Geospatial Revolution Project & 2 Mountain Visions productions

Over the past few years I have been tracking and recording trends related to the Geospatial web and other new networking opportunities that can empower citizens to become more informed and active in environmental current affairs and decision making. As part of this effort I created a presentation for the Idaho Environmental Summit last November titled "GeoWeb Common Adventure Networking." On this blog and other participatory opportunities I will attempt to add interesting information as time permits.

A few days ago I was alerted by a message from the Idaho Geospatial Office List Server about a very interesting and informative web site and video trailer titled the "Geospatial RevolutionProject -- The location of anything is becoming everything." This is a project of the Penn State Public Broadcasting. The video trailer is at the top of the web page.

In Summary text under a topic "THE PROJECT" notes that 'We live in the Global Location Age. “Where am I?” is being replaced by, “Where am I in relation to everything else?”

Text under a "THE NEED TO KNOW" topic states: "Geospatial information influences nearly everything. Seamless layers of satellites, surveillance, and location-based technologies create a worldwide geographic knowledge base vital to solving myriad social and environmental problems in the interconnected global community."

As I watched the video I was reminded of two similar Geospatial educational projects we (Mountain Visions) produced in the year 2000.

The first of these was titled a "Virtual Exploration of GIS", a short series of multimedia tutorials to explain the basic concepts of Geographic Information Systems, and was prepared as an Interactive multimedia CD-ROM and an interactive web site. Sponsors the production included the Remote Sensing and GIS Laboratory and Landscape and Ecology Modeling and Analysis Center at Utah State University and the Bureau of Land Management National Training Center. The original purpose of this project was to be a presentation tool for BLM workshops helping land managers and other citizens understand how GIS technology works and how to use it. The web site version of the project also became a popular educational tool for colleges and other GIS training projects. This project was awarded "First Place for Multimedia" at the ESRI International User Conference that year.

Another multimedia program we created in 2000 was titled "Understanding the Nature of Ecosystems Through Science" and explained the history of how maps were created for Yellowstone National Park and how hyperspectral satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS technology was being developed to help solve ecosystem issues. (Note that this was originally produced for a CD-ROM presentation for the "Yellowstone Ecosystem Studies" project and was subsequently reduced in window size for acceptable presentation on the web at that time. The window size now could fill the computer screen for future projects of a similar nature.)

World Wide Web 20th Anniversary

Very interesting news articles and videos have appeared the past few days noting the 20th Anniversary of the World Wide Web (WWW).

In The Industry Standard, Paul Boutin notes that Tim Berners-Lee is widely credited with the first proposal, in 1989, to create a hypertext model that would allow researchers to share documents over the Internet that linked to each other.

By far the most impressive description of the history of the WWW is given by Tim Berners-Lee himself in a 16 minute video presentation provided by the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference. Watch this video where "he talks about his next web - a network for open, linked data that will unlock our information and reframe the way we work together.



Another source, News.cnet.com provides a short history of Berners-Lee involvment with the WWW using a series of 10 images and text starting with the statement that what started on March 13 1989 "gave birth to the WWW and thus, eventually, Facebook, eBay, Google, iTunes, YouTube, Pets.com, blogs...." On slide 10 Berners-Lee is pictured at the March 13, 2009 Celebration at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. Text on this slide notes that 'Berners-Lee offered this historical reflection: "When people built the Internet, it was designed to be a cloud," he said. "When routing packets, the system only looks at the envelope--it's an important design principle. Now people find out what you write in your letters."

For the past few months I have been very busy experimenting with many other social/interest networking concepts (Google Earth, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc., etc., and as a consequence have not been posting to this blog as often as I want to. I hope to use this 20th Anniversary to re-energize my effort to post more regularly in the future. As the global economy has gone topsy turvy and associated, but less discussed, global ecological problems accumulate, we understand that everything will be (has to be) different now and in the future. Citizens, communities and governments simply cannot behave the way they have been if there is to be a reasonable quality of life for humans in the future. There has to be an equalization of quality for people around the world and there has to be a sustainable environment/ ecosystem for this to happen.

The WWW and many new open source initiatives being made available today reinforce the message conveyed by Tim Berners-Lee in the video above that linked and shared data is critical to our future. I have outlined some of my own thoughts about these new citizen empowering WWW opportunities in an online presentation titled "GeoWeb Common Adventure Networking" I produced for the November 2008, Idaho Environmental Summit.

Idaho Environmental Summit - 2007

In 2006, on November 29, and December 12, I posted information about the first annual Idaho Environmental Summit, including information about our (Mountain Visions) participation and suggestions for future networking. We are involved in the Summit again this year and will continue to encourage more in depth internetworking on the Idaho topics being discussed. I will write more later about my experiences at the conference this year.

December 11-13, 2007 are the dates for "The second annual Idaho Environmental Summit with more than thirty partner organizations, offers seven keynote events and over 70 breakout sessions featuring sensational nationally recognized speakers." The IES Keynote Speakers web page provides details about these speakers including Richard Louv, Keith Allred, Charles Wilkinson, D.J. Eagle Bear Vanas , Deborah Williams, and Brent Stinnet.

"Breakout sessions will feature over one hundred presenters providing educational and networking opportunities and current research for all the people and organizations of Idaho."

Informative sessions on subject areas include:
Air Quality
Cleanup and Remediation
Climate Change
Collaboration
Energy
Environmental Education
Faith and Environment
Fire and Fire Management
Fish and Wildlife
Land Use
Natural Resource Information
Recreation
Sustainability
Tribal Topics
Water Resources Research

Idaho Environmental Summit - Boise December 5-7, 2006

The first annual Idaho Environmental Summit will be held in Boise, Idaho -December 5-7, 2006.

I plan to attend this meeting. It will be interesting to examine if and how this conference may stimulate the use of social networking concepts in the future. New online technologies, some of which I have identified on this Blog, should allow all of the topics that are being highlighted at the Summit to be discussed throughout the year and in the future by interested citizens.

The web site notes that "The mission of the Idaho Environmental Summit is to provide an annual event for the people of Idaho to work together to achieve a healthy environment through communication, education and action. "

Over thirty partner organizations are working together to provide an agenda full of sensational and nationally recognized speakers in six keynote events and over fifty breakout sessions. Environmental subject areas include:

Energy
Land Use
Sustainability
Water Resources
Air Quality
Regulatory Compliance
Fire
Treaty Rights and Trust Responsibilities
Fish and Wildlife
Community Building and Environmental Science
Recreation
Cleanup and Remediation
...and much more.

I will write a report here after the meeting is concluded.