Local Sensing?
In his article Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography (2007) Goodchild details the recent establishment of citizen or public volunteered information which he calls “volunteered geographic information (VGI)” (212).
This movement has been typified by web-based applications such as Google Maps, Google Earth, and Open Street Map. All of these sites/sights are examples of what is now called web 2.0, which is characterized by the participatory creation of databases of information by web users. Where the first incarnation of the web was strictly a one way affair where users moved from page to page and could not interact with the information that was presented other than read it, now with web 2.0 users are active creators and authors of information.
In the realm of Google Maps/Earth, Open Street Map and Wikimapia, among others, this information is geographic in nature, while places and events, and many other forms of information, are now georeferenced.
In this new world of participatory mapping enabled by web 2.0 users are the sensors themselves, and the information is locally sensed rather than remote sensed. It must be stated though, like with any mapping activity, user created mapping is not objective, but subjective to the user’s position within the physical world and material society.
Examples of “Participant Populations” (218) given by Goodchild interestingly enough includes soldiers, and farmers. He states that these individuals are potential sources of firsthand information and “data that is in many cases much more detailed and current than that available from central…agencies” (218).
He also claims, however, that these “developments contribute to a growing reversal of the traditional top-down approach to the creation and dissemination of geographic information” (218). This is a problematic assumption though on the part of Goodchild that information coming from soldiers and farmers represent a shift to a bottom up kind of information gathering.
Soldiers represent the violent, repressive, and coercive authority of the state, and therefore, any information they would gather and disseminate will be in the state’s own interest. Furthermore, the geospatial tools, utilized in precision farming, are owned by the capitalist class. These tools are used on large farms owned by agribusinesses who farm on land that was gained through the structural, or in many cases the actual, violence of colonialism. Is that what bottom up means?
Nonetheless, the growing trend of VGI, in many instances has removed map making from the hands of the ‘experts’ and placed it into the hands of regular citizens. This is an empowering and democratic act, however, only for those that are able to participate by owning the proper equipment, and being connected (literally).
Goodchild, M. F. (2007). Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography. Geojournal, (69), 211-221.
