Geo-blog from MIT Senseable City Lab
Geo-blog is a web-based platform for geo-tagging and sharing user generated content on the one hand and retrieving the shared, geo-tagged content based on current location on MIT campus at any given time on the other hand. The platform is open to MIT community for the content contribution part and open to public as a location-sensitive content viewing platform.
I am interested in the mapping in bottom up approach. Using human as sensors can always recall the forgotten substances which are in fact existing but become invisible due to the limited information and access, or absence of interest of the top-down mapping group. I will keep on looking for more various ways of bottom-up mapping.
Human as sensors :”Recently a great deal of attention has been devoted to the concept of sensor networks. The observational objectives of Earth science, as well as the objectives of security and surveillance, can be addressed at least in part by the installation of networks of sensors across the geographic landscape. Commonly cited examples include the network of video monitors in many major cities, proposals to instrument the ocean and seabed with sensors in the interests of science and early warning of tsunamis, and networks of traffic sensors that can provide useful information to planners, as well as realtime pictures of congestion.”
“Goodchild Michael F., “Citizens as sensors: The World of Volunteered Geography”, GeoJournal (2007):211- 221, acccessed May 17, 2017, doi:10.1007/s10708-007-9111.”
History Unwired is a walking tour through one of Venice’s more hidden neighborhoods, delivered over location-aware, multimedia phones and PDAs. Developed in 2005, this project was a first-ever mix of mobile video, animation, audio, and bluetooth locative technologies in the tourism sector. The tour takes visitors around the neighborhood of Castello, guided by the voices of Venetian citizens who depict a particularly local experience of art and craft, history and folklore, public and private spaces.
It is a map of imagination.
Pokemon Go is a locational based mobile game. In the virtual Pokemon world, players will become a Pokemon trainers. Through their mobile screens, they can see virtual stops widely distributed on physical cityscape and they are called Pokststops. These stops allow players to obtain virtual supplement for doing virtual activities like Pokeballs for catching Pokemon and medicine for injured Pokemon after battling. As a locational based game, gamers have to physically arrive the stop and spin the ring of each stop on their screens. Also, the spectrum of the three-dimensional map is responding to the real-time location of the players. The primal purpose of the map is used for navigating the players to surrounding stops in order to continue their adventure. Such real-time interaction and physical engagement make the players believing they are really in the Pokemon world that they dreamed of in their childhood.
Another factor helps stimulating our imagination is the creation of the Pokestops. They are created in a crowd-sourcing method providing valuable Volunteered geographic information.(VGI) The operator called for players’ participation to create a landmarks which are educationally or historically significant, unique art or architecture, hidden local gem and networking places. Participants can snap the selected city object with GPS on, entitle the photo and share to the operator. It allows human act as sensor network to process data collection.
We all love brain-storming as we believe everyone will have something valuable to contribute. The bottom up formation of Pokestops allow people to discover the cityscape with a new perspective contributed by the crowd. As a result, we re-discover a lot of forgotten substances around us which are in fact existing and interesting but used to not come to our eyes.
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