Lab3: Neogeography

As a neogeography project, I decided to make a map of places in the greater San Diego area that intrigues me. I visit San Diego quite often because of friends at UCSD. There is beautiful scenery by the Mission Bay Park as well as magnificent tourist destination, SeaWorld. Watching the sunset from coastlines of Coronado is by far the most amazing place I have ever been to. From the famous Chili Fries from Lolita's to 40oz porterhouse for two at Cowboy Star, San Diego also has my favorite restaurants. There are also other attractions such as the USS Midway museum, an Aircraft Carrier-turned museum that demonstrates the immense scale of the US Military protecting freedom around the world.



View My Visits to San Diego in a larger map

    Neogeography is the geo-spatial side of Web 2.0. User-created content combined with existing maps to give meaning and share spatial information with other users. Neogeography embodies the idea that spatial knowledge contains a personal meaning.

    Although neogeography is widely accepted and appreciated, as with anything, there are some downsides to this idea. One of the major pitfalls of neogeography is misinformation. Since there is no regulating agency (such as USGS) there is a great amount of discrepancy regarding the information presented by neogeography. Unlike GIS, where qualified individuals go to great depths to catch and correct wrong information, neogeographers (many of whom are amateurs like me) may present wrong information regardless of malicious intent. Also, since there are no requirements or set regulations, every user follow their self-made guidelines (if any). This leads to a map that is very difficult to read and interpret. Another major disadvantage of neogeography is the loss of privacy. Due to the fact that many neogeography maps contain personal meaning to the space around us, there is a possibility of great leak of personal information. Since anyone who accesses this blog (made public) can access my map (made public by following the link), they can predict where I will be when I visit San Diego without my knowledge.

    Regardless of these downsides of neogeography, it still stands as a positive symbol of personal understanding of spatial information. I don’t see it too distant in the future when users will start to tag their pictures and videos based on location, which will allow for another type of social-spatial analysis. It also serves a way for people like you and me to get interested in maps as a whole, and moving to a more sophisticated study such as GIS. The flaws mentioned above can be reduced by implementation of a bit of regulations and safety mechanisms.