Locatum

As Richard Pope attests in his recent blog there is some pretty boring-to-the-ordinary-person aspects to the whole transparency, tracking and contact tracing narrative. To an extent we appear to be becoming desensitised to the who and the how, the centralised/decentralised, the open/proprietary, the technology choices and how inclusive or otherwise they might be, and to the notion of privacy. On this last point language plays a key role. You'd hope this was clear language on the back of a truck in Sri Lanka The Coronavirus (Safeguards) Bill 2020 proposes protections for 'digital interventions'. Though the ambition is understandable and the intent and brevity admirable its reliance on the same language, in relation to privacy, GDPR, anonymisation, digital exclusion, sharing, containment, research and time merits some exploration: Digital exclusion is highest in those communities most at risk notably the poorest and the elderly, sub-sections of whom are at the fo...

As Oasis never said, some might say that R (and/or python) is the language of geospatial, or at least languages for geospatial scripting, applications, data processing, analysis and modelling. But to misquote Chris Tarrant, well Quiz has been on, I don't want to give you that. Instead, in these harrowing times, what is the language that both goes to the very heart of the world of 'geographic information' and effectively engages the widest audience. The AGI bears that name and over 30 years we (am currently Vice Chair myself) have borne witness to the challenge our own nomenclature, our own domain, represents whilst simultaneously proclaiming that "everything happens somewhere". it does, even out there This post is in part rooted in that history and posits that finding a common argot with which to talk about that "somewhere", that location - location data, location analysis, location intelligence and its manifestation, typically in visualisatio...

Not that we're quiet at the moment but something must be in the air - so, like buses, another post! courtesy (c) MediaBuzz 2017 Steve Wilson has managed to capture in this post , on a specific case to do with health care data, arguably amongst the most sensitive of personal data, a sense that 'we' have lost or are losing (what limited) control we might have had, over our data, over who collects it, on whose behalf they collect, how they analyse and process it - in particular what other data they "join"* [see below] it to, on whose behalf that is in turn done, who that is sold or supplied to. * join - a short-hand here for the vast array of, to many, unfathomable ways in which 0s and 1s from X data set are ingested, validated/verified, analysed, combined, associated or otherwise linked, directly or indirectly, using techniques and methods in and from data science, statistics, information science, physics, geography, operations research et al with many other d...

Statistics was compulsory when I studied geography, maybe it still is, but it is dull, worthy, grey and complicated which means that few labour over the minutiae of sampling methods, aggregation units, timelines, confidence intervals, error and so on. Too many shades of grey for politicos, lobbyists, media and the hobbyist too. So what happens in the mashup, in the creation and consumption of information, the thirst for knowledge and some degree of certainty? Both producer and consumer can define and divine intelligence in their mashup and the chosen analytical methodology (though few would think in those terms). And so we have it, a few producers, a myriad consumers, a willing public, a naïve one, ripe for gulling. It is an interesting area…. We are in the arena of filters, choice architecting, framing effects and the tools of cyber balkanisation - data through a lens, information of the providers making, online. The often self-referential, self-reinforcing nature of this information...

I used Elvis Costello circa 1979 and a Cory Doctorow cover, Jerry Fishenden starts with Jeremy Bentham (godfather of UCL if I recall correctly) and continues so much more eloquently on the issue of data driven dystopia and the understanding required by citizens of the role and purpose of IT as envisaged by political parties. This is the domain in which those of us in location IT (and all that it encompasses, from the geoweb to the GIS, from spatial operations in the database to sensor webs) need to make our voices heard......

Can't believe a month has gone by since last post but then been busy as the world wakes up to new possibilities - can't talk about those obviously! What I can talk about follows on from a theme in my presentation on the geoweb stream at AGI last week in which a call was made for the 'community' to become more relevant not just by talking amongst ourselves - "we're all geo" after all - but by talking to others, by engaging with them and becoming integral to their communities of interest. I prefixed this call with, what may have been seen as oblique, references to data driven dystopias and the surveillance state. But methods/madness etc.... And here comes the link to Elvis Costello (used at AGI too). There I was on the M3 on Friday, mid-morning, half empty, breezing southwards (for once not particularly swiftly) and lo and behold, a hidden speed cop (behind the bridge before the services), then a speed bike cop (Winchester services), then an overhead speed ...

The entry of the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) into the "free"/"open" debate is not surprising ( http://www.cps.org.uk/cps_catalog/it ). It feels though like another missed opportunity to move the debate on hampered as it is by political point scoring. Varney has it that the government needs to hold “...a ‘deep truth’ about the citizen based on their behaviour, experiences, beliefs, needs and rights”; the CPS report argues for something they call "Government Relationship Management" at whose heart lies choice in the location of your personal data and access to it based on standards (and, not mentioned, rights). Whether or not data "belongs" to the individual, that data should be exchanged using open standards - the web services and metadata chestnut. Hence my interest. The report focuses on cost, ownership and security and that the solutions to this lie with a change to the model. From the perspective of opening up access the report actually of...

Is it just me or does there seem to be a flurry of geoweb and overlapping cultural-political goings-on? Some of the more visible ones: - reports into our surveillance society - http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/detailed_specialist_guides/surveillance_report_final.pdf http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmhaff/58/58i.pdf http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/practical_application/surveillance_society_full_report_2006.pdf http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/practical_application/surveillance_society_appendices_06.pdf for the brief versions: http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/practical_application/surveillance_society_public_discussion_document_06.pdf http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/practical_application/surveillance_society_summary_06.pdf - Firefox 3.5 chooses Google LS (Latitude) over Skyhook's Geode ( http://www.techcrunc...