I've been a lurker on geowanking for some time now, and the
interesting posts on this thread have moved me to throw in a
contribution. Apologies if that contribution is a bit ethereal for so
pragmatic a venue!
By way of introduction, I'm not a geographer (of the neo-, paleo-, or
any other designation). I'm an ethnographer and cultural historian of
science and technology (albeit with significant technical background);
my current research is focused principally on geoinformatics. I'm
currently working as a post-doc at Syracuse university, and while I am
affiliated with the fine geography department here, that affiliation
is largely administrative. I *am* hoping to attend the upcoming Where
2.0, but reductions in our discretionary budget this year have left
that in question.
I want to say first that this thread represents something of an
interesting reversal to me. A portion of my recent work has dealt
with a similar dichotomization in the field of remote sensing,
described in detail by John Baker at RAND back in 2001. In a major
RAND report on the challenges facing commercial remote sensing, he
warned of an "imagery credibility paradox" that could result from the
sudden influx of "new users" (principally news organizations and NGOs)
into the field of remote sensing. That group he defined in opposition
to "traditional users," which he defined as including state agencies
(e.g. espionage and natural resource management), extractive
industries, and major university labs (he himself would've fallen into
this later category). The worry, obviously, was that new users (for
understandable reasons) didn't really know what they were doing, nor
did they have the resources for precision analysis, and their flawed
analyses could "taint" the enterprise as a whole (at least in the eyes
of the public). Baker suggested this was especially ironic, in that
new users' objectives--"public disclosure, attention-focusing, and
communication," as opposed to inquiry for scientific, development, or
management purposes--meant that they, not "traditional users," would
become "the public face of remote sensing."
In general I've found Baker's perspective on the threat (and promise)
of "new users" quite flawed, but I mention it here only because it's
interesting that the posts I'm seeing that are critical of the alleged
neo/paleo dichotomization are coming from the folks who do NOT
self-identify as neogeographers. Of course, some might see
"new/traditional" as less likely to raise hackles than "neo/paleo."
As an alternative to "neogeography" I've been developing the concept
of "geomedia" (though many of the practitioners who inform my research
are more than happy with the former term). The term is meant to
portray the recent developments we're talking about here less as
"web-enabled geography" than as a hybrid of objectives and rhetorical
strategies drawn not only from geography but from photography,
journalism, and other critical/communicative enterprises. It is only
these latter fields which took public discourse and critique as
central to their function. I'm of course aware of the
social/technical split that has waxed and waned within the field of
geography for some time, but I think it's fair to say that until
comparatively recently, "public disclosure, attention-focusing, and
communication" has never been a central objective of "mainstream"
("traditional?" "paleo-?" whatever) geography, which instead has been
engaged first and foremost with the construction of scientific
knowledge (and all the deeper objectives that entails). To treat the
confluence of these two very different fields of human practice solely
as the evolution of one of them seems untenable, and I think to
understand the operation of what's being called "neogeography"
requires the insights not only of geographers but of media studies
theorists as well.
My two cents.
--Lane DeNicola
On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 4:13 PM, Michael Gould Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> Geographers who used /developed GIS in the 1980s *were* the neogeographers of
> their time. Perhaps some of them have not kept up with new technology as well
> they might have....but I (also) do not think that this justifies the "us
> versus
> them" rhetoric. That said, I look forward to the Where2.0 and AAG panels:
> debates are almost always valuable vehicles for moving ahead.
>
> MG
--
Lane DeNicola, Ph.D.
Faculty Fellow in the Humanities
College of Arts & Sciences
Syracuse University
http://web.syr.edu/~ladenico
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