A couple of pennies here too. Neogeographers don't care what your background or job title is.
Origins - neogeography came first. Those in the traditional system who didn't get it, or were opposed to it citing outmoded reasons for their objections were dubbed palaeogeographers. E.g. someone saying 2 years ago "OpenStreeMap will never work", and a national mapping agency saying 2 weeks ago "You cannot use electoral boundaries on top of Google maps". Lane's email above is very illuminating, in particular the description about some people fearing the influx of "new users". It's exactly the same excuses I hear from academics to justify not releasing their methodologies, models and data. For example, "I think you will all agree that if anyone could do this simulation and thereby make a wrong decision, it would be a bad thing". A neogeographer would not agree. If everyone and their dog could use a complex model to place a new supermarket, do we seriously believe the supermarket chiefs will prefer to ask Mrs Jones at No. 20 instead of the experts in the field? Neogeography should encourage all people to do intelligent analysis. They use things like communities and crowds - solutions can be arrived at together. It's not just about access to new shiny tools. It's democratic. What's also interesting with hindsight is that the remote sensing fear never really came to pass. At least in my perception. Perhaps the experts with the most to lose did lose some of their number? Is it a fear about crowds hammering at the ivory tower then? So a Paleogeographer is identified by their opposition to neogeography. Neogeography is more of a belief system than a job description. The same with paleogeography. Therefore there are many traditional or academic, or professional geographers who are neogeographers (even if you don't know it!) Neogeographers don't care what your background or job title is. Neogeographers love geography! It's just a new way of practising some of it. Another little observation: It's all a very new thing! Remember to breathe! Academia works on a slower timescale. Three or four years for the first research papers to get published - it must be frustrating. As an example with another bit of technology, SecondLife came out around 2003, research proposals in 2004, and it's only now we're seeing the fruit of this research, now, when the virtual world is as empty as ever! (Anecdotally, I've been told that such research is very hard to publish or talk about as SecondLife was increasingly associated with Furries, gambling and adult activities). _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org
