[Geowanking] Critical Theory

[Richard Heimann [C]]

I would posit that the breakthrough was more than just a technical endeavor
of streaming tiles to a client. Clearly, that was an atypical approach to
the problem, as clearly dynamic mapping was the norm. Google Earth showed us
user-centric views of the world. Al Gore, at the turn of the century, gave a
speech on the idea of a 3D globe that modeled all the worlds peoples,
places, and actions...maybe what GE will ultimately become. 

 

Rich

 

 

 

Naval Research Lab

 

From: geowanking-bounces at lists.burri.to
[mailto:geowanking-bounces at lists.burri.to] On Behalf Of Alan Keown
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2008 11:20 PM
To: geowanking at lists.burri.to
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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