UCL CENTRE FOR ADVANCED SPATIAL ANALYSIS PAPERS
- ISSN: 14671298
- DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.78.016110
- arXiv: 0706.0024v1
Abstract
We first develop the network paradigm that is currently dominating the way we think about the internet and introduce varieties of social networking that are being fashioned in interactive web environments. This serves to ground our arguments about Web 2.0 technologies. These constitute ways in which users of web-based services can take on the role of producers as well as consumers of information that derive from such services with sharing becoming a dominant mode of adding value to such data. These developments are growing Web 2.0 from the ground up, enabling users to derive hitherto unknown, hidden and even new patterns and correlations in data that imply various kinds of social networking. We define crowdsourcing and crowdcasting as essential ways in which large groups of users come together to create data and to add value by sharing. This is highly applicable to new forms of mapping. We begin by noting that maps have become important services on the internet with non- proprietary services such as Google Maps being ways in which users can fashion their own functionality. We review various top-down and bottom-up strategies and then present our own contributions in the form of GMapCreator that lets users fashion new maps using Google Maps as a base. We have extended this into an archive of pointers to maps created by this software, which is called MapTube, and we demonstrate how it can be used in a variety of contexts to share map information, to put existing maps into a form that can be shared, and to create new maps from the bottom up using a combination of crowdcasting, crowdsourcing and traditional broadcasting. We conclude by arguing that these developments define a neogeography which is essentially mapping for the masses.
UCL CENTRE FOR ADVANCED SPATIAL ANALYSIS PAPERS
Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis University College London 1 - 19 Torrington Place Gower St London WC1E 7HB
Tel: +44 (0)20 7679 1782 casa@ucl.ac.uk www.casa.ucl.ac.uk
WORKING
PAPERS
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Mapping for the Masses:
Accessing Web 2.0 through
Crowdsourcing
ISSN 1467-1298
Paper 143 - Aug 08
Mapping for the Masses:
Accessing Web 2.0 through Crowdsourcing1
Andrew Hudson-Smith, Michael Batty Andrew Crooks,
and Richard Milton
Emails: asmith@geog.ucl.ac.uk, m.batty@ucl.ac.uk, andrew.crooks@ucl.ac.uk,
richard.milton@ucl.ac.uk
Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London,
1-19 Torrington Place, Gower Street,
London, WC1E 7HB, UK
Tel: 0207 679 5611, Fax: 0207 813 2843
www.casa.ucl.ac.uk
Abstract
We first develop the network paradigm that is currently dominating the way we think
about the internet and introduce varieties of social networking that are being
fashioned in interactive web environments. This serves to ground our arguments about
Web 2.0 technologies. These constitute ways in which users of web-based services
can take on the role of producers as well as consumers of information that derive from
such services with sharing becoming a dominant mode of adding value to such data.
These developments are growing Web 2.0 from the ground up, enabling users to
derive hitherto unknown, hidden and even new patterns and correlations in data that
imply various kinds of social networking. We define crowdsourcing and crowdcasting
as essential ways in which large groups of users come together to create data and to
add value by sharing. This is highly applicable to new forms of mapping. We begin
by noting that maps have become important services on the internet with non-
proprietary services such as Google Maps being ways in which users can fashion
their own functionality. We review various top-down and bottom-up strategies and
then present our own contributions in the form of GMapCreator that lets users
fashion new maps using Google Maps as a base. We have extended this into an
archive of pointers to maps created by this software, which is called MapTube, and
we demonstrate how it can be used in a variety of contexts to share map information,
to put existing maps into a form that can be shared, and to create new maps from the
bottom up using a combination of crowdcasting, crowdsourcing and traditional
broadcasting. We conclude by arguing that these developments define a
neogeography which is essentially ‘mapping for the masses’.
1 First draft: August 18th 2008
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