Gregory’s subsection on space and time in Historical GIS reminded me quite a bit of its historical and present day implications. The presentation of the past is easily manipulated, as is any data however, analysis can easily be incorrect. Currently, I am in a GIS class and I have learned that how you divided the data, choropleth maps can give stronger impressions than what the truth may actually be. In some cases, the truth is better kept secret. Location is a valuable thing on the individual scale as well as the international scale. GPS was first developed by the Defense Department and kept secret from the public. Eventually they sold it to the public with a certain margin of error put in to ensure public access to locations could not be as specific as the military’s. However, many mathematicians easily got around the error and eventually Clinton threw the switch and allowed the public full access to the data. The military feared that if exact locations of secret facilities were known, enemies within and outside the US would target them. As a personal experience, I recall working with pinpointing locations of sites in Northern Sudan for an archaeology class on Google Maps. My professor told us that in order to protect the sites, we had to use our better judgement on where to pinpoint the temples. The problem being if a site was precisely labeled on an international GIS database like Google Maps, others across the globe would also have access to it. The next day, we might receive a report saying that the site had numerous pits dug all over and that the temple had been raided by people who saw the location online. It is for this reason that my professor directed us to put our labels several meters off from the actual site.
Not every individual though is out to get rich. In fact, citizen science can provide large amounts of data over a short period of time without costing much money. Another one my professors recently pointed me to EBirds, a collection of bird sitings provided by birdwatchers across the globe that allow researches to track migrations and populations of birds. Just as with Google Maps, I do believe collective input in an international database is helpful to solving problems. I do think however, that we must be wary of who has access to this kind of information.