ABSTRACT

Google Earth’s success and popularity is symbolic of many di§erent transitions that signify today geographic information creation and consumption is no longer under the tight control of institutions, experts, and the powerful few. Ÿeir grips have been loosened incrementally and sometimes disruptively by certain developments that ¦nally have given individuals, novices, and the traditionally disenfranchised a strong say in how places, events, and perceptions are mapped and communicated. We now live in a world where the average person is increasingly aware of the everyday bene¦ts and drawbacks for geo-information and associated technologies. Ÿis includes powerful tools that support navigation and exploration, communication, social interaction, public participation, security, and the like. Our increasing reliance on mobile devices (e.g., phones, tablets, and notebooks) is an important catalyst for many of these developments. Such developments also give rise to increased concerns over the quality and quantity of the spatially oriented data we collect and maintaining our privacy as personal communication devices, web services, electronic cards, and surveillance cameras (in developed countries) create digital shadows (Klinkenberg, 2007) of our everyday lives. In a short time, we have gone from representing places and features to populating our geospatial databases with our doppelgangers, whose controls, ironically, lie in hands other than our own and who will continue to roam within large databases, long a¬er we cease to exist ourselves.