Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Google My Map


View Humane Societies around UCLA in a larger map

Neogeography is new to people and has totally changed the view that people have on maps. It literally means the new geography and is now being commonly used by personal and community activities. It is new because it conveys the information about a location to individuals in a new way of presentation. One of the pitfalls of neogeography could be that information provided to individuals may not be always accurate. For example, neogeography cannot 100% constantly update its information, so people still needs to reply on other tools while traveling. One unfortunate event happened a few years ago as broadcasted by the local news related to the pitfall was that one family was driving and get lost in the mountains. Back then everyone was shocking to hear that the family did actually used the GPS. However, even though they have the GPS system, the system does not tell the family that due to the heavy snow, the route has been closed down. So the alternative routes were based on old road information and it leads to the family get lost. Tragically the father went out of the car to search for routes was never found, while the rest of the family was lucky to be rescued. 


Neogeography has limitless potentials. It provides people the platform, freedom, and the flexibility to share any content they want. An example would be this assignment, each students would create a map base on their interest, such as battle fields, old historical buildings in a city, or even number of schools in one city! Also, neogeography is inclusive, anyone without professional background of geography could create maps, without intense or formal training through school as additional living expenses. 


One of the consequences of neogeography would be an explosion of information communicating various discipline of studies, more importantly, people could understand it easily without any trouble. This fastens the speed of communication and engagement, it speeds up the time that people needed earlier to absorb information. However, we have to keep in mind that, since now that everyone is a map maker, we have to validate the content of the map before using it.

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