FANTOM PLANET

I’ve been intrigued with Lisa Parks’ presentation at Where 2.0 last week. Personally, I like the topic because I study the exact same stuff in my day job—when I’m not Twittering. Yet, it had an air of ignorance in it. It was observed from a cultural studies, almost post-modern view. It might be an observation from the outside that we don’t care for, but it is interesting and a needed perspective.

So, do we think of the effect of our media? Those media that are representations of real life in spatial terms.

We could put some deep thought into this for years and months, but for any geo-types who feel like Parks gave us a bum rap, and for those who may want to challenge her assumptions about geo as a medium, then start off by reading a paper by Daniel Sui and Mike Goodchild. It’s called, “A tetradic analysis of GIS and society using McLuhan’s law of the media.”

This paper argues that GIS are increasingly becoming media for communicating various crucial social and environmental information to the general public. By reconceptualizing GIS as media, the paper conducts a detailed tetradic analysis on the social implications of GIS using Marshall McLuhan’s law of media. The analysis reveals the paradoxical and ambivalent nature of GIS technology. To make GIS fulfill democratic ideals in society, this paper calls for a shift of perspective, from viewing them as instruments for problem‐solving to viewing them as media for communication. This shift from instrumental to communicative rationality enables us to examine more critically and holistically how space, people and environment have been represented, manipulated and visualized in GIS and thus promotes a more critical and democratic GIS practice. [Emphasis mine]

For all things GeoWeb, this starts you off with some perspective where Parks was trying to come from. It did for me, and it’s probably why I’m reading books on media ecology and cultural geography of media. It’s a crazy shift for a kind of paleo/neogeography guy like myself, but just its another way of studying geography and our impact on place and people.

Understanding geo as a medium will help you realize the impact and design of your applications… As well as debating the academic film and media department’s evaluation of your lifestyle.

Since it is that time of year and since everyone is doing it. I might as well list my top ten dumbest predictions about our world for 2008. If they become true, I’m heading to Vegas with Dave Bouwman’s profits this time next year.

10) Election Maps. It’s election year in the States and once again we’ll be hosed with “red vs. blue” thematic maps. These maps will polarize the country early on with predicted areas of support for candidates and bringing out the nastiness of who’s right, wrong, left, up, and down.There will also be a few mashups of election supporters with breakdowns of where obese folks, intelligent designers, and Oprah/NASCAR moms are.

9) OSHA. OSHA will step in to ban the Wii and GIS. Especially after James Fee has his Wii Bowling accident before Where 2.0 and becomes unable to spell GIS anymore, let alone blog about it. GIS is banned because is causes blindness and hairy palms.

8) Maps is bad. Once the non-western world melts down during the spring thaw, a number of baddies use [Google] maps for no good. Causing knee-jerk reaction by a number of governments to ban or highly regulate mapping. Especially China, who takes out WorldView-2 right after launch.

7) WorldView-2 Stuns GeoEye’s New Bird. Months after China whacks WV-2, WV-2 parts whack GeoEye’s new bird by having it’s debris scratch GE-1’s lens. Bill Gates secretly de-orbits GE-1 onto Sergey’s secret island Googleplex.

6) FOSS4G and the ESRI UC announce plans to combine in 2010. That’s after a prisoner exchange during a TC211 meeting.

5) Jeff Thurston discovers that GLONASS is really a space weapons system. Only because he watched a special on TV, then formed a rescue party that rescued a number of GLONASS engineers from captivity in Siberia. If he would only do that for Manifold users too

4) GooglePhone knows more about you than you do. Google releases the GPhone with its partners and eerily signs you up, books your car, room, and flight to attend Where 2.0 even before you own your GPhone. On a sad note, Glenn is tasered by his N95 when it discovers he decides to think about writing a comparison piece between N95 and GPhone.

3) Acronym soup! VGI, SDI, ESRI, FOSS4G, WTF? 2008 is the year we get acronym’d to death. It starts in DC with the ESRI FedUC and ends when SlashGeo stops with its sloppy seconds.

2) Surveyors reclaim the Earth—only because the lawyers let them. Dusting off the old chains, someone lobbies in DC hard enough to enact licensing for all geo professionals after a rash of high profile court cases that affect senators and representatives and the earmarked buildings, parks, and bridges named after them.

1) Nom de plumes. From me, to the Fake Steve Coast, to Fake Ed Parsons and the soon to be Fake James Fee. The fakes get unmasked; I stop posting b/c too many folks know who I am—and, yes, I will have to kill you; and everyone starts fake <insert name here> blog. On the bright side, in August, the Fake Jack Dangermond hosts the Fake ESRI UC and gives me my fake grad skool diploma.

Didn’t I mention this was a bad list?

I thought I’d throw a serious post up since it has been awhile. This one is via AFP article ‘China, Brazil give Africa free satellite land images‘ on 29 November.

Last Wednesday at a conference in South Africa, China and Brazil announced that it would provide free imagery to African countries to help with environmental monitoring of sub-tropical areas. The announcement mentioned the creation of a number of ground stations in Africa to receive and process the satellite data. China and Brazil hope that African countries use the information to planning and resource management for a better world.

One thought would be the use of OpenAerialMap to share the data among the countries in the program. If China and Brazil are really interested in global sustainability and sharing data for environmental resource management, then you would think that they would want to provide the data to the widest user group possible. So, why not process it into OpenAerialMap?

For those of you who don’t know, Boeing will be launching DigitalGlobe’s next-generation commercial imagery satellite, WorldView-1, later this week on the 18th. Boeing Integrated Defense Systems has a website up for a webcast of the launch from Vandenberg AFB in California. The site looks like it will also host the launch video afterwards.

I was asked if I wanted to go, but the 220+ mile drive and my high-pressure graded learning experience here in grad school were obvious reasons for not going. I wish I could have gone. Rocket launches, if you’ve ever seen them, are pretty spectacular.

There’s still WorldView-2 on the board.

Well, anyway, a lot of folks have been eager for this next improvement in commercial imagery: Google, NGA, Garmin, and. . . me. I’m actually eager to apply the “good stuff” with my ImageConnect toolbar for ArcGIS while I’m here in Redlands.

And who knows? It might help my GPA—which, is doubtful.

I may not have attended last week’s GEOINT conference, but the interesting tidbits I’ve heard from attendees have been pretty interesting. Most notably, discussion at the conference about limiting U.S. commercial satellite imagery providers in their resolution and distribution. Yeah, I know. Blew me away too.

The line of thought is no different than the Indian Government or any other sovereign state about concerns of ill-intended use, like use by terrorists. What my sources have said is that senior policy makers are worried about just that and have discussed limiting U.S. firms from improving their technology and who they sell to.

This is not good.

One, “the cat’s already out of the bag, dude.” Commercial satellite imagery is here to stay and so are the dissemination platforms. (Re: SPOT and Geoportail.) There are more non-U.S. platforms that are going to go up in the future along with various disemination systems, like Google Earth, NASA World Wind, and others. If the U.S. doesn’t stay in the game and keeps improving the technology, then it’s going to go elsewhere.

Two, it’s a matter of global economics. There is a legitimate demand for this information, if it doesn’t come from U.S. providers, then it’s going to come from elsewhere. This would force Google Earth to buy commercial satellite imagery from India, Russia, or China someday.

Three, this information has done more to help people than to hurt them. Just look at the example of a number of Indian farmers who used Google Earth to thwart the attemps of their government to reclassify and take away their land. NGO’s and conservation groups can monitor area’s that need monitoring. If this line of thought that is running through some U.S. policymaker’s head is about fear, then they need to get over it. I’d like to note, that putting more information out into the public is a good thing. Where citizens can participate in their communities and add value to them.

The one main idea that should have came out of GEOINT this year should have been make it better for the citizens to help ease this fear.

On a side note, if U.S. law and policy did revert back to more restrictive measures, the U.S. would be no better than any other country who limits the posession of other geographic imformation.

(Update: Jeff at Vector One wrote a similar post about de-classifying geospatial data.)