Walking Cyfarthfa 3: The signs in the new digital landscape

[Chartist Merthyr]

In today's world in which GIS meets the Web, the new geoweb, we add a whole new layer of information to the landscape.


Towards the geospatial Web



Map | Google Maps | Google Earth (KML) | Flickr
Geograph British Isles | SO0306 | SO0307 | SO0407 | SO0406


We inhabit a new digital landscape. With today's linking of GPS data with cameras and Internet-enabled mobile phones one glimpses the future promise of the geospatial web ( or, geoweb; and x); a new digitally-encoded landscape with a new fluid geography of location-aware information that's available to us whilst on the move. - Which direction to Chartist Cave?

With the current development of popular mapping software and apps such as Google Earth, we enter a new "soft" geography in which the viewer selects which software layers of information to overlay the map with. Towards a new "liquid geography" for use as a tool to locate oneself in today's "liquid modernity" (and X) ?

There is now an explosion of popular mapping activity online. The initial sharing culture of the Web and a wiki-approach to open knowledge building (exemplified by Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit"; see also Wikimedia Commons), has really taken off for popular mapping with the availability of new user-tools for geographical information (GIS) and digital mapping applications such as Google Maps & Google Earth (and x); Flickr (and x); Geograph (UK) , "photograph every grid square!"; and Wikimapia, "a Web 2.0 project to describe the whole planet Earth". Check out these cool tools for uploading photos directly to flickr from your mobile camphone. The term "neogeography" has been coined to capture this practice of personal and community photo-geographical activity online, which represents a new geographical "wisdom of crowds" to harness the network effect of the Web.


The layers of the map: User, group, public culture



Google Maps: Walking Cyfarthfa | Geograph British Isles: Grid ref SO0306 | Google Earth (KML) | Wikimedia: GeoHack: Coordinate 51° 44′ 55.88″ N, 3° 23′ 57.31″ E


The Web forms a new mesh of information with multiple articulations of place through photo, text and map. The profusion of user-generated content online provides a whole new layer of information in response to our searches, visualization and mapping of place; a space for new fusions of identity and place. Contributions by the individual user, the common interest group, and the official public culture find new possibilities for overlap, connection and interaction; producing new horizons of cultural value and meaning.

In this process we move beyond a command-and-control world in which maps were essentially a monopoly of the state *, towards a networked world that includes a new popular mapping and folksonomy of place (- certainly, today's underlying GPS and GIS technologies derive from military command-and-control functions). This movement beyond a statist, static and closed world towards a new, fluid and open citizens' cartography network is an apparently unorganized and massively distributed phenomenon of the Internet. Comprising part of the wider information network of the Web, this plethora of photographic/geographical content nevertheless yields the properties of an emergent intelligence or "hive mind". For beyond the apparent disorder and endless multiplicity, one finds the formation of coherent communities of interest online, as for example in the formation of photo groups on Flickr that bring together people of shared interest or geographical location.

There is an increasing option for the addition of a "public culture" (or "heritage") layer to the landscape. The institutions of official public culture are now playing catch-up with the popular trends of the "Web 2.0"; with its rich media features such as photo & video sharing and embedded mapping features - epitomized by Flickr, You Tube, My Space, etc. It is of particular note that the United States Library of Congress entered into partnership with Flickr in 2007 to harness the "Web 2.0" power of folksonomy (users' tags as metadata) and the photo-sharing culture of the Web to augment its photographic collections (with the implementation of new, open copyright licensing agreement). [ draft: A wider pattern is now evident as public archives (libraries and museums) meet the "Web 2.0" and seek new relationships with online audiences - updating websites with GIS functionality, adding blog and podcast features, utilising Flickr as a resource for user-generated contributions, and so on.


Moving through the landscape



The merging of the physical and the digital landscape adds a new serendipity factor for the walker to discover new features whilst moving through the landscape. A case of Smart Mobs meet the City of Bits; the new landscape of bits, in which "all that is solid melts into air", and can be reconfigured again.

A spin-off from the GPS-enabled mobile phone is geocaching, a digital enhancement of the traditional treasure hunt where one explores a landscape on the move and seeks out particular features (Nokia were the innovators in the mobile Web and enabling the mobile phone for geocaching; see here and here); so its not too much of a stretch of the imagination to consider a "Geocache the Trevithick Trail" (see here and here) for a truly steampunk adventure along this recently opened heritage trail.

We thus glimpse the potential of the geospatial web in which the user may produce a real-time map whilst on the move, actively selecting which layers of information of immediate interest to overlay the landscape with (- a local walk guide, the weather forecast, some notes on the historical background, a recommended food & pub stop ? ); a powerful tool for contextual knowledge with a potential to bring together people of similar geographical location or interests.



Google Earth (KML) | Projection view: includes Pont y Cafnau iron bridge, Cefn Coed VIaduct, Brecon Beacons



Note

* See the British Ordnance Survey map series. The 1836 map of Merthyr, one may fairly assume, was commissioned for a specific purpose in the aftermath of the 1831 Merthyr Rising?


+ Walking Cyfarthfa 1: The landscape of the Cyfarthfa iron works
+ Walking Cyfarthfa 2: Towards the "Cyfarthfa Heritage Landscape"
+ Walking Cyfarthfa 3: The signs in the new digital landscape


Copyright | Text and photos copyright John Wilson and licensed for re-use under this Creative Commons licence.


( Posted by - John Wilson )