It always helps to remind that "the map is not the territory" [1], or the model is not the reality. Never by definition.
But it is always also possible to get a better map or a better model than the actual best by that definition. And this is of course where you/we can come into play. ;-) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map-territory_relation Eric Wolf schrieb: > > And what do you mean here by "the Geographic is unique, > significant"? To > a computer scientist, this sounds at best funny I think. > > > I get this a lot. One of these days, I'll develop it into an entire theme. > > Geographic Information is an attempt to represent the world around us > in computer terms. This seems pretty easy if you start breaking down > reality into features and attributes. Roads and rivers then fit nicely > into a database. However, this representation, like a map, is > inherently a lie. Much of Computer Science avoids these lies by > focusing on "realities" that are inherently simplified. People want > Google Earth to function like Second Life. The problem is that in > Second Life the "reality" is the simplification - it is the lie. In > Google Earth, all you get are lies with constant reminders of the > difference between those lies and reality. When you zoom in on your > house in Google Earth, does it look like it does right now? Who's car > is parked out front? What season is it? If you attempt to create a > representation that avoids these lies, you end up with the mythical > one-to-one scale map. > > Modeling the world in a computer faces the flip-side of the same > challenges facing artificial intelligence. Our immersion in the world > around us is at one what makes us human (dasein) and enables our > intelligence. But this immersion is consistently taken for granted but > Computer Scientists while it is the very core of Geography. > > -Eric > > -- > -=--=---=----=----=---=--=-=--=---=----=---=--=-=- > Eric B. Wolf 720-209-6818 > USGS Geographer > Center of Excellence in GIScience > PhD Student > CU-Boulder - Geography > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > 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
