Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
part
in
facilitating
the
access
to
and
re-use
of
map
background data.
3.1.3.
The Web as platforms
As base maps become available online through APIs,
maps' status shifts from self-sufficient objects to platforms.
This
notion
stresses
the
possibility
to
question
and
reprogram the existing content:
Definitionally a “platform” is a system that can be
reprogrammed and therefore customized by
outside developers - users - and in that way,
adapted to countless needs and niches that the
platform's original developers could not have
possibly contemplated, much less had time to
accommodate.
Andersen,
2007
6
,
quoted
in
[BOG 09, p.3]
Web platforms underline how online resources can be
reprogrammed. As Bogost and Montfort summarize, “If you
can program it, then it's a platform. If you can't, then it's
not” [BOG 09, p.4]. So Websites are no longer only related
through hyperlinks; as stated by the founder of the Website
ProgrammableWeb: “instead, developers are using tools to
connect data and functionality from one site to another
site.”
7
APIs play a vital role within this new method of
linking contents:
Important steps in this direction are APIs
(Application Programming Interfaces) that allow
Web communities to create an open architecture
6 Andersen M., 2007. “Analyzing the Facebook Platform, three weeks”. See:
http://web.archive.org/web/20071021003047/blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/analyzi
ng_the_f.html.
7 See: http://blog.programmableweb.com/2012/02/06/5000-apis-facebook-
google-and-twitter-are-changing-the-web/.
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