FreeMaps Vs Google Maps (an Old article relevant for current debate on Security concerns)
Anivar Aravind
I am attaching one of my articles in 2005 , when Google Maps/Earth is
introduced.
It was written as a perspective piece in Global south Context in 2005
. It have the limitations of That. But I feel it is relevant to the
current discussion on Google maps and Security Concerns .
Anivar
----------------------
I am trying to Explain how Free Map is different from Google
Maps and Google Earth
The ideas & concerns FreeMap is ver different from Google Earth & Google Maps
The issues are several, and start with the social origins of geo-
spatial technologies. There has always been a widespread public
ignorance of these technologies, which until recently had been the
exclusive domain of high-end scientific institutions, state
bureaucracies, or large corporate organisations. For most of the past
three decades, these market and state institutions maintained a
tradition of secrecy around their sources, encouraging a perception
of maps as a read-only medium produced by experts, not a read-write
medium produced by people. Now that maps and geographic information
are disseminating more publicly through efforts like Google's, the
tradition of secrecy has been abandoned, but the perception of the
medium as read-only has been retained and extended in products like
Google Maps/Earth, which do not allow active editing, annotation or
creation of maps -- only passive browsing, searching, and viewing.
Neither the state nor the market has any reason to challenge this
widespread and increasingly false perception of maps as read-only,
because it is neither in their political or commercial interests.
There is not much that is new about Google Maps/Earth, which are
simply taking tools and data which have been around for years,
designing a new and simple API around them, and delivering these huge
datasets of licensed satellite imagery through their network of
powerful servers. I agree that it's pretty cool, and I've also had
great fun surfing on their servers with the Google Earth application
and Google Maps web interface. But Google Maps/Earth is basically
about browing and searching, which is definitely useful for
navigation, tourism, locating services, and other kinds of
consumption activity. Free Mapping, and GIS more generally, is more
about analysis and representation, which is useful for decision-
making and community action around housing, environment, and civic
infrastructure, which is basically a productive activity.
There are another set of related issues raised by Google. The state's
historical failure to digitise and publish geo-data in the public
domain, before commercial providers could get there first. This has
created a paradoxical and distressing situation. The transition from
traditional geography and its use of static print-based map bureaus,
to digital cartography through the use of dynamic, computer-based
spatial databases has also resulted in an enclosure of previously
public information into a new form of private property. It is
interesting that there are so little awareness or public debate
around maps and geo-data as intellectual property, when there is
otherwise so much(comparably high in indian context. but not active in
the context of kerala) attention on the status other media such as
music, movies, books, and other earlier forms of print and analogue
culture now being digitally produced and distributed. But we are soon
about to face a situation where private corporations have more public
knowledge than either the state or civil society organisations. This
must change.
Unfortunately, much of the community mapping, wireless networking
and geo-hacking in US/UK/EU often shares the same techno-utopian
political aesthetic which now drives Google's own marketing
strategies. There is a strong determinism which underpins many
non-profit or community projects, which are premised on the naive
belief that by simply giving people tools and technologies, that they
will magically transform into more open, more empowered, more
participatory communities. Perhaps this belief is generated within an
affluent society, in which most people have laptops and ubiquitous
connectivity, which provide a material basis for certain forms of
social and cultural activism, which strike us in India as extremely
exclusive and elitist. And in any case I feel that the market is a
better mechanism for delivering and disseminating technology than the
voluntary sector. We only tend to realise the power of the market once
it has already appropriated community projects and practices to serve
commercial purposes, shorn of their democratic impulses. Google Maps
is the latest example of this trend which has faced many successful
free software projects in the recent past. I personally feel
non-profit and civil society organisations should focus more on the
social practice of technology, challenging both the state and the
market to recognise that people drive society, and not machines or
money. The shock and horror induced in the European and American
hacker networks by the launch of Google Maps and Google Earth, as if
somehow they 'got there first', reveals how exaggerated our idea of
our own role is, and how little faith we have in people's own
practices around information, in spite of all the participatory
rhetoric.
The culture and politics of information sharing is different
societies requires a less deterministic or universalist approach in
the development and design of useful tools for communities. In
developing countries undergoing rapid urbanisation, where the needs
of the urban poor majority for information about their own spaces,
to help them organise and make claims for a better life and
environment, I don't believe that a commercial medium for targeted
advertising to a restricted audience of web surfers has much
relevance, except for a small elite. Nor are such commercial efforts
a sufficiently open or democratic basis for building a vital public
infrastructure, which has heretofore has been out of public reach,
as it was jealously guarded by scientists, bureaucrats, large
companies and bureaucracies. Google is right now stuck in a thicket
of legal and cultural problems in doing a version of Google Maps for
India, because most Indian cities are split between a formal and
organised sector governed by the laws and master plans, and often
larger and more significant informal or unplanned settlements which
are controlled through non-legal mechanisms. Basic maps are hard to
come by because of the old colonial obsession with territorial
security, and this secrecy has rendered urban planning into an
authoritarian process captive to the classes who have privileged
access to information. In some senses, we are on the same side of the
fence as Google and the GIS industry in terms of their battle with
the state for greater openness, but where we part ways is in our
final objective, which is social and not commercial.
In short, what Freemap projects want to do is develop and design
simple toolkits and networks through which urban communities can
access and use spatial information for self-development, and do it
based on public geo-data, free & open source software, and community
information. The challenges here are manifold, but they are less
technical in their nature than culturally and politically determined.
--
"[It is not] possible to distinguish between 'numerical' and
'nonnumerical' algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from
other kinds of precise information." - Donald Knuth
Anivar Aravind
Anish A
google maps through google local business center. However, i have made
a mistake in positioning my marker. I tried much replacing the marker.
But i could not. I wish, the google maps was open!
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Praveen A
> I also had a problem with google maps. I have registered my firm in
> google maps through google local business center. However, i have made
> a mistake in positioning my marker. I tried much replacing the marker.
> But i could not. I wish, the google maps was open!
Instead we can build our own map. Contribute to openstreetmap.org
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