> -----Original Message-----

> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:geowanking- 

> [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of R E Sieber

> Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 8:54 PM

> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

> Subject: [Geowanking] Idea for a Neogeographers meet Paleogeographers 

> panel at Where 2.0

> 

> Also, you'll notice that the above abstract is a bit hard on the 

> paleos and gracious to the neos. What I'd need is some wording that's 

> gracious to the paleos. Can you think of good things to say about 

> traditional cartographer and GIScience? (Obviously I can, but I'm 

> curious as to others' impressions.)

 

I'm not sure why anyone would think that calling academic GIScience folks
"paleogeographers" would foster meaningful discussion in the way that you
describe. That term seems condescending to me - I guess I am a
paleogeographer because I work at a university and I am a researcher in
GIScience - this despite the fact that we build open source software (since
10 years ago, and in recent years our software leads are GeoTools folks),
much of linked to computational methods for data mining and cluster
detection. So the proprietary, non-computational, and closed
characterizations do not apply. And our center is far from the only place
where this kind of work is taking place in academia. 

 

What does GIScience and Cartography Research have to offer? Research
advances in GIScience and Cartography provide the basis for all kinds of
things that people are mashing up today. Mapping and spatial analysis
methods didn't simply appear out of thin air to become mashable through an
API.   

 

I think the "paleo" perspective on what GIScience research is all about has
little evidence to support it. Maybe those assumptions apply instead to
GIScience as it is *practiced* in much of the professional world. 

 

So clearly I have some strong opinions about this. :) I guess I just wonder
if your stated goals are at all possible if you're going to devote attention
to defining camps and weighting them down with sweeping generalizations.
That's going to alienate good ideas and attract people who just want to
gripe. 

 

I think this session would benefit from simply comparing different types of
goals associated with GIScience research vs. those who are associated more
closely with neogeography. It would be interesting to identify places where
the more science-oriented goals of GIScience research might mesh well with
faster-moving neogeography goals and vice versa. One thing that is almost
certainly in common is that both communities need to find people to fund
this stuff in one way or another. So are there good examples of projects
that mix university research with neogeography partners? If not, what are
the barriers to that happening and how could we change them? 

 

 

Cheers,

 

 

-Anthony

 

 

Anthony Robinson, PhD

Research Associate

John A. Dutton e-Education Institute / GeoVISTA Center

Department of Geography

The Pennsylvania State University

http://www.personal.psu.edu/acr181/

 

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