By Christopher Williams
Keith Clarke is a cartographer from the
University of California at Santa Barbara. He, like many
other geographers, wants to map the world... in a way
that no one has ever before.
Clarke was the main speaker at a lecture
held by the BYU Geography department Thursday, February
21, where he spoke on a concept first introduced by Vice
President Al Gore while he was giving a speech at the
California Science Center in Los Angeles back in 1998.
His topic was on the integration of multi media elements
and cutting-edge technology into an all-in-one project
named Digital Earth.
Clarke said that geography has always been
considered a library of facts about the world in which
we live, constantly being updated as the day's technology
improves. The integration of geography with modern elements
such as cross-scale considerations of variation in space
over time, various information tools, and integrative
and synthetic (e.g. map vs. atlas) tools, is necessary
to keep its usefulness to the masses.
Clarke spoke of a project completed by the
Library for the Betterment of Humanity in 1935. The Library
constructed a huge world globe made of stained glass that
was big enough that people could walk into it and look
out at the outside world.
"While flat maps and globes offered
the same information," Clarke said, "but people
were astonished to see the world in such a new way."
Clarke said today's world has all the interactive
capabilities that Gore once imagined for his digital earth.
"Gore's vision at the time implied
hardware that we would have to go somewhere to gain access
to," Clarke said, "including a head-mounted
display, a virtual digital globe display, and a data glove
for interaction."
In 1999 a consensus was decided upon by
geographers that this idea of Digital Earth would be a
virtual representation of the planet, a consensus that
has since given rise to a plethora of Geobrowsers that
enables a person to explore and interact with the world
through online maps.
Clarke gave a website in London as an example
of user contributed data for one such browser. A man in
London, who had obviously been given a ticket of some
sort, had gone around the city and mapped out the location
of every red light that is equipped with a camera.
"A very popular site," Clarke
commented.
But the goal of seamless fusion is not yet
there for Digital Earth, despite the rise of certain popular
Geobrowsers like Google Earth. Clarke said that despite
all of Google Earth laudable qualities, it is not Vice
President Gore's Digital Earth.
"Digital Earth contains so many more
visions. Google Earth's goal is to attract additional
advertisements. Google is a media company, not an information
broker," Clarke said. "Google Earth is simply
a start, along with all these other browsers."
Clarke said that understanding Digital Earth
allows humankind to visualize the earth, and to build
upon it where we can. Google Earth is one example of a
Geo Browser. There are at least 30 Geo-browsers out there;
among them are such players as NASA with World Wind, and
Microsoft with Virtual Earth
Clarke said that many companies and corporations
including scholars are contributing their resources to
this and similar projects at this time, but there exists
no central government leadership or funding, other than
in China.
"We are close, but not quite there
yet," Clarke said. "The technology and capabilities
are there, they just need to be assembled and integrated."
For more information on the Digital Earth
project, visit the projects homepage at: http://www.ai.sri.com/digitalearth
