Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
enough to sustain all the Internet mapping services that are available currently?
Will free open source software continue to be of growing economic significance?
In an economic analysis GPS would not be considered free since it is paid for
out of taxation (directly by U.S. citizens and indirectly by the rest of the world
who participate in the U.S. economy). The open source movement is supported by
academia, which in most countries is supported by the public purse. However, the
wiki movement [3] is a genuine “common” that shows no sign of “overgrazing.”
1
There is a strong likelihood that at least some elements of ubiquitous
positioning may really be free. For example, if someone records the geography of
a favorite walk, he or she may be motivated to share the experience via a geowiki
so that others may benefit [4]. A problem with wikis is that there has to be a
moderation activity to reject obvious abuse. While these activities may also be
performed by noncommercial volunteers, there may also be a vital role for
commercial validation services.
This option is perhaps something of a wild card. Could there be a grassroots
movement to provide a Whereness “common”? There are already many millions
of WiFi hotspots mapped and open source resources to manage the information
space. There is also an increasing interest in amateur “mashups”
2
whereby open
application programming interfaces (API) from large organizations can be
combined to provide some very compelling location-aware applications. It is
possible that this grassroots approach might evolve into something of a standard
that gathers its own momentum. Open mapping is discussed in Chapter 8, and if
this investment in personal time were accounted for conventionally and added to
the billions of dollars and euros invested publicly in GNSS, it may be that this
approach actually becomes the dominant one. Main industry players may then be
relegated to providing the low-value elements and specialist systems integration,
while the mass market is effectively free. A caveat is, however, appropriate. The
“tragedy of the commons” [5] occurred when overgrazing led to starvation. So
although a “free” system may emerge, it may ultimately fail due to abuse and be
rescued by a more traditional approach from established players.
If people know their location then why would they not share that information
for free or maybe for a reusable token? There is the problem of validation because
how would they really know they could trust the positional information? Perhaps
the shared location or route is a false one calculated to draw the victim into a false
location for some illegal purpose. Really important application users are likely to
want to validate the data or at least the identity of the other party providing it.
1
A common is a metaphor for a shared resource owned collectively, inspired by medieval village
commons that are open spaces upon which the ordinary people, or commoners, have animal grazing
rights.
2
A mashup is the term used to describe the informal integration of information taken from several
sources. Many new user applications in Web 2.0 can be made by people mashing up existing data
accessed from specific remote Web sites together with new data provided locally.
