Amateurs and Professionals Unite

The information business is being transformed by the Internet into the sheer noise of of a hundred million bloggers all simultaneously talking about themselves.

Andrew Keen - Cult of The Amateur

I was led to that quote in a round about manor via Jame's Fee's blog to an entry by Sean Gorman. There is an interesting discussion on the tensions between the Geoweb and the GIS industry (ESRI, MapInfo). In short, the GIS industry apparently considers GIS is what professionals do and the Geoweb is for amateurs. I don't really agree with this, but don't see too much of a problem with the terms used. I do agree that the Geoweb is not GIS, at least not at this point. I see a little danger with people who do not understand fundamentals about maps creating maps, but you get this even with so-called "professionals." Plus, the people, generally speaking, who build the Geoweb do have an understanding. I see GIS and the Geoweb on the same spectrum supplying different services around spatial data, they aren't the same but aren't too different. People who do Geoweb are professionals at Geoweb, and I'm definitely an amateur. I'd like to think of myself as a professional at GIS, and a person who does Geoweb probably would be an amateur at it. Everybody is a little defensive (me too) about their industry, and a little protectionist, for example just tell a Geoweb zealot that it isn't GIS. When I say it, it isn't meant to be an insult. There's just a lot of capabilities that I have in a GIS that isn't there in the Geoweb, just like there is a lot of capabilities that isn't in a GIS. The problem with ESRI is that they want their software to do everything. It's not practical or possible. I agree with James Fee's sentiment about all getting along, after all we are all under the same Geography hat. Sean Gorman had a link to the Cult of The Amateur book which had an excerpt you could read. I found the bits that I read of this book interesting. I don't agree with his points entirely. In the end the web is a bit of a quasi-market, and the users gravitate to the best sites, best blogs, best news organizations that meet their criteria. If a film review blog is filled with boring analysis and misspellings, then it is not going to be popular and not overshadow someone like Roger Ebert. This blog is proof positive that people avoid crap (except for 7-10 people one of which is my Mom). Even Wikipedia has had to tone down their encyclopedia for everyone to edit and now use "experts" to do the writing or monitoring. I do think the inclusion of a comments section on news articles is ridiculous, and although it is sometimes entertaining, they are usually filled with vulgar bigoted remarks. I forgot who's axiom it was about Usenets/newsgroups but if they go on for long enough eventually someone will start to call someone else Hitler or a Nazi. That is perhaps where the Web's greatest enemy lies is the anonymity. Which makes it difficult to tell where certain information comes from, but unlike Keen I'm pretty sure Web 2.0 users can tell that a blog is going to be a form of an OpEd piece, and if you visit the Ford blog you can expect propaganda. I think perhaps the greatest flaw in Keen's argument is that the "quality of public civil discourse" has been declining since before Web 2.0. Personally I point the finger at the political pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coultour, Michael Moore, Al Franken, and on and on; who leave little room for "civil discourse" and bifurcate an already bifurcated system. Anyway, that's way off topic and probably not the type of info you would read a GIS blog for. So I apologize, but I've typed it and it would take too much effort to remove it.

Geography of Teeth

Was reading the recent National Geographic Article about stonehenge. They discovered a burial site of a rich neolithic man in the Salisbury plain near Stonehenge. Turns out he was originally from the Southern Alps of Europe, and apparently had migrated to that area...how I'm not sure. But they discovered this information by doing an Isotopic Tooth Analysis. I just thought that was pretty cool that they can determine geography via your teeth. Here are a few articles that might be of interets: here and here.

Place...Countries.

I was watching the English Patient the other night. I have to admit, I think it is one of the best movies made...Anyway, you don't search for GIS blogs to here about the writer's favorite movies. I guess I had not seen it since finishing at university, because it never struck me how geographical that movie was. Not in that it was shot in several countries, but in geographical concepts. One of the major themes of the movie is place and identity. Another related theme was with borders, country borders to be specific. I don't think that movie could have been made at any other time than the 90's. Sort of that reshuffling of the deck period between the fall of the Berlin wall and September 11th. The internet and global communication was create a borderless world. The idea of a one world government seemed to have gained momentum. So here you have this movie where the characters defy borders and create their own sense of place, only to have that destroyed by the invasion of ownership of place.

One other part struck me too, was when Juliette Binoche's character is asked if she knows anyone from a dying soldier's hometown. I think it is later in the movie that she questions this action. The desire to see someone from where you come from. This probably interested me more than normal, as I am now living abroad. We just went to a party of Americans living abroad. The only reason for the party was that we were Americans, or spouses and children of Americans. So that was the one connection - you're American. There was even a hierarchical scale to the connection - America --> State --> Close to the same town....It's just funny, because without the concept of place, it's not like we would have ever met or been friends with any of these people, especially in the states. We only had one thing in common. This happened when I traveled too. It's such an easy introduction - WHERE are you from? As if Where defines who you are. I would probably make the argument it does partly define you.

I noticed that Harm de Blij has a new book coming out this winter/summer (july), and I think it will be about this topic. From the product description:

"In recent years a spate of books and articles have argued that the world today is so mobile, so interconnected and so integrated that it is, in one prominent assessment, flat. But as Harm de Blij contends in The Power of Place, geography continues to hold billions of people in an unrelenting grip. We are all born into natural and cultural environments that shape what we become, individually and collectively. From our "mother tongue" to our father's faith, from medical risks to natural hazards, where we start our journey has much to do with our destiny, and thus with our chances of overcoming the obstacles in our way."

I find it to be interesting, but I can only offer anecdotal experience as my view. I also find Geography in the movies to be interesting. A recent AAG newsletter had a short article about this. I think it was just before the Boston Conference, because all the movies were about/took place in Boston.

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Forgot the book came out shortly before the movie, but still in the early 90's. Although similar themes between the book and movie exist, I think the movie had a few of its own. Anyway, here are some articles on the book here and here.

GIS Recognition

I recently moved to Australia a few months ago, from the United States. My goal was always to continue in my GIS career, but in case that wouldn't be practical I was prepared to go another route (like work in a bookstore). Luckily, though, finding GIS work has not been a problem.

Of course finding work in Darwin isn't that difficult. If you can't find a job here, you're not looking, or you don't actually want one. Actually, you probably don't even need to look, and a job will fall into your lap. This probably refers mostly to "skilled" labor.

I'm sure the job market has something to do with all my new found work, but I think there is a deeper issue going on. I believe that Australians are more open to the spatial side of life. Spatial awareness seems to be much more prevalent here. Even on the bus the other night, I overheard a mobile phone conversation (not that you cannot overhear someone talking on their phone in public) and he said, "Do you want me to do a presentation on the geographic study?" In the states, I felt I constantly had to insist on the value of GIS and Geography. Here it is more like: "Oh, you do GIS, would like a job?"; instead of "You study rocks?[glassy eye look]" It just seems that Australians are already thinking spatially. I've worked for a company where I tried to implement GIS, and it was a struggle (despite already using CAD extensively). Actually, it really never happened. Then I've worked for a company where GIS was already established, and continued to invade every aspect of the firm's services. Once GIS is there, then it is there to stay. In the least, most everyone in Australia has heard of GIS, if they are not able to explain it, and are definitely open to the value of maps. Some people are skeptical though. As in one case, I was told that it is silly Google Earth (I believe "flashy technology" was used) is the motivator for data collection initiatives. In other words, this flashy technology was what they were using to push for more data. I resisted the urge to state that this person had just slapped an entire industry in the face by calling GE and GIS by extension "flashy technology", and calmly explained that the true value lies in the capability to analyze and display said data geographically. I asked, "Wouldn't it be useful to consolidate thousands of pages of financial data and display it on a map, where one can quickly identify where the resources are and are not?" There is probably a paper in there somewhere about the impact GIS has had on policy and policy/makers.

I think Australia, and probably all of the commonwealth, gives geography a higher place in education than Geography has in the United States. Let's face it, we Americans really aren't geographic people. The Geographic Literacy survey shows that. I think the downfall of Geography is well documented in the American Geography community. From the loss of Geography in Ivy League Universities to the advent of social studies, Geography lost its ground in the 20th century. Take a look at Why Geography Matters for a good read. It's coming back though; the American Association of Geographers is reporting record membership and conference attendance numbers, Harvard has even made steps to reintroduce Geography. I'm sure we all know that this is partially due to the Google Maps and Google Earths. These technology have made Geography extremely accessible.

Moving too Australia has definitely been a good career move for me.