Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
viduals. This has been done for a number of surveys. The use for criminal
investigation has been popularized in movies and TV shows. The mundane
use of personal data to aggregate information for marketing and other pur-
poses has received some coverage as the result of the increasing number of
identity theft cases, but its use by telemarketers and direct mailers has lacked
a clear response.
The complexity of an individual's movements and the limitations of the
technologies leads to constraints. GPS receivers will not work inside build-
ings, and most high-accuracy remote sensing technologies will not record
details about objects in the shadows of buildings or obscured by natural fea-
tures (e.g., in ravines or under dense tree coverage). In other words, some
unsurveyed areas remain, but as the technologies develop and people come
to rely more on them for a sense of security, the cultural sense of what is
appropriate to collect, record, and reuse about an individual's things and
events will be changing.
Summary
Many choices of geographic representation and cartographic representation
follow implicit cultural conventions. The success of GI or a map is to no
small degree contingent on the ways that cultural conventions are included.
The GI's or map's power is also a measure of how much of a contribution is
made to the a culture's engagement with the world. Knowing the cultures of
GI and maps can help make sense out of how GI and maps are used and
manipulated, and how biases can become part of maps. In Western countries
a central issue is accuracy—questions of what and how GI and maps
represent. A second central issue is the question of why GI and maps are cre-
ated. They are very expensive and must have good economic or political rea-
sons. Finally, an engagement with cultural aspects should consider the
choices people make. These points are relevant to ongoing debates sur-
rounding surveillance.
Distortion is a common way to describe the inaccuracy of GI or maps.
Propaganda is often accused of distorting the truth, but distortion is a neces-
sary part of most GI and cartography. A helpful distinction comes from look-
ing at the distortion of propaganda materials in terms of a malicious intent
or willful distortion. This provides no black-and-white criteria to distinguish
propaganda, but still can help identify propaganda in practice.
In-Depth Different Ways to Represent
Geographic Knowledge
Textbooks like this topic focus on the creation and use of GI and maps for the
representation of geographic knowledge, but we certainly should at the bare
 
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