What is a NeoGeogrpher?
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There is a good interview with Steve Chilton,Chairman of the Society of Cartographers posted here http://googleearthdesign.blogspot.com/2007/08/steve-chilton-interview.html[^] that has caused some interesting debate in the geoblog sphere lately, namely what exactly is a Neogeographer and how is it changing the face of cartography(Link[^]). This term generally applies to people (web programmers and general users) employing new internet mapping technologies such as Google Earth with little to no back ground in cartographic design. I thought I would share this as I know many of us are interested in some of the cool and interesting things Google enables users to do and it is interesting hearing a different perspective regarding these new users and creators who are employing these new mapping technologies. Aaron
_____________________________________________________________________ Our developers never release code. Rather, it tends to escape, pillaging the countryside all around. The Enlightenment Project (paraphrased comment) Visit Me at GISDevCafe
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There is a good interview with Steve Chilton,Chairman of the Society of Cartographers posted here http://googleearthdesign.blogspot.com/2007/08/steve-chilton-interview.html[^] that has caused some interesting debate in the geoblog sphere lately, namely what exactly is a Neogeographer and how is it changing the face of cartography(Link[^]). This term generally applies to people (web programmers and general users) employing new internet mapping technologies such as Google Earth with little to no back ground in cartographic design. I thought I would share this as I know many of us are interested in some of the cool and interesting things Google enables users to do and it is interesting hearing a different perspective regarding these new users and creators who are employing these new mapping technologies. Aaron
_____________________________________________________________________ Our developers never release code. Rather, it tends to escape, pillaging the countryside all around. The Enlightenment Project (paraphrased comment) Visit Me at GISDevCafe
A Neo Geo grpher? It has to be a cyber pet surely!
Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.
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A Neo Geo grpher? It has to be a cyber pet surely!
Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.
Only if your strokin its ego will it purrrr!!!;P
_____________________________________________________________________ Our developers never release code. Rather, it tends to escape, pillaging the countryside all around. The Enlightenment Project (paraphrased comment) Visit Me at GISDevCafe
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There is a good interview with Steve Chilton,Chairman of the Society of Cartographers posted here http://googleearthdesign.blogspot.com/2007/08/steve-chilton-interview.html[^] that has caused some interesting debate in the geoblog sphere lately, namely what exactly is a Neogeographer and how is it changing the face of cartography(Link[^]). This term generally applies to people (web programmers and general users) employing new internet mapping technologies such as Google Earth with little to no back ground in cartographic design. I thought I would share this as I know many of us are interested in some of the cool and interesting things Google enables users to do and it is interesting hearing a different perspective regarding these new users and creators who are employing these new mapping technologies. Aaron
_____________________________________________________________________ Our developers never release code. Rather, it tends to escape, pillaging the countryside all around. The Enlightenment Project (paraphrased comment) Visit Me at GISDevCafe
Aaron VanWieren wrote:
This term generally applies to people (web programmers and general users) employing new internet mapping technologies such as Google Earth with little to no back ground in cartographic design.
I disagree with where he thinks it comes from. The military long since used flat-earth projections, on of the least accurate and least meaningful maps. The push to provide "close enough, but I don't really care if it is accurate" images has been pushed from end-users who have no knowledge of cartiography -- the biggest user pushing is multi-national militaries. Maps become reference, and you only use field local references for targetting, or since GPS will get you within 10-20 meters, you make something large enough so you don't have to target finer than that. "Close enough for government work" has been a long-time joke, but it is because end-users, military or otherwise, don't want to know how it works, they don't care if it works accurately most of the time (or you know where its innaccuracies are such that supposedly you can fix them later). All end-users employ the "I just want it" idea. Look at jokes in the lounge about rent-a-coder, it isn't just cartiography. People want it all for nothing. When "all" is a half-an-effort, they still won't buy it, but they might actually use it. So google earth and google maps live with a 15-30m error on map data, no problem, no one has really complained. Sure someone might question why the streets don't always line up. It's "just data" would be the probable answer. No one really understands why, so you shrug and go on. A cartiographer might say, "well are you using it right? are you treating the elevation data as an image where the elevation maps to the grid corners, or grid center?" The programmer would look at them and say, "it's just data, I am just using it, it works, so it must be right." The main difference between the militaries of the world and rentacoder is that the militaries will actually pay for a half-arsed job, but not the full one, and they will be happy with it. Generally you learn to live with the innacuracies. I try hard to fight them, but I know they exist, and which ones are worse than others. You can slowly correct problems, but when you fix them, and someone else doesn't, just try arguing over who is wrong. Just leave it as "it has always been" and try to ignore the problem. Sad, but true. I feel for the cartiographers, I really do; I cringe at some of the programming methods (a
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There is a good interview with Steve Chilton,Chairman of the Society of Cartographers posted here http://googleearthdesign.blogspot.com/2007/08/steve-chilton-interview.html[^] that has caused some interesting debate in the geoblog sphere lately, namely what exactly is a Neogeographer and how is it changing the face of cartography(Link[^]). This term generally applies to people (web programmers and general users) employing new internet mapping technologies such as Google Earth with little to no back ground in cartographic design. I thought I would share this as I know many of us are interested in some of the cool and interesting things Google enables users to do and it is interesting hearing a different perspective regarding these new users and creators who are employing these new mapping technologies. Aaron
_____________________________________________________________________ Our developers never release code. Rather, it tends to escape, pillaging the countryside all around. The Enlightenment Project (paraphrased comment) Visit Me at GISDevCafe
I love that people in one field can make use of complex GIS systems without having to understand the fundamentals. They can focus on adding value to their field and not get tied up in the intricacies of lat/long, variation, deviance* and so on. Guys like Jon Udell annotating maps with public data, web-apps that make finding houses easier and so on. The KML layers of Google Earth, now slowly being supported by Google Maps, are so awesome. We do need the cartographers to remain though and keep passing their knowledge on. Got to have strong foundations or all our abstraction layers are just going to crumble. * I recently did the RYA Day Skipper course so those "intricacies" are generally in the area of navigation.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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Aaron VanWieren wrote:
This term generally applies to people (web programmers and general users) employing new internet mapping technologies such as Google Earth with little to no back ground in cartographic design.
I disagree with where he thinks it comes from. The military long since used flat-earth projections, on of the least accurate and least meaningful maps. The push to provide "close enough, but I don't really care if it is accurate" images has been pushed from end-users who have no knowledge of cartiography -- the biggest user pushing is multi-national militaries. Maps become reference, and you only use field local references for targetting, or since GPS will get you within 10-20 meters, you make something large enough so you don't have to target finer than that. "Close enough for government work" has been a long-time joke, but it is because end-users, military or otherwise, don't want to know how it works, they don't care if it works accurately most of the time (or you know where its innaccuracies are such that supposedly you can fix them later). All end-users employ the "I just want it" idea. Look at jokes in the lounge about rent-a-coder, it isn't just cartiography. People want it all for nothing. When "all" is a half-an-effort, they still won't buy it, but they might actually use it. So google earth and google maps live with a 15-30m error on map data, no problem, no one has really complained. Sure someone might question why the streets don't always line up. It's "just data" would be the probable answer. No one really understands why, so you shrug and go on. A cartiographer might say, "well are you using it right? are you treating the elevation data as an image where the elevation maps to the grid corners, or grid center?" The programmer would look at them and say, "it's just data, I am just using it, it works, so it must be right." The main difference between the militaries of the world and rentacoder is that the militaries will actually pay for a half-arsed job, but not the full one, and they will be happy with it. Generally you learn to live with the innacuracies. I try hard to fight them, but I know they exist, and which ones are worse than others. You can slowly correct problems, but when you fix them, and someone else doesn't, just try arguing over who is wrong. Just leave it as "it has always been" and try to ignore the problem. Sad, but true. I feel for the cartiographers, I really do; I cringe at some of the programming methods (a
There is actually a history here with the traditional cartographers. For the longest time, cartographers were masters of the spatial, creating print maps was considered an art as much as a science (You somewhat can sense this through the guys attitude in the article). Then in the 80's and 90's GIS started to replace the roles of cartography. Leading into the 2000's digital cartography and GIS is all that really remains. And now, lay people with little understanding of maps and projections are infringing on what remains of the "olden long held fighting" traditional cartography. I think one of the take aways he was trying to stress was a better educational effort to give these neogeographers a better understanding of the spatial data and principles in map creation, so as on the whole the greater benefit will not exclude users, but will provide better map and data creation. On my site, Rich (the writer of the article) in the comments points out that allot of these NeoGeographers are probably programmers(web) who are trying to utilize the new tools in a traditional developer mentality of separate components, which does not work for GIS. Also, they are just forcing the applications to work through mash ups and what not without any idea of how the end results should really be presented. My 2C Aaron
_____________________________________________________________________ Our developers never release code. Rather, it tends to escape, pillaging the countryside all around. The Enlightenment Project (paraphrased comment) Visit Me at GISDevCafe
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I love that people in one field can make use of complex GIS systems without having to understand the fundamentals. They can focus on adding value to their field and not get tied up in the intricacies of lat/long, variation, deviance* and so on. Guys like Jon Udell annotating maps with public data, web-apps that make finding houses easier and so on. The KML layers of Google Earth, now slowly being supported by Google Maps, are so awesome. We do need the cartographers to remain though and keep passing their knowledge on. Got to have strong foundations or all our abstraction layers are just going to crumble. * I recently did the RYA Day Skipper course so those "intricacies" are generally in the area of navigation.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
There is also a whole other group which are the professional GIS developers. Often we create internet based, spatially enabled information system solutions that in the end, allow the user to answer a specific problem. I am somewhat touched on this in my post, as I think he oversimplified the internet spatial areana to a very small subset of people. I can see value in the efforts from Google and Microsoft, but what end product will this really produce that will be useful and valuable beyond convenience widgets?
Paul Watson wrote:
We do need the cartographers to remain though and keep passing their knowledge on. Got to have strong foundations or all our abstraction layers are just going to crumble.
Most of the modern cartographers are actually being trained in digital cartographic expression with GIS being the tools of choice instead of drafting tables and pencils and manual tools. When I was studying at University for my masters in Geography and GeoTechnology, I had to take classes in digital cartography and expression as well as my related GIS, IS and CS classes (I had a hybrid program with a couple of other departments). My 2c AAron
_____________________________________________________________________ Our developers never release code. Rather, it tends to escape, pillaging the countryside all around. The Enlightenment Project (paraphrased comment) Visit Me at GISDevCafe
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There is also a whole other group which are the professional GIS developers. Often we create internet based, spatially enabled information system solutions that in the end, allow the user to answer a specific problem. I am somewhat touched on this in my post, as I think he oversimplified the internet spatial areana to a very small subset of people. I can see value in the efforts from Google and Microsoft, but what end product will this really produce that will be useful and valuable beyond convenience widgets?
Paul Watson wrote:
We do need the cartographers to remain though and keep passing their knowledge on. Got to have strong foundations or all our abstraction layers are just going to crumble.
Most of the modern cartographers are actually being trained in digital cartographic expression with GIS being the tools of choice instead of drafting tables and pencils and manual tools. When I was studying at University for my masters in Geography and GeoTechnology, I had to take classes in digital cartography and expression as well as my related GIS, IS and CS classes (I had a hybrid program with a couple of other departments). My 2c AAron
_____________________________________________________________________ Our developers never release code. Rather, it tends to escape, pillaging the countryside all around. The Enlightenment Project (paraphrased comment) Visit Me at GISDevCafe
Aaron VanWieren wrote:
but what end product will this really produce that will be useful and valuable beyond convenience widgets?
In sailing circles it allows for full plotting systems that aren't owned by one of the major companies. We aren't bound to chart providers either, we can add in information too (classic example was a dangerous reef off a Caribbean island was 1 nautical mile out from where the chart provider said it was. A local took a fix and made the information available to anyone who needed it. With a simple file download I can update my electronic charts and also mark it off on my paper charts.) For my work (information syndication feeds, RSS etc.) it means we can offer added value such as localising information, computing and linking "nearby" information and improving efficiency of physical delivery systems. Also to get the next Coastal Skipper qualification I need to log 800 nautical miles of sailing. I can now use my Garmin to emit waypoints and routes and plot it all on Google Maps. This is more orderly and accurate than a log book (which I do still have to keep but is just more supportive data.) A project downstairs is coupling localised radio and GSM positioning and GIS with a tablet interface to allow rescue services to accurately pin-point people in distress. Having an API means the interface programmer can focus on good usability and not worry about the intricacies of the data. Right now it is a lot of "convenience widgets" which I think is no bad thing but it is early days and more life-saving uses will emerge.
Aaron VanWieren wrote:
Most of the modern cartographers are actually being trained in digital cartographic expression with GIS being the tools of choice instead of drafting tables and pencils and manual tools.
Are the digital systems poor? In the day skipper course we learnt digital and analogue/manual navigation. It was recommended we use digital when possible as when you are dead tired from having not slept for 48 hours in rough seas you are going to make navigation errors on manual charts. But we learnt the manual systems too so that when the GPS unit was swept overboard we could still navigate.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser,
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Aaron VanWieren wrote:
but what end product will this really produce that will be useful and valuable beyond convenience widgets?
In sailing circles it allows for full plotting systems that aren't owned by one of the major companies. We aren't bound to chart providers either, we can add in information too (classic example was a dangerous reef off a Caribbean island was 1 nautical mile out from where the chart provider said it was. A local took a fix and made the information available to anyone who needed it. With a simple file download I can update my electronic charts and also mark it off on my paper charts.) For my work (information syndication feeds, RSS etc.) it means we can offer added value such as localising information, computing and linking "nearby" information and improving efficiency of physical delivery systems. Also to get the next Coastal Skipper qualification I need to log 800 nautical miles of sailing. I can now use my Garmin to emit waypoints and routes and plot it all on Google Maps. This is more orderly and accurate than a log book (which I do still have to keep but is just more supportive data.) A project downstairs is coupling localised radio and GSM positioning and GIS with a tablet interface to allow rescue services to accurately pin-point people in distress. Having an API means the interface programmer can focus on good usability and not worry about the intricacies of the data. Right now it is a lot of "convenience widgets" which I think is no bad thing but it is early days and more life-saving uses will emerge.
Aaron VanWieren wrote:
Most of the modern cartographers are actually being trained in digital cartographic expression with GIS being the tools of choice instead of drafting tables and pencils and manual tools.
Are the digital systems poor? In the day skipper course we learnt digital and analogue/manual navigation. It was recommended we use digital when possible as when you are dead tired from having not slept for 48 hours in rough seas you are going to make navigation errors on manual charts. But we learnt the manual systems too so that when the GPS unit was swept overboard we could still navigate.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser,
Sounds like some cool stuff, I would love to take up sailing. I would say you and your crowd are definately not who he was targeting in the interview. This was part of the reason why the response I wrote on my site tried to break down the actual users of these tools, obviously I need to rethink my classifications a little, but I don't think I was far off. Oversimplified the lowest level of implementers.
Paul Watson wrote:
Are the digital systems poor?
No they are not poor, they are actually very complex, but as you probably know from development, different mediums require different considerations. The biggest difference between paper and digital geography is probably just that, digital cartography actually is published over the internet and is displayed on a monitor. Also, digital cartography over the internet is more graphical and dynamic. Aaron
_____________________________________________________________________ Our developers never release code. Rather, it tends to escape, pillaging the countryside all around. The Enlightenment Project (paraphrased comment) Visit Me at GISDevCafe