Week 3: A Running Route

Neogeography represents a new and exciting development for the field of geography but it does have its pitfalls. Neogeography is essentially the democratization of mapmaking, made possible by new technology. Before the widespread prevalence of powerful home computing, easy to use software and the internet, the creation and editing of Geographic Information Systems was limited to people who had both the training and hardware to use ARCGIS and similar programs. Now, however, anyone with access to an internet connection can use google maps to create and edit multiple layers of spatial data, effectively creating a GIS. One of the greatest advantages, and also largest challenges, of this neogeography is that it is open to everyone.

The new access to map making allows for a much wider variety of spatial and geographic data to be shared. Groups and individuals who would have never before thought to create GIS and maps now are able to with relative ease. The GIS they create is then available for anyone to access online, increasing the total knowledge available. This open access, however, is the main drawback of neogeography. When everyone can create maps and GIS anonymously, the pressure to have completely accurate results is lessened. In addition, since neogeography involves the participation of mainly amateurs it could lead to a higher rate of mistakes and deliberately false data, which might hurt researchers trying to analyze the data. However, for the most part this democratization of geographic knowledge has been a plus. Neogeography is part of a larger trend where previously hard to attain skill and knowledge is made accessible to the general public through technology. Hopefully, like other previously esoteric skills such as digital photography, filmmaking and music producing, it will make what was once expensive and hard to access easily usable. This will encourage members of the general public to get involved, leading to a wide variety of data rich maps. While it is still to early to speculate where neogeography will lead, I believe one of the ultimate end points could be a worldwide system of geographic information, where previously individual geographic knowledge and information is available for access by all. Neogeography, if it can overcome the problem of accuracy, will be able to bring maps and geography into the 21st Century and give entirely new groups of users access to a wide variety of geographic information.

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