I find this point of view to be astounding in its arrogance and indeed
blatant colonialistic spirit. The noble savages should not be influenced
by us, the decadent Westerners. A sickening insular attitude that I have
not found in similar projects like Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia.
When do I stop being a local, when I cross my street, when I cross into
the next neighborhood, when I cross into the next settlement, next
region, next country? Where is the limit of local?
There is nothing taken away by remote mapping, indeed what is given is
very valuable, time and commitment to building a base map upon which it
is easier for locals to add their own "flavour".
I've written some thoughts on this myself, and indeed find this to be an
opportune time to point at my project Askja, on how to make mapping
remotely even easier and more focused.
My thoughts are found here: http://joi.betra.is/?p=1769
The TL;DR is, we are building a map of the world and we need more people
to do more work on more places, remotely or not.
Remote mapping - lets do more
Þann 13.6.2015 14:37, skrifaði Frederik Ramm:
Hi,
I'm known for being critical of armchair mapping by people with no
personal connection tho the area being mapped. Whether done for fun, for
money, or to help, I think that in most cases it is a bad idea that runs
against the spirit of OSM.
(I'm willing to concede that there are exceptions, and that sometimes
doing something that's against the spirit may still be useful. But these
are individual cases, to be carefully justified, and remote mapping
should never become anyone's standard mode of contribution.)
Until now I thought that the main exception, one that even I would have
to accept, is mapping for humanitarian purposes.
I was all the more surprised - positively surprised - to read this
thoughtful essay by Erica Hagen, who founded Map Kibera:
http://groundtruth.in/2015/06/05/osm-mapping-power-to-the-people/
I'd encourage everyone to read that. It questions some rarely questioned
assumptions; it even says that mapping by locals doesn't really "count"
if those locals are just doing it for the money (a sentiment that I've
always felt but rarely dared to express, because who can expect locals
in the poorest parts of the world to map "for fun" like privileged
westerners do?).
It also says that "local" isn't "local" if the locals from the wealthy
city map the slum in their midst. I've tended to routinely associate the
call for "more diversity" in OSM as mainly being one for levelling the
gender playing field but this article goes much further.
In some parts the article echoes a rather more acerbic posting written
last month by Gwilym Eades, a university lecturer in London:
http://place-memes.blogspot.de/2015/05/the-hubris-of-proactive-disaster-mapping.html
which essentially accused humanitarian mapping (and as I would add, any
remote mapping really) of "homogenising, westernising, and colonising"
the map.
I don't agree with everything written in these postings but they
certainly deserve some wider audience, and that's why I am writing this
here - since neither author is on these lists and I haven't seen their
messages mentioned or quoted anywhere.
I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: "Whenever you give
someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from them."
Bye
Frederik
_______________________________________________
talk mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
