[Geowanking] Critical Theory

[Sean.Gorman at fortiusone.com]

In light of the conversation on critical theory vs. positivism I thought folks might find the new Wired cover article interesting:

The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory

It is a biased link to post on my part, but interesting reading all the same.  The debate in the comments is probably better than the article. In the print edition there are some cool geo visualizations of massive datasets (crop production in Iowa and FAA flight tracking over a day).

best,
sean


FortiusOne Inc,
2200 Wilson Blvd. suite 307
Arlington, VA 22201
cell - 202-321-3914

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Keown" <AlanKeown at southernphone.com.au>
To: geowanking at lists.burri.to
Sent: Tuesday, July 1, 2008 11:19:37 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [Geowanking] Critical Theory

>From what I can tell what Google had was a truckload of "spare" cpu capacity
and the insight to apply their
<http://labs.google.com/papers/mapreduce.html> "MapReduce" technology to the
slicing and dicing required to make the imagery usable - that was the
breakthrough.

 

  _____  

From: geowanking-bounces at lists.burri.to
[mailto:geowanking-bounces at lists.burri.to] On Behalf Of M J
Sent: Wednesday, 2 July 2008 12:54 PM
To: geowanking at lists.burri.to
Subject: Re: [Geowanking] Critical Theory

 

Just a thought...

On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 7:23 PM, Eric Wolf <ebwolf at gmail.com> wrote:

Google "solved" similar problems in Google Earth by taking a commonly known
concept in cartography (globes are better than maps at representing the
world) and throwing just the right amount of technology at it to create a
platform that furthers their goals (world domination?!?).


Google didn't actually solve that problem.  It was Keyhole, a completely
separate company who was at the right place at the right time when obtained
by Google <http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/keyhole.html> .  Keyhole had
been peddling their wares since at least 2001 and imo lucky to survive.  The
company I worked for at the time (long dead) was interested in subscribing
to their service (we were building 3D model of cities using photogrammetry,
CAD, & GIS), but not enough to actually do it as it cost a fair amount of
money to do at the time (for a start-up) and was a pretty intense program
for the computers of the time too. 

I believe that Google by that point was powerful enough to carry it to the
next level and continue development.

Nif

 


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