This document discusses the emergence of mapping and geospatial data on the web without centralized authorities or credentials. It notes how open source mapping allows for "bottom-up" and crowdsourced maps that challenge traditional top-down maps. Some key aspects covered include the rise of map mashups and volunteered geographic information, challenges around standards and coherence of crowdsourced data, and issues of censorship, the digital divide and net neutrality.

1. Mapping Without a Net Jeremy W. Crampton Georgia State University Global GIS Academy Presentation October 8, 2008 [email_address]

3. “ Geography is emerging as a fundamental principle for structuring the Web – a principle that yields the world’s knowledge through the lens of location. The strategy of adding location metadata to existing databases and accessing the vast amounts of information stored in these databases via geospatial services weds physical and virtual spaces, deepens our experiences of these spaces and incorporates them into our everyday lives .

4. Map mashups

6. What is the geoweb? Web-based georeferenced information… More than just maps online: – open access – map mashups – hyperlinked & interactive – distributed – 3D – virtual globes/digital earth – communities/crowdsource – bottom-up

7. In the process, [map amateurs] are reshaping the world of mapmaking and collectively creating a new kind of atlas that is likely to be both richer and messier than any other” The New York Times, 2007

8. “ It turns out that when we talk about the ‘world’s information’ we mean geography too” – Google

13. Don’t be evil

19. Voter turnout

20. Non-voters by household and race Atlanta, USA

25. In referring to the work of Foucault and post-Foucaultian social theory as the ‘new cartographer’ (along with the new archivist), Gilles Deleuze pointed to a mode of investigation and writing that sought, not to trace out representations of the real, but to construct mappings that refigure relations in ways that render alternative worlds. --UNC Counter-cartographies Collective

27. The “long tail” effect

29. Divided they blog?

30. Hotmap from Microsoft: shading indicates frequency of tile requests

31. Global internet connectivity (Chris Harrison/DIMES Project)

33. Traditional Big GIS: ESRI does geoweb? Jack Dangermond: “ GIS technology is evolving on the Web, making geographic knowledge easier to access and more…‘connected’ [with] new geographic information services and communities of users who incorporate these services into their daily decision making. Some have called this new environment the GeoWeb —a geospatial dimension of the cyberinfrastructure.”

34. … but still doesn’t get it? “ Jack Dangermond is skeptical…he worries that even the best-intentioned amateur could provide inaccurate data that could lead to a disaster. ‘Who wants to dig a hole and run into a pipe?’ Dangerman asks.” Computerworld , August 2007

37. Thank you! [email_address] http://monarch.gsu.edu/jcrampton/