Citizen Science @ Computational Foundry, Swansea, Festival of Ideas

The Computational Foundry at the Swansea University organised two days "Festival of Ideas" as part of the activities to celebrate its opening. The first day was organised by Ben Shneiderman and focused on aspects of AI, while the second day, curated by Jenny Preece, focused on citizen science. The summary here is from the second day, …

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Being philosophical about crowdsourced geographic information

This is a post by Renee Sieber and myself, providing a bit of a background on why we wrote the paper “The epistemology(s) of volunteered geographic information: a critique” – this is in addition to what I’ve written about it in this blog post…

Geo: Geography and Environment

By Renée Sieber (McGill University, Canada) and Muki Haklay (University College London, UK)

Our recent paper, The epistemology(s) of volunteered geographic information: a critique, started from a discussion we had about changes within the geographic information science (GIScience) research communities over the past two decades. We’ve both been working in the area of participatory geographic information systems (GIS) and critical studies of geographic information science (GIScience) since the late 1990s, where we engaged with people from all walks of life with the information that is available in GIS. Many times we’d work together with people to create new geographic information and maps. Our goal was to help reflect their point of view of the world and their knowledge about local conditions, not always aim for universal rules and principles. For example, the image below is from a discussion with the community in Hackney Wick, London, where individuals collaborated to…

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New paper: The epistemology(s) of volunteered geographic information: a critique

Considering how long Reneé Sieber  (McGill University) and I know each other, and working in similar areas (participatory GIS, participatory geoweb, open data, socio-technical aspects of GIS, environmental information), I'm very pleased that a collaborative paper that we developed together is finally published. The paper 'The epistemology(s) of volunteered geographic information: a critique' took some …

Albert Borgmann’s Philosophy of Technology, VGI & Citizen Science

Some ideas take long time to mature into a form that you are finally happy to share them. This is an example for such thing. I got interested in the area of Philosophy of Technology during my PhD studies, and continue to explore it since. During this journey, I found a lot of inspiration and links …

Neogeography and the delusion of democratisation

At the end of 2010, Matt Wilson (University of Kentucky) and Mark Graham(Oxford Internet Institute), started coordinating a special issue of Environment and Planning Adedicated to 'Situating Neogeography', asking 'How might we situate neogeography?  What are the various assemblages, networks, ecologies, configurations, discourses, cyborgs, alliances that enable/enact these technologies?' My response to this call is …

Democratisation in Web 2.0 and the participation inequality

Continuing to reflect on Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur, I can’t fail to notice how Web 2.0 influences our daily lives – from the way we implement projects, to the role of experts and non-experts in the generation of knowledge. Some of the promises of Web 2.0 are problematic – especially the claim for …

The Cult of the Amateur – worth reading

I have just finished reading Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur, which, together with Paulina Borsook’s Cyberselfish, provides quite a good antidote to the overexcitement of The Long Tail, Wikinomics and a whole range publications about Web 2.0 that marvel in the ‘democratisation’ capacity of technology. Even if Keen’s and Borsook’s books are seen …