to discuss similar principles and guidelines to remote/armchair mapping? cheers, Maning Sambale (mobile) ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Hi Russ, On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 2:01 PM, Russ Nelson wrote: > Frederik Ramm writes: > > I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: "Whenever you give > > someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from > them." > > Western aid has a bad history of mostly aiding westerners. The one > simple trick for avoiding that is to ask the locals "How can I help?" > > And if the locals say "We need a better map for where we live", then > that addresses your concern. > What about in the situations where locals would like to make their own map but this is not financially feasible? If we are creating truly a free map of the entire world it is important to figure out how not to just make a map of the privileged. Should lack of access to internet and technology be a reason someone can't contribute to this map? I've worked with groups where we did on the ground mapping both through our own digitizing or through that of others. Honestly in most cases people were happy to not have to trace every building themselves. They could then simply put in the names/address information. Though we should think about what types of features and how we do our tagging where culture/experience can come in. For example what someone might think if as a track in their experience may be a secondary road in others. Frederik, Diversity to me has never just been gender. Though it has been shown that if you make a place welcoming to women it also makes it more inviting for other underrepresented groups. Intersectional feminism is about equality for everyone. For those that missed it Kathleen Danielson gave an excellent talk about some of these issues at SotM-US last week: http://stateofthemap.us/improving-diversity-in-osm/ -Kate > > ___ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
>Western aid has a bad history of mostly aiding westerners. The one simple trick for avoiding that is to ask the locals "How can I help?" >And if the locals say "We need a better map for where we live", then that addresses your concern. Unfortunately the world isn't quite so simple. If we look at the ongoing Ebola outbreak for example. Many health teams were met with rocks and a strong negative reaction. Should the west have done nothing and let Ebola spread? How do you know what the locals want? At the department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada one of the problems is there is half a million status Indians which means roughly half a million different points of view. You don't mention the NGOs and others who consume our maps, are they not legitimate clients? Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) works hard using Open Data to improve the quality of life for many. They make extensive use of OSM especially in the HOT areas. The locals may recognise GODAN's efforts and use their information without recognising the value of OSM underneath. They aren't the only ones using the data. Even quite small AID groups doing nothing more than providing access to clean water use OSM to work out where the wells should go. I think recently the World Bank noted that the cost of building a highway in an African country when they were involved is about twice as high as one where they aren't involved. They think that corruption plays a part in this. There are a number of issues involved in giving aid, for example some US food aid must be carried in US registered ships I believe but the HOT mapping delivers some value to the population often indirectly without some of the problems of other types of aid. Cheerio John On 13 June 2015 at 17:01, Russ Nelson wrote: > Frederik Ramm writes: > > I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: "Whenever you give > > someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from > them." > > Western aid has a bad history of mostly aiding westerners. The one > simple trick for avoiding that is to ask the locals "How can I help?" > > And if the locals say "We need a better map for where we live", then > that addresses your concern. > > -- > --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com > Crynwr supports open source software > 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 > Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog > > ___ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Frederik Ramm writes: > I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: "Whenever you give > someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from them." Western aid has a bad history of mostly aiding westerners. The one simple trick for avoiding that is to ask the locals "How can I help?" And if the locals say "We need a better map for where we live", then that addresses your concern. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
These critiques seem to be beginning to develop themes explored more fully and famously by James Scott in _Seeing Like A State_. In it, he explores the implications of government efforts at systematization, including the original French cadastre and some German forest management projects. I'm afraid the news is worse than you might think, Frederik: Scott makes a compelling case that the *very act of mapping itself* snuffs out locally adapted systems of property management, social support and cultural exchange. It is a troubling critique and one that bears serious consideration. (It also carries vast and unwieldy intellectual coattails, including a deep connection to the failed anarchist project of the early twentieth century.) For my part, the value of being able to deliver emergency services, economic development and competent governance seem overwhelmingly worth the cultural costs that accompany efforts to rationalize the world. It seems to me that the verdict is in and we're all building a global society (and global map!). I'm skeptical that OSM should or can be a meaningful bulwark against this process. Local mapping is preferable not because it escapes the intellectual hegemony of mapping practices -- there is no escape from them at all if you are making a unified map -- but because it delivers a better map. And some map is better than no map: > Does every building address need to be mapped? If not, it just seems like an easy win — why not collect everything? One reason not to is because later when you find you need local buy-in, even OSM may be viewed as an outsider project meant to dominate a neighborhood, a city, especially in sensitive neighborhoods where this has indeed been a primary use of maps. I wonder if people will one day want to create “our map” separately from OSM. A different global map wiki which is geared toward self-determination, perhaps? That would be a major loss for the OSM community. This struck me as shortsighted. The author is suggesting that leaving the map blank is preferable because someone might fill it in later, and that person might feel intimidated by the presence of existing data. I will gently submit that needing a blank slate is not even close to the most off-putting thing about OSM for new mappers. More to the point, even if you take an *extremely* rosy view of the extent to which the act of mapping enhances self-determination, the "loss to the OSM community" seems vastly less important than the losses to everyone who could be using the map to facilitate their businesses, recreation, or government. Every day that a part of the map remains unusably empty is a day that those people lose benefits they might have had -- or a day in which they become more reliant on closed data that has already gotten the job done. Tom ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On Saturday 13 June 2015, Frederik Ramm wrote: > [...] > > I don't agree with everything written in these postings but they > certainly deserve some wider audience, and that's why I am writing > this here - since neither author is on these lists and I haven't seen > their messages mentioned or quoted anywhere. > > I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: "Whenever you give > someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from > them." Thanks for pointing to these texts, very interesting reading. I fear though that critical discussion of the matter will most likely be difficult since the perceived need for humanitarian mapping in events of crisis and the perceived prominence of altruistic motives in those activities is so large making even the basic notion that something good does not justify something bad seems unimportant. Critical reflection on your activities in such a context is very difficult. One important point where i think Gwilym is wrong is the idea that proactive humanitarian mapping will lead to a true homogenization of the map. First of all none of the organized mapping activities focusses on those areas that are worst mapped in OSM so they increase differences rather than reducing them. Efforts in true homogenization would only have a chance on a much longer time horizon (i.e. decades) and none of the organizations involved in humanitarian mapping think on that time scale. But more importantly the colonalization, control and "power over space" is already there in the form of global coverage high resolution imagery. Remote mapping essentailly makes this information more accessible. If this is a good or a bad thing can of course be discussed but OSM is not really the best address to blame here in any case. This is not meant to say remote mapping in OSM is generally a good thing, many of the arguments against it have a lot of merit. But the main question should be if and how this hampers development of true grassroots mapping by locals when performed within OSM and thereby conteracts the primary purpose of the project and not if remote mapping itself, i.e. extracting semantic information from remotely sensed data that exists anyway is morally questionable in general (which is fairly frivolous IMO). And i think there are a lot of other areas in OSM that represent at least as efficient (and therefore damaging) means of cultural imperialism as remote mapping. My favorite example is always map rendering, there is a real lot of more or less subtle cultural bias in that. OSM does not only need more mappers with diverse cultural backgrounds, it also need more diverse input in development and design and the barriers for those are much higher than for mapping. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
This is a very intersting discussion and something worth talking about. This should happen more. I think we should distinguish between remote mapping, or armchair mapping, and putting 'color' on the map. Most remote mappers will just trace basic stuff like buildings, roads or other features that can be easily recognized. I think this ethical dilemma should be more about the actual stuff that matters. For example, what name has an area, what name does a street have, what kind of shops have we mapped,... in other words the local communities should decide what's on the map but basically roads and buildings will have to traced anyway and the result will most likely be exactly the same. In my opinion locals should always have the last word on what's on the map. You could also argue that some communities don't want to be mapped for various kinds of reasons. That's something we should probably think about a little more in HOT. But I'm afraid there is very little we can do about it too. Any military operation, that's most likely very questionable when looking at the good it will do for locals, can use use OSM too. To summarize, I think a HOT activation does more good than bad because the 'color' of the map is the most important part but we should be carefull about specific cases because maybe someone out there has a bad experience after we traced their home and suddenly everybody can see there are people living there. Cheers, Ben ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Hi, On 06/13/2015 05:00 PM, john whelan wrote: > I think you could extend this to saying we should let people live their > own lives and not allow them access to things such as mobile phones > until they have enough education to design their own. Or perhaps even break that down to individual people... I'd probably have to relinquish my use of a computer then because I can't design one ;) Jokes aside, yes what you say is echoed in an acerbic comment under the acerbic post of Eades, where the commenter writes: "It was far more fun when MSF volunteers had to guess where the latest poor sufferer was brought in from - at least any sketched map on a piece of scrap paper they had was a bottom-up sketched map and free from western hegemonic tyranny!" > Realistically HOT mapping helps the NGOs and others to provide things > such as Polio inoculations. I understand that some people on religious > grounds feel that all inoculations should be banned. I personally don't > subscribe to this view. I guess one could make the point that the map is part of the aid, and withholding the map means withholding aid. But Erica Hagens's post can certainly not be reduced to the question of "should religious beliefs be allowed to interfere with aid", it is much more nuanced than that. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
I think you could extend this to saying we should let people live their own lives and not allow them access to things such as mobile phones until they have enough education to design their own. In Canada we have native people and the debate is always what services should you provide them with and what laws should apply. Realistically HOT mapping helps the NGOs and others to provide things such as Polio inoculations. I understand that some people on religious grounds feel that all inoculations should be banned. I personally don't subscribe to this view. I note that one article questions whether or not mapping buildings is of any value. The question has been raised in HOT circles and it depends on the project and the purpose of the project and whom the client is and what their requirements are. I think these days project managers are sensitive to the fact that asking for a million buildings to get mapped may mean the project is never completed or not completed within a reasonable time frame, we have HOT projects still uncompleted some years after they were first started that request buildings. The other thing of note is that often when an area is mapped multiple AID / NGO groups will use the map data. On balance I think that the HOT part of OSM provides value, the locals do not need to use the maps. The maps are much better when locals are involved but then you bring up the whole issue of how reliable is an OSM map? Often something is better than nothing. Cheerio John On 13 June 2015 at 10:37, Frederik Ramm wrote: > Hi, > >I'm known for being critical of armchair mapping by people with no > personal connection tho the area being mapped. Whether done for fun, for > money, or to help, I think that in most cases it is a bad idea that runs > against the spirit of OSM. > > (I'm willing to concede that there are exceptions, and that sometimes > doing something that's against the spirit may still be useful. But these > are individual cases, to be carefully justified, and remote mapping > should never become anyone's standard mode of contribution.) > > Until now I thought that the main exception, one that even I would have > to accept, is mapping for humanitarian purposes. > > I was all the more surprised - positively surprised - to read this > thoughtful essay by Erica Hagen, who founded Map Kibera: > > http://groundtruth.in/2015/06/05/osm-mapping-power-to-the-people/ > > I'd encourage everyone to read that. It questions some rarely questioned > assumptions; it even says that mapping by locals doesn't really "count" > if those locals are just doing it for the money (a sentiment that I've > always felt but rarely dared to express, because who can expect locals > in the poorest parts of the world to map "for fun" like privileged > westerners do?). > > It also says that "local" isn't "local" if the locals from the wealthy > city map the slum in their midst. I've tended to routinely associate the > call for "more diversity" in OSM as mainly being one for levelling the > gender playing field but this article goes much further. > > In some parts the article echoes a rather more acerbic posting written > last month by Gwilym Eades, a university lecturer in London: > > > http://place-memes.blogspot.de/2015/05/the-hubris-of-proactive-disaster-mapping.html > > which essentially accused humanitarian mapping (and as I would add, any > remote mapping really) of "homogenising, westernising, and colonising" > the map. > > I don't agree with everything written in these postings but they > certainly deserve some wider audience, and that's why I am writing this > here - since neither author is on these lists and I haven't seen their > messages mentioned or quoted anywhere. > > I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: "Whenever you give > someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from them." > > Bye > Frederik > > -- > Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" > > ___ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
[OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Hi, I'm known for being critical of armchair mapping by people with no personal connection tho the area being mapped. Whether done for fun, for money, or to help, I think that in most cases it is a bad idea that runs against the spirit of OSM. (I'm willing to concede that there are exceptions, and that sometimes doing something that's against the spirit may still be useful. But these are individual cases, to be carefully justified, and remote mapping should never become anyone's standard mode of contribution.) Until now I thought that the main exception, one that even I would have to accept, is mapping for humanitarian purposes. I was all the more surprised - positively surprised - to read this thoughtful essay by Erica Hagen, who founded Map Kibera: http://groundtruth.in/2015/06/05/osm-mapping-power-to-the-people/ I'd encourage everyone to read that. It questions some rarely questioned assumptions; it even says that mapping by locals doesn't really "count" if those locals are just doing it for the money (a sentiment that I've always felt but rarely dared to express, because who can expect locals in the poorest parts of the world to map "for fun" like privileged westerners do?). It also says that "local" isn't "local" if the locals from the wealthy city map the slum in their midst. I've tended to routinely associate the call for "more diversity" in OSM as mainly being one for levelling the gender playing field but this article goes much further. In some parts the article echoes a rather more acerbic posting written last month by Gwilym Eades, a university lecturer in London: http://place-memes.blogspot.de/2015/05/the-hubris-of-proactive-disaster-mapping.html which essentially accused humanitarian mapping (and as I would add, any remote mapping really) of "homogenising, westernising, and colonising" the map. I don't agree with everything written in these postings but they certainly deserve some wider audience, and that's why I am writing this here - since neither author is on these lists and I haven't seen their messages mentioned or quoted anywhere. I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: "Whenever you give someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from them." Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
