In a recent post on Google Earth Design, Rich Treves interviewed Steve Chilton,Chairman of the Society of Cartographers. In this interview Chilton reflects on trends in modern cartography and map production, referring to the new breed of map producers as NeoGeographers. Further Chilton simplifies NeoGeography/NeoCartography to the production of maps over the internet and credits the users as simple and uncaring of traditional cartographic and geographic principles. While I am sure this definitely is the case for some of the internet mapping producers, I feel his description to be an extreme oversimplification of who is producing geographic content published on the internet. So this raises the queston what is NeoGeography and how should it and its producers be defined?

I am not certain exactly who Chilton was referring to as neogeographers and if his inclination meant all users and producers of spatial data in a digital format produced for distribution over the internet. From my experience broad categories can be established to describe internet geographic creation and usage and possibly give neogeography a better classification, allow the geocommunity a means to clearly define our target audience and lead to more important discussions about the role spatial information plays as an internet medium.

From my perspective neogeography can be classified into specific groups with different levels of cartographic and geographic competence.

Casual Users
These are probably the closest to Chilton’s definition of neogeographers. This group does not have any education or bacground in GIS, Geography and/or Cartography. This group consits of the hobbyist and the general user who uses spatial internet mapping tools to get driving directions,find the nearest hotel etc. Also in this group are users who see the spatial realm as a new playground, a place to play with a new gizmos and gadgets, a new toy to add to their social networking experiences, something else to occupy time with on the internet.

Hobbyist and the Curious
From this goup though are the curious who want to understand spatial data and try to use it to describe their world through new found tools such Google map and Microsoft Virtual Earth. These users are the ones that truly have an understanding or an inkling of an idea that these tools can be used to answer questions and display those answers through a graphical medium. From my perception these users are at the doorstep of realizing these tools are intended for something more than playtime toys, but as a way to describe something meaningful spatially.

Professional Practitioners
Not all groups who use and produce online cartographic content are blatantly ignorant of Geography and Cartography. There is an upper level of people who are analyst and programmers who are responsible for transforming spatial data into informational resources. This group often have an educatiional background in Geography or GIS and understand the concepts of digital cartographic display. GIS analysts prepare and quantify spatial data and prepare cartographic content that answer specific and relevant questions. Some of the interpretations and results are presented over the internet medium.

The second part of this grouping would be the GIS Application Developers who create applications, websites and tools that allow users to as specific domain related questions and receive information without having to understand the underlying structure and nature of geospatial processes. Instead of user having to retrieve data and understand the data, instead of users having to understand how to relate layers together, the GIS developer creates tools that provide the user an interface to answer dynamically generated questions and receive a spatially interpreted answer to their questions. These applications and web sites are specific to their given domains.

Conclusion
I think understanding the who of internet GIS is important as it allows the community of professional geographers to seriously evaluate and understand the growing demand of spatial information over the internet medium. Serious questions arise, especially how to foster an understanding of spatial information as the general publics’ desire for spatial content grows. Also, who exactly are the intended audiences of online spatial data and what potential does the internet cartography/geography provide for the average user? Will the internet mapping “fad applications” serve a more viable role in mapping and interpreting our world or will it be just that… a fad.

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