The July issue of WIRED features two interesting articles – and you may have seen them already. If not, please find a brief overview and links to the articles below. I’m also pointing out some sections I found most interesting and like to share why I’ve picked them.
The first article is titled “Google Maps Is Changing the Way We See the World“.
The article gives some fascinating insights into how Google Maps and Google Earth developed over time. You will also learn who the key persons were to drive most of the cool usage possibilities these services are recognized for today. An interesting read beefed up with interviews of some of the leaders and pioneers of the (online) GIS industry like John Hanke, Director of Google Earth and Google Maps, Michael Goodchild, a professor of geography at UC Santa Barbara, Paul Rademacher, creator of the first Google Maps mashup, and David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined.
The second article is “Dispatches From the Hyperlocal Future“, written by no other than cyberpunk Bruce Sterling. His protagonist is Harvey Feldspar, a self proclaimed top tier geo blogger, typing dictating away on his Senseo-Transicast 3000 in the summer of 2017. Harvey is ranting and raving about geospatial and hyperlocal gadgets and feature sets.
While I very much recommend reading the two articles yourself first, here are a few quotes or paragraphs I liked most. And I’ll also tell you why.
About user generated map data:
“It didn’t take sophisticated software,” Hanke says. “What it took was a substrate — the satellite imagery of Earth — in an accessible form and a simple authoring language for people to create and share stuff. Once that software existed, the urge to describe and annotate just took off.”
We can argue about user generated maps’ data quality, reliability, and possible bias of POI entries. However, no one can deny the fact that the Internet has democratized the tools for production in many areas – map making being one of them. Chris Anderson wrote in “The Long Tail“: “Never underestimate the power of a million people with keys to the factory.”
So in case you might wonder whether this is the end of digital map providers like Navteq and TeleAtlas: I don’t think it is. It is just a perfect example of how you can allow people to add value to a product. “Give people the power to create their own ground truth,” as Mike Liebhold, a senior researcher specializing in geospatial technology at Silicon Valley’s Institute for the Future is quoted in the article.
I see great potential in allowing people to create a much richer hyperlocal detail level and then making those map layers available to a broad audience. Filtering will help find and boost the relevance of these layers to individual users in a magnitude never dreamed of before: 
The wine & dine layer, the scenic roads layer, the hip-hop culture layer, the shoe boutique layer, the Obscure-Street-Food- in-Eastern-Jackson-Heights layer … build your own and extent the long tail.
The call is for the map and map device makers to enable user-generated micro layers to be easily made, offered, found, and applied.
About hyperlocal advertising:
“I’m [...] careering along the Beltway [in a Hyundai GPS-King]. I downloaded a cool plug-in to block out the gas-food-lodging ads that hit my screen a quarter mile before each exit, so I’m free to concentrate. What do I care about lodging anyway?”
I agree location based advertising is one of the many emerging possibilities often mused about. And above is the horror scenario, isn’t it? Given what is possible today I see a different scenario if only ad-serving technology would be used at its full potential. Context is king. And that means active context, initiated by the user – not passive context, observed by some software.
It’s really an old story: Pushing out messaging to users based on observed behavior rather than users’ explicit preferences does not work too well. But hey, the time will come and a broader level of marketeers and media agencies will get it too.
About social-localizing:
“It’s the most common question during cell phone conversations: “Where you at, dawg?” Those queries will soon be obsolete. Helio’s Buddy Beacon allows you to locate other “don’t-call-it-a-phone” users on MapQuest by glancing down at your screen.”
This is not the future. This is today!
Helio has indeed launched the Buddy Beacon service late last year. Read more about this location based socializing service on Matt’s blog. Yet another mobile friend finding service is Loopt, who according to Reuters where able to sign up about 40,000 customers in the first seven weeks of a free trial after signing a deal with Boost Mobile.
This may sound like a very geeky application, targeted at the young and footloose generation. But that’s not my point. I think services like these will have a great affect on how a whole range of future location based service will be adopted by this (and other) generations in the years to come.
The extensive coverage by WIRED will definitely propel the thinking to new height. So what do you think?
