Hi Lane - Very interesting perspective - one of my frustrations with geography as a discipline has been its lack of interest in leveraging the GeoWeb to raise public awareness about the issues they research - environmental justice, climate change, economic inequality, etc. If I understand your proposition this is not a mission geography, as a discipline, has "geography, which instead has been engaged first and foremost with the construction of scientific knowledge (and all the deeper objectives that entails)."
Although I'd argue geography has over time trended away from what most of the public defines as empirical science towards critical theory. In many ways I see neogeography as an extension of geography's quantitative movement of the 60's and 70's. As neogeography moves past pushpins on maps I see lots of the work from Berry, Hagget, Chorley, Kansky, Paelinck being duplicated in new and innovative ways. Look at apps like Walkscore, pgRouting, kernel density heat maps, and temporal analysis. Computational techniques have vastly improved since 60's and 70's and we are seeing some of the benefits of how the new horsepower can be applied to old geographic problems often times with amazing results. While I think neo's could benefit from the old work - I do not think it is a prerequisite. The work drew on the common language of mathematics and most of the neo's I know have a very solid background, often times far better than many modern geographers. While I do think the gap between neo and academic geography has been far over blown. I also think that the friction is not only the fact neo's are often not geographers, but possibly worse they embody the spirit of quantitative geography and what many current geographers view as positivist science. This could also be some of the underpinnings as to why geophysicists love the GeoWeb and geographers less so. I'd wager the discipline of geography in 60/70's would have a far different reception to the GeoWeb that we see today. I was lucky enough to have a class and do some research with Jean Paelinck (still brilliant in his 80's) and he was definitely fascinated by the work and technologies that were emerging. A sample size of one but interesting none the less. I definitely recommend checking out the work of any of them - great stuff. best, sean FortiusOne Inc, 2200 Wilson Blvd. suite 307 Arlington, VA 22201 cell - 202-321-3914 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lane DeNicola" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2008 6:43:31 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [Geowanking] Idea for a Neogeographers meet Paleogeographers panel at Where 2.0 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 _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org
