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| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
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| Subject: | RE: GISList: NPR, CNN, Iraq & the elusive "GIS" |
| Date: |
04/04/2003 09:00:01 AM |
| From: |
Richard Hoskins |
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When push comes to shove, to make the technology accessible, useable,
and to extend it, some one person has to put fingers on the keyboard and
wiggle the mouse. You can have all the MBAs in the world, but if there
is no automobile to put in the showroom, not much happens at Toyota or
GM.=20=20
In health care, all the politicians and hospital administrators can
argue forever about this or that for health care, but some one surgeon
and his or her team is wielding the scalpel. And they are looking at
images developed in various scanning techniques by engineers,
physicists, etc, using lab results developed by biochemists, medications
developed by pharmacologists, and so forth.=20
The point is that we technology and content folks just need to remain
aware that we should not hand over control to "Monday Night Football"
and that we should hold policy makers and talking heads accountable for
how they use our technology.=20
Richard E. Hoskins
-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Quartararo [mailto:ajq3@spatialnetworks.com]=20
Sent: Friday, April 04, 2003 6:27 AM
To: gislist@geocomm.com
Subject: RE: GISList: NPR, CNN, Iraq & the elusive "GIS"
Both good points and well taken. However, when I hear and see what
clueless celebrity news anchors say and do while using these very
powerful tools of persuasion (I'm not kidding, it's just like Monday
Night Football - with the same intellectual capital), the ability to
present an incredible array of spatial information to global audiences,
all the time, over and over, the impact of a little white "lie" makes
"How to Lie with Maps" seem almost
quaint and homey. We don't need to worry about official
misinformation
sanctioned as part of a military strategy, the media has that handled
all too well. I'm not expecting the "beautiful people" at CNN to launch
into a GIS 101 course each time they ramp up the Teledestructor, but it
does bother me that these fools are many people's first real exposure to
the power and application of the fruit of our collective efforts.
I sometimes explain to people I meet that what I do (and what industry I
work in) is to make the guts of "Mapquest.com" for lots of different
industries, and they seem to get it right away. This is a 10 second
explanation that works just fine in social settings, because when I
launch into the GIS 101 course, lots of glassy eyes abound. While I'm
not pretending to be an ambassador for the industry, every chance I get
to turn someone on to "how do they do that....", I take advantage. The
point is, in the rush and effort to become ingrained into everyday
business/consumer mainstream technology, are we (and we should be)
prepared to hand over control of the mainstream "interface" to
non-industry professionals ?=20
ajq
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Hoskins [mailto:healthmaps@attbi.com]
> Sent: Friday, April 04, 2003 8:43 AM
> To: gislist@geocomm.com
> Subject: RE: GISList: NPR, CNN, Iraq & the elusive "GIS"
>=20
>=20
> Totally right-on comment. When I show up at community
> meetings with cool maps and statistical models of why the=20
> such and such death rate near a toxic waste site is higher=20
> than elsewhere, I sort of have my feelings hurt because the=20
> community passes right over the technology, GIS, computation,=20
> and statistical effort that it took to produce the results.
>=20
>=20
> Then I remind myself that is exactly why we are using the
> technology in the first place, that is, so citizens and=20
> policy makers can focus on the problem and not on some arcane=20
> process outside their scope and interest. When technology=20
> becomes transparent - we have done our job.=20
>=20
> Richard E. Hoskins
> WA State Dept of Health
>=20
>=20
>=20
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Gould [mailto:gould@lsi.uji.es]
> Sent: Friday, April 04, 2003 5:27 AM
> To: gislist@geocomm.com
> Subject: Re: GISList: NPR, CNN, Iraq & the elusive "GIS"
>=20
>=20
> Anthony seems surprised that people on the street i.e. the
> press, do not
>=20
> talk about GIS.
>=20
> This seems strange to some of us deeply embedded in the GIS
> field, but in=20
> the end "normal" people care about results, not the=20
> technologies behind the=20
> scenes. I can imagine that experts in tire rubber compounds=20
> are amazed that=20
> Formula-1 commentators only talk about speed, positions, how=20
> much drivers=20
> get paid, etc. and do not focus enough on how well a certain=20
> tire seems to=20
> be adhering :-)
>=20
> Earthviewer lets people see Bagdad. They don't care how many
> GISs it took=20
> to produce each view or which SUN server is driving the web site.
>=20
>
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