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<nettime> cisler meeting report -- new geography: strategies for deep place |
[forwarded to nettime at steve cisler's request -- cheers, t Meeting Report October 6-7, 2004 New Geography: strategies for deep place Institute for the Future (iftf.org) By Steve Cisler CONFERENCE BACKGROUND The host organization is a research group that has been in Silicon Valley for more than 35 years. It was founded by a group of RAND researchers with money from the Ford foundation. Corporate and government agencies subscribe to their services which include forecasting based on emerging trends and technologies and access to a variety of practitioners, writers, and academics. They provide reports, a private web site, and exchanges such as the one I attended in San Francisco on October 6 and 7. The Technology Horizons aims at forecasting what happens at the intersection of biotech, information technology, material science, and energy. These fields not only reflect where the disruptive changes occur but also the consequences for their client base, each of whom pays $65,000 for membership . At this meeting there were people from GM, IBM, U.S. Army, DARPA, Proctor & Gamble, Swisscom, HP Labs, Samsung, Herman Miller, State Farm Insurance, Time Warner, McDonalds, NASA, Sun, Vodafone, UPS, BP, and Intel. Though heavily weighted toward large corporations and institutions, there were also coders and hackers and designers doing interesting projects in the realm of what IFTF calls the geoweb. It brought together peop le who might not meet each other...but should. I will describe some of their presentations in this report. Much of the program was suggested by Mike Liebhold, an IFTF affiliate who was able to get me an invitation. I was one of two attendees out of about one hundred who had no title and no affiliation. Nor did I have a business card. It was a special event for me--what I call a Rip van Winkle* experience. I had been disconnected from the Internet for eight months (Feb-Sept 2004) visiting people and groups not using the Net in the U.S and Mexico. Except for what I read in seminal news sources like The Onion (print edition), newspapers and magazines at the public library much of the online news passed me by for most of 2004. This was an imme rsion in a kind of interchange and presentations I had not experienced since 2003 at the Next Five Minutes conference in Amsterdam. PLACE MATTERS A good part of what is now San Francisco was claimed as a military base more than two hundred years ago. Recently the Presidio reverted to use by civic, cultural, and nonprofit organizations which are housed in the many military buildings around the park-like setting at the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge. Archive.org and SFLAN a community wireless project are located here. IFTF chose the Golden Gate Club for our meeting, and besides having a million dollar view of the S.F. Bay, it has something few large cities have: ample free parking. We met in a room where the original United Nations took place in 1945. Nearby at Fort Scott we took part in a geo-coding exercise. The opening panel featured Dave Rumsey of Cartography Associates. He has a fine arts degree and taught at Yale Art School and then went into real estate and was associated with General Atlantic. With the wealth he amassed he began collecting maps, and his lecture was about his online map collection of 10,000+ digitized maps at www.davidrumsey.com. He has a total collection of 150,000! Using the Presidio--our meeting place-- as an example he showed digital overlays of historical maps of the area and how the new tools provide new ways of visualizing valuable and delicate historic documents. The other panelists included Stewart Brand, founder of the Long Now Foundation as well a board member Kevin Kelly and Zander Rose, Director. This foundation is focused on the very long term issues, and they are designing a clock to be housed in a mountain in the Nevada desert. They hope the clock will last ten thousand years. They have a project called Rosetta stone where they have inscribed on a nickel plate some common text in 1600 written languages. They searched for something that had been translated widely. The Soviet Union had some writings of Lenin, the U.N. Human Rights declaration was another candidate, and the text finally chosen was part of the book of Genesis. The Summer Institute of Linguistics in Dallas, Texas, has translated the Bible into many previously unwritten languages, and they made a deal with the foundation. Rose said they put the information up on the web at first and found that linguists and others came to the site to correct them (some of the text was upside down!) and without much intervention the collection was changed for the better. Kevin Kelly noted that his interest was what happens when you embed the digital economy in the physical realm. The format of the IFTF exchanges includes one-way lectures with some Q&A, moderated by a staff member who knows some of the background about audience members and calls on them for comment and input. At the same time graphic artists are summarizing some of the issues and points of information on large murals. These are a mix of text, arrows, images and have provided me a way of remembering what was discussed. If you were not present it serves as something like a free-form PowerPoint slide show. This sort of mapping has been a mainstay of IFTF for many years, and this use of the word mapping is quite different from cartographic mapping which was at the core of this meeting. OUR FIELD EXERCISE John Carnes has a company called Map Tools in Woodside, California. He worked against a deadline to come up with a web-based program that integrated descriptive information on places that had been geo-coded with a small eTrex handheld GPS device. Besides the program he had to work out device drivers that worked with both laptops and HP tablets. Working with Mike Liebhold and others as we arrived, they had the toys ready for us to try. Ten groups, shepherded by IFTF staff, were taken to Fort Scott a couple of miles from the meeting site. In the week leading up to the meeting, the staff, working with park historians, input hundreds of nuggets of geo-coded information. Our groups roamed the grounds, watching the text and imag es appear, and we had the option of adding our own items. In a perfect world the information would be on central servers, but without 802.11 (Wi-Fi) access the points were on the portable tablets and laptops. At first, the GPS device could not find enough of the satellites to give a reading. Star-crossed lovers of technology! Once it began to triangulate and give readings, the bright sun made the screens hard to read. I had the idea that until screen contrast improved, we would map shadow worlds with greater richness than the bright ones. What might have been a little unwieldy for a single user was no problem for a team. In fact, just having the exercise of strolling around together exposed us to the place, the new technology, and to each other. One participant, William Cockayne, knew a great deal about the area, the architecture, and the histor y and filled us in orally while we experimented with the electronic system. While a tightly integrated dedicated device with a rich source of data could be accessed by a lone user, the social aspects of sharing and cooperation, even for a short exercise, were very positive. Some of the geo-coded items were personal: someone looking for a running partner, and there were ads which prompted discussion about geoSpam as something that could ruin the experience. On the display of the site map, each item was a small circle. Could a secure method assure that spam (or sponsored ads) would be a different color? Could advertisers buy larger circles that would be easier to see, perhaps one as large as the area mapped? Or will there be prohibitions just as there are for billboards on some highways and in national parks? Many of the items were historic notes; some were environmental (I added a note about all the ground squirrel holes in the field), and someone had input elements of a fantasy adventure game. Others had put in very personal notes about a boy friend (better than carving initials on a tree) and the one that attracted the most attention was the item about Jerry Garcia learning to play guitar while stationed in the Army in one of the barracks. Each group was supposed to come up with a development plan for this old fort, and these plans were shared after dinner. My ankle was hurting from an old sprain and I sat out that part of the exercise on the bus. Day Two I overheard one participant saying, IFTF uses the delphi techniques with experts, but predictive markets are big. We are using large bodies of average folks to look at trends. ECOLOGY OF THE NEW GEOGRAPHY The keynote for the morning was Mike Liebhold talking about the Ecology of the New Geography which was a survey of the technology and projects, some of which was included in a background paper all the participants received a few weeks earlier. I noted five out of one hundred taking notes on laptops. The rest used paper or just listened. One fellow constantly used a new model of Sidekick from Danger. This is a cell phone with small color screen, camera, and QWERTY keyboard. Throughout the conference we was carrying on IM sessions, even as he conversed with those present. Liebhold said he had been thinking about geo-spatial issues and technology since the 70s He cited Stewart Brands Whole Earth Catalog and the spatial data management system funded by DARPA. The famous product of this project was the Aspen movie map. One of those involved, Michael Naimark (USC film schools Interactive Media Division), was present in the room. At Apple Liebhold worked on a program called Terraform, collaborating with NASA and ESRI. ESRI is the dominant commercial force in commercial GIS with more than 100,000 installations. What Liebhold envisions is a rich and seamless integration of all sorts of place-based web information with digital cartography. In the future most products might have descriptive labels much as some food already carries. a chair with an FAQ. Maps of electrical conduits, gas lines, and telecomms infrastructure in an office building. There will be context-aware computing where the device knows your intentions and calendar and matches the environmental attributes to your interests. The devices will have to change and will include single use and multi-use. Samples of Frog Design eyeglasses with a telephone built in and visual overlays were shown. On most participants minds were the issues of security vs. privacy, and this makes decisions about the best kind of geo-location techniques very important. There are now location sensing networks like E911. That means the network is tracking you, and many find that objectionable. Intels PlaceLab is working on an open source application that triangulates known radio sources. They have a database of wardriving wi-fi stations that could be used. Our field exercise made use of the U.S. GPS satellites. In the future the European Union will have its own system. Liebhold stressed that most of the geocoded data is not integrated or aligned. There are many ways of describing latitude, longitude, and elevation, many data formats, and metadata standards. Each sector is doing a markup language resulting not in an Esperanto but TMML, too many markup languages. Even the Java implementations are not the same, so changes have to be made for different machines. He surveyed the geoweb software industry and the large companies interested (Palm Sybian, MapInfo, Autodesk, Integraph, IBM, MS, Oracle, and Sun plus some smaller ones like Webraska Mappoint and Brew). And there are Linux projects of all sorts. Some of the policy issues to deal with: location privacy, protecting sensitive data. Not just in the face of the increased influence of the Dept. of Homeland Security. California State University Sonoma has a database of secret maps about archaeological sites around the state. Most countries do not have a large base of free cartographic information as does the U.S. and Denmark. This will inhibit development, especially for small scale experiments. The costs in the UK are so high, they are driving geo-hackers into the streets to make their own maps. He compared the San Francisco map of wi-fi spots which overlay a street map with the London, England, version which lacked the street grid. Finally, he mentioned that without map literacy navigation would be limited to a relatively small number of people. INTERNATIONAL GEOWEB READINESS Scott Vollrath, IFTF research manger, showed preliminary research on Geoweb readiness but admitted data was lacking for many sectors and countries. He tracked 148 countries using UN, ITU, and research institution information as well as cartographic atlases and academic papers. He assigned scores of 0 to 100. This, of course, placed the rich countries at the top and places like Niger at the very bottom. He said that North America will lead in top down applications like precision agriculture (more on that ...), security, and manufacturing while western Europe will lead in bottom-up apps like gaming and urban computing (gaming, art coops, social networking using electronics). L atin America will have some precision agriculture, eco-toursim and urban computing. He predicted there would be rapid grown in E. Europe, the Pacific Rim and high tech cities in India. I felt this meant another way rural areas in general and Africa would not easily participate. The maps displayed for the readiness index reminded me of Larry Landwebers early maps (circa 1990) of Internet penetration where a physics lab in the capital city of a country might have had the sole 56 Kb connection, thus qualifying the whole nation to be colored purple as was the U.S., Finland, Netherlands, Canada... even though every place outside the capital was not even cognizant of the Internet. Another issue is the popularity of quantified indexes and rating systems that assign a score to countries (ICT readiness, corruption, human development) or to restaurants (Zagat) or bottles of wine (Parkers Wine Spectator) and how this form of evaluation is seen as American by many Europeans, even though we in the U.S. tout the methods as universal. APPLICATIONS AND FORECASTS Following the presentation on the readiness index leading edge applications panel explained some of the terms used by Vollrath -Urban computing Mogi is a Japanese game with virtual treasures found using mobile phones. they can trade tokens and run into other people Verizon challenge game (nobody in the audience had played this either) You need to create a photo journal (using Verizons service) as you roam an area. -Built environments These are getting quite complex and those managing it need a lot of info. They cant rely on blueprints but temporal info about the sites. Fleet management; supply chain; manufacturing; facilities management. -Health zones Where you live determines your health. epidemiological and environmental maps. (Silicon Valley Toxic Waste Coalition!) health resources risky places people at risk -Precision farms Microclimate sensing yield monitoring automated geo-guidance high-value row crops livestock management -Secure places there is a lot of publicity and money being spent in this area. Critical infrastructures high-profile events crime watch emergency response -At-risk ecologies Eco-tourism greenmapping indigenous mapping This was followed by forecasts in six areas: Transparency: making the invisible visible using Smart Dust, RFIDs using SMS to alert callers to infected buildings during SARS scare. This was a service available in Hong Kong. This raises questions about privacy and health transparency. Having info about risk exposure will change the way we move about. (USC participatory. mapping of dangerous areas according to race of respondent) In security, it could be used for placing snipers to protect (or sweep and clean out) an area with the fewest resources. Pixel views: fragmenting places and spaces: (image of a field with all kinds of weeds, crop stress, and soil composition). Its no longer just one field. GPS locator in tractors enables farmers to use fewer and less skilled employees. And the farms get bigger to justify the outlay for this type of analysis. Mike thinks this will help people understand microclimates and more info to benefit small farmers in developing countries. Pathmaking: creating spatial memory. Will this result in routes of travel being mapped which will help those who follow. Some indigenous. groups are making their own maps (American Indians using ESRI GIS mapping systems for land and resources management) Ground truth: empowering people in place. Will crime stats be mapped and made available for all to use and make decisions? Megans Law already provides names and locations of sex offenders. Will it expand to include other offenses (barking dog complaints, speeding tickets, overdue library books?) Subversion: playing with convention pacmanhattan taking place in Washington Square. People run around and try to eliminate the Pac Man (IIA and mapping surveillance cameras) End of Cyberspace. Can you see me now? is a London based game. Participants carry devices that let them see the online action as well as taking place in the real world arena. CHANGING THE GAME: REAL-WORLD PERSPECTIVES What stood out for me was the degree to which a company such as Proctor & Gamble--most of whose products are still purchased at stores and not online--will invest in shopping cart and customer surveillance technology in order to track behavior and suggest purchases. This is important because 80% of the purchases are decided once the shopper is in the store. Large screens are attached to some supermarket carts in Germany and others in Boston, Massachusetts. They make use of Wi-Fi to guide the shopper with marketing messages and track their patterns. It turns out that casinos are the prime users of customer tracking technology. Franz Dill of P & G Global Analytics, showed a screen of a company called Reactrix which projects ads on the floor as you move. The shopper reacts and kicks away images of the product. They arent sure it sells anything, but its good publicity for new items. Richard Beckwith of the Intel Vineyards Project showed a British Columbian vineyard situated in a relatively hilly area where the temperature varied depending on the sun exposure and the altitude. Different grapes mature better in different zones. By installing 65 motes (sensors plus antennas and radios) in a two acre/one hectare zone the vineyard manager could see a readout during the day of temperature changes and be alerted to a damaging frost. As a former vineyard owner this was of particular interest to me. At this time only crops with a high value (cannibis?) could justify investment in this network of sensors. Beckwith did say that they found that there was enough sun ( measured in degree-days) to replant one part of the vineyard with a grape that brought a much higher price than the one originally chosen. Schuyler Erle of the Locative Media Lab talked about the recent San Francisco election and how the strategist for his Green candidate did not have good GIS information. He believes the outcome of the elections in the future may depend on more timely use of GIS info. Someone mentioned fundrace.org which is fascinating for American voters. You can input your zip code and see all the political donations made by your neighbors. There are also maps of states, three digit zip codes, and some cities. Large donations have large circles and there are some interesting patterns for Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York. Tom Kalil who used to work in the Clinton administration (now with Univ. of California) gave a rundown of federal geo. projects started with Gore and Clintons support. He mentioned Digital Earth, the controversial NetDay 96, Geospatial One Stop, and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. The NTIA supported the Chicago Neighborhood Early Warning system by mapping crime statistics. He emphasized the difference in info policies of the U.S. and the E.U. The U.S. prices info at marginal cost of dissemination, the E.U.: cost recovery, i.e. full cost of collection. At this time the U.S. market is five times that of the E.U.. The open question is the right mix of fee or for free. He said that geo-spatial literacy was critical if this field was going to flourish. The US is second to last in geography literacy for 18-24 year olds. 30% could not find the Pacific Ocean, and only one in four knew that the U.S. population was between 150 to 350 million. CONCLUSION I was lucky to attend this meeting. Where it will go depencds on map literacy, policy changes, cheaper hardware, and a lot of alignment of emerging standards. The Web 2.0 conference in another part of town did not even consider the aspect of geospatial information. Will these developments intersect with other trends? Or will they mainly provide material for writers and conference organizers much as virtual reality did in the early 90s. I went home and reviewed my old Hi-8 videotapes of CyberThon, a 24 hour event held in San Franciso many years ago... --- *Rip van Winkle is an 18th century character in a story by Washington Irving. Rip is a village slacker who wanders off, falls asleep for years and finally awakes to find old friends long gone and the world of upstate New York no longer a colony but part of a newly independent country, the U.S.A. _________________________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? [1]vote.yahoo.com - Register online to vote today! References 1. http://vote.yahoo.com/ # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net