> Too often post modern theory replaces good solid empirical research. Part of what defines Geography (or paleo-Geography in this forum) as a discipline has been it's ability to merge the human with the empirical.
Issues of data ownership have been a front-line research area for GIS. It used to be focused on parcel data sets. The basic argument was: if public funds are used to pay for the data collection, it should be free for public use. Later it morphed into cost sharing programs used by local governments to fund aerial photography runs. The civic government wasn't able to afford the fly-over. By sharing costs with other interested parties, they were able to acquire better data. Who, then, owns the data? Since it was partly funded by the public, shouldn't everyone get it? Then what value was there for the interested parties to invest funds? But geographic information has a component that goes way beyond who owns what. It's much more fundamental and deals with the ontological nature of geographic information. Putting someting "on the map" establishes it's existence in significant ways. When you start messing with ontology, you better be open to critical (post modern) analysis. For instance, I work for the USGS. We are doing everything we can to expose more geospatial information for public use via open standards. However, the USGS holds some data that it won't expose. There are significant environmental concerns for exposing some data. There are significant security concerns for other data. And there are cultural concerns for not exposing other data. But how do we define these cultural concerns? It used to be well established based on "solid empirical research" that Native Americans deserved little rights to lands they inhabited for generations. The Enlightenment led to genocide of indigenous cultures. Now we understand that there are reasons beyond the empirical research to protect geographic information relating to these cultures that were once considered unimportant. Example: if you put an previously unmapped location containing significant Native American cultural artifacts on a publicly available map, these artifacts will likely be stolen or vandalized. The act of putting something on the map has significant social implications. If you value the rights of Native Americans to retain what little is left of their culture, you will leave these things off your map. -Eric Wolf Geographer, USGS Center of Excellence in GIScience -- -=--=---=----=----=---=--=-=--=---=----=---=--=-=- Eric B. Wolf 720-209-6818 PhD Student CU-Boulder - Geography
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