[Geowanking] Critical Theory

Wed Jul 2 17:41:21 PDT 2008

Interesting points Alan and Landon, and I agree we have a long way to go handle the masses of geodata that exist today and the additional masses that will be available tomorrow (when Landon's next gen GPS comes to pass).  

Maps are inherently models or abstractions of reality (despite our acceleration towards mirror worlds).  In many ways this gets back to Renee's MAUP problem - one of the easiest way to abstract data is to aggregate it to larger units (census tracts, zip codes, counties etc.).  While the promise of always working at the raw data level is tantalizing we are still a long ways off of that on the GeoWeb.

If we look at the limits of KML file size support in Virtual Earth and Google Maps today it is roughly around 2mbs.  There are limits of what you can handle in memory and limits on how much data you can render on the map.  So, while you could conceivably have massive spatial databases of information your ability to serve up that data and make it consumable by the public is still severely limited.  Just think about how hard it is to display an average size GIS data file in a GeoWeb application, especially a browser based application.    

The GeoWeb has done a great job dealing with points of interest and segmenting them into manageable chunks, but I agree with Landon that going the next step is going to take an incredible amount of work.  Although it is definitely work worth doing.  I believe the upside will dwarf what we've done with mostly local point data to date.

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: Wednesday, July 2, 2008 7:43:17 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [Geowanking] Critical Theory

I agree with Landon, Sean a very interesting article.

I can't accept the premise that "Scientific Method is dead" but,
paraphrasing Landon, I believe there are models that are so vast that they
can't be tested by experiment (eg the impact of climate change on crop
production).

In 2004 I attended a conference that had as its major theme the idea of
sensors scattered through the environment as dust to provide data that would
(more) precisely model the agriculural and ecological environment and lead
to better responses to changes.

I was struck at the time that managing this data would be a difficult,
almost incomprehensible, task. In pondering this problem I had the idea that
location (2D, 3D or 4D as required) provides a unique key for any model
element in a database. (No two things can occupy the same location if your
coordinate precision is fine enough.)

Now that the "Google method" has become spatially enabled maybe they will be
able to "move from traditional maps to a massive database of spatial
information like the world has moved from print publications to the digital
information available on the web" (to quote Landon).

Cheers
AlanK

-----Original Message-----
From: geowanking-bounces at lists.burri.to
[mailto:geowanking-bounces at lists.burri.to] On Behalf Of
Sean.Gorman at fortiusone.com
Sent: Thursday, 3 July 2008 1:02 AM
To: geowanking at lists.burri.to
Cc: geowanking at lists.burri.to
Subject: Re: [Geowanking] Critical Theory

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

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