Database Reference
In-Depth Information
But, the reader should be reminded that these classifications are crude at best
and are more tendencies than classifications. Also, these groupings will obscure the
richness of diversity that is the true picture. Therefore, they should be treated as
indicative of general trends rather than precise classifications.
This section began with the statement: “If we bring these two stories together, we
should get a good picture of where GI finds itself at the beginning of the second decade
of the twenty-first century.” The operative word here is
should
. It is apparent that there
is no one picture that properly embraces the story of GI. Rather, we have complex
patterns of use and community. There is no one clear direction. Interaction between
the various groups ranges enormously, as do the usages. But, perhaps it is this very
complexity and incoherence that are the common factors. All these groups ultimately
share the same problem: Using GI is often hard. “Hard” limits what can be achieved by
creating demands on time, money, and required knowledge. It is hard because GI does
tend to be more complex than a lot of other data, especially that which relates directly
to geometry or requires spatial indexing. It is hard because it exists in so many forms,
and despite its existence, only a small proportion of GI its any standards. That so
much has been achieved is to the credit of those involved with GI. At least those who
deal with GIS, and who probably most strongly recognize GI as a distinct thing, are
aware of these issues as they have to deal with them on a day-to-day basis, as are those
working to develop standards and infrastructure to help resolve these issues. But, the
largest group, those who use GI, often unconsciously, to join data or produce mashups
are the ones who struggle the most and are most constrained. For these people, the
struggle is with the syntactic and semantic diversity. Indeed, most mashups in truth
are little more than “pins on maps,” limited to display simple locations with some
attribute data as content. Anything more would have required too many data transla-
tions and probably too many semantic errors, partly due to imperfectly described data.
There are also social issues:
•
The mutual distrust that often exists between professional authors of GI and
those involved in the creation of VGI.
•
The insularity of the GI community—that body of mostly professionals
that explicitly recognizes GI as a distinct type of data. Such insularity is
not atypical of particularly specialist professional groups, but perhaps it
is because geography offers so much potential for integrating other data it is
more of an issue for GI. The more people who see GI as special (and maybe
therefore not for them), the more difficult it will be to use GI as a means to
link across communities and hence data (because it is within communities
that different data resides).
3.6 SUMMARY
If the reader finished Chapter 2 with a largely coherent picture of Linked Data and
the Semantic Web, the same probably cannot be said of GI at the end of Chapter 3.
GI is marked by diversity in types of data and communities of users and creators.
There are those who have a strong sense of GI as something different, and many who
would not really recognize that they were dealing with GI.
