[Geowanking] Spatial analysis was Re: MapMaker

[stephen white]

On 26/06/2008, at 2:04 PM, Mike Liebhold wrote:
> And despite Stephen White's and Schuyler Erles earlier comments
> diminishing the importance of "red dots",  besides 3D,  another
> important frontier is learn true geospatial analysis; learning to form
> proper queries  for the -specific-  dots, lines or blobs from what is
> growing into an immense web of geocoded data.


I'm a bit surprised to find myself the poster (or whipping) boy for  
wanting to go beyond map mash-ups. It just seems very obvious to me  
that mash-ups of all kinds will always be specialised interfaces that  
have, and suffer, from all the same problems as layers in GIS.

When trying to find information, what is the difference between a  
clumsy search field, a clumsy layers box, a clumsy bunch of red dots,  
or basically any of the current approaches? They all end up at the  
same original problem of being unable to specify what is wanted.

There are two components to this problem. The first is being unable to  
accurately, without bias, specify what is being searched for. The  
second is being unable to accurately, wihtout bias, sort information  
into searchable categories.

That is the same valley of death that mash-ups dive into every time.  
They always categorise information in the first place, then want the  
information searched by category. Categories are the problem.  
Categories are not the solution.

Hence my push to look back towards the original data with its 3d,  
time, location, and photographic capture by nature. Now given a bunch  
of raw data, how CAN it be organised (not categorised) such that it  
can be searched by the same means?

I can only be the poster (or whipping) boy for one topic at a time. So  
I won't expand further until the discussion is more amenable to this  
specific avenue.

--
   steve at adam.com.au