Lab 3

The following is a map of the home location of all individual Nobel Peace Prize winners since 1978. Every individual point represents the location of each individual winner, and lines connect the multiple winners of shared prizes (Example: the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize was shared between David Trimble of Northern Ireland and John Hume of Ireland). A polygon is used to denote the area of Norway from which the Norwegian Nobel Committee gives out the various awards. A photo is embedded with the picture of Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize from China, and there is an embedded link to a video of President Barack Obama's acceptance speech in 2009.



View Nobel Peace Price Winners by Country since 1978. in a larger map


The entire internet is shifting to a more user-uploaded-content infrastructure. Concepts such as Wikipedia, or Facebook, which thrives off of user-generated content, have boomed in popularity over the past decade. Following the trend of the broader internet, the concept of neogeography can be defined as “…people using and creating their own maps, on their own terms and by combining elements of an existing toolset. Neogeography is about sharing location information with friends and visitors, helping shape context, and conveying understanding through knowledge of place” (Turner 2006).

User-generated content has several advantages. First, it allows people to comment, add, or in this case create maps of those ideals or messages which are closer to ideological set of beliefs. This allows for a staggering size of sheer data uploaded daily, which even corporate entities cannot compete with on a consistent basis. A simple test case can be observed in the race between Google and Microsoft in creating Google Earth. In creating GoogleEarth, Google encouraged user-uploaded content and pictures uploaded to add to their database. Microsoft only uploaded their own content in creating their version of Virtual Earth, and Google clearly won the race in assembling massive quantities of data necessary for this vision.

However, like most user-generated sites, there is some cause for worry with neo-geography. People can very easily only complete maps with either inaccurate data or data that only reflects their personal ideological agendas. To use the above map as a reference case, a Chinese government official could very easily not include Liu Xiaobo in his rendition of the above map and thus give an inaccurate rendering that conveniently fits his worldview.

Neogeography, and user-generated content schemes as a whole, allow for any individual to create massive amounts of content, and fast. The above map took less than an hour to complete. And while this map is truthful and accurate, this new wave of user-generated content is vastly unregulated. Without any authorities, the validity of data is very quickly called into question. The chances are very good that somewhere, someone in China is simply making their own map to reflect their own personal ideology and leaving the latest Nobel Peace Prize winner, quite literally, off the map.