Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The potential exists for serious misinterpretation and misuse, and there is a growing need
for basic education in these and other spatial concepts.
Geobrowsers offer enormous potential to social scientists, both as tools for visualization
and as subjects of research. The social implications of fine-resolution imagery and of a
proprietary view of the world are profound, and demand attention. Much has been written
about the social impacts of GIS over the past two decades, and this work badly needs to be
extended to the developing field of geobrowsers.
Finally, Google Earth and its competitors are only a first approximation to the concept
of Digital Earth, and could be of much greater value if some obvious limitations could be
addressed. From the perspective of the social sciences, the focus on content that is visible from
above is problematic, given the abundance of more abstract data sources. A new generation
of techniques is needed that can mash such data with the Google Earth base, creating more
powerful ways of communicating what social scientists know about the surface of the Earth.
References
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Goodchild, M. F. and Yang, S. (1992) A hierarchical spatial data structure for global geographic
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Gore, A. (1992) Earth in the Balance: Forging a New Common Purpose . London, Earthscan.
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Harley, J. B. (2002) The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography . Baltimore, MD,
Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Maguire, D. J. and Longley, P. A. (2005) The emergence of geoportals and their role in spatial
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Pickles, J. (ed.) (1995) Ground Truth: The Social Implications of Geographic Information Systems .
New York, Guilford.
Raskin, R. (1994) Spatial Analysis on the Sphere . Technical Report 94-7. Santa Barbara, CA,
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Snyder, J. P. (1993) Flattening the Earth: Two Thousand Years of Map Projections . Chicago, IL,
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