With recent technological advances, namely in the cell phone industry, neogeography has become a huge part of our everyday lives. Neogeography, which is essentially the use of mapping tools by people who are not considered to be professional geographers, is utilized in a variety of ways. For example, when an individual with a GPS-enabled phone goes to a restaurant, he or she can “check-in” to the restaurant on Facebook, write a restaurant review on Yelp, send a “Tweet” about the restaurant, or take pictures of the restaurant and post them on all three of the aforementioned sites. In a positive light, this appears to be fantastic because of the ease at which it allows all of us to share information about locations. Google Maps, for example, will not only give you directions to a destination from a specific location, but it will also give you information about your destination, and where other venues (such as restaurants, gas stations, etc.) are along the way, information about these secondary venues, and so on. With regard to travelling, programs like Google Maps also release “live” information, information that is continuously updated, about traffic development, construction detours, and bus schedule alterations. It makes more efficient travelling possible by reducing the chance of a traveler getting lost. This type of technology makes it simple to figure out where to go and how to get there. The amount of information we can access thanks to neogeography is endless.
While neogeography allows us to learn more information about places, it also can help us figure out what is happening at certain places. For example, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking websites and applications can be quicker tools for notification about a disaster than a national news network. For example, if one person in Southern California feels the ground shake beneath their feet, he or she can log onto Facebook or Twitter and let all of his or her friends or followers know that he or she “felt an earthquake.” In a positive sense, this quick alert can inform other friends in the area to be careful and follow earthquake safety protocol. Now, in another light, maybe a cement truck just drove through this individual’s neighborhood, shaking the ground so immensely that it gives the false sense that an earthquake is happening. This would make the online post about the “earthquake” false. This example illustrates one of the primary problems with neogeography: because anyone can contribute to neogeography by volunteering geographic information, information may not always be accurate. This problem can be directly associated with the same problem Wikipedia faces by allowing all users the ability to edit postings on the site.
Neogeography also poses another problem, as it can be a contributing factor to increased invasions of privacy. In order to generate street images, Google attaches cameras to cars that take pictures of their surroundings, including the people in them. Now while most cases simply show people on the streets, some people have been discovered doing inappropriate or various illegal actions through Google Maps from images registered from the car. Technologies that allow people to “Check-In”, or publicly announce their exact location, allow people to compromise their own privacy and the privacy of others that they include in the tag (a “tag” is essentially a link between an online comment and another person’s profile). This can be considered a security issue because now anyone in the world can figure out where a certain person or a group of people are at a certain time and could possibly encourage certain behaviors such as stalking.
Despite the two downfalls of falsified information and a possible loss of security, I do find neogeography to be more positive than negative because I believe that in the end it makes people more aware of their surroundings. Between information that people can retrieve from computers, GPS devices, cell phones, and other technological communication devices, neogeography allows people to always have access to information ranging from directions to restaurant reviews to traffic information. I firmly believe that the costs and the benefits of neogeography outweigh the aforementioned consequences, and for that reason I believe that neogeography is a positive advancement in our technological society.
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