Sunday, October 06, 2002

Riding the Magic Carpet At Educause, I sat in a keynote presentation that really got my thoughts going—some new and some old. The speaker was John Gage, chief researcher and Director of the Science Office for Sun Microsystems. He started his presentation by showing an application called EarthViewer (http://www.earthviewer.com) that was, frankly, quite amazing. It allows you to input geographical location data (latitude and longitude) and instantly zoom from a view of the entire earth to that exact location—to within a meter in most cases (and centimeters in some) of your coordinates. Once you zoom in, the application accesses, through the internet, aerial image data for that location. As you watch, the resolution enhances until you can in some cases see, for example, what cars are parked in the parking lot with total clarity. This application is freely available on the internet (demo version). The image data is not real time, but that does not decrease the “wow” factor of the demonstration. This is a tool that previously was only available to select agencies within a small handful of world superpower governments. Now any kid with an internet connection—from anywhere in the world—can very literally see the world. The implications of such open access to information are more easily understood with this very visual example, but they are not limited to digital image repositories. One critical point—the application was built using stable technologies that have existed for a while. It is the interface to the information that adds the value. Gage used the metaphor of a magic carpet to describe the utility of the interface. Such metaphors are powerful in their ability to capture the imagination of creative individuals in manipulating the information and knowledge that exists around them. 9:37:09 PM    comment []

gRadio and guilty posting "Perhaps he can be guilted out of his blog doldrums/neglect by posting links to his site. " Has it really been that long? Man! Well, I'd better get to work... I just came back from Atlanta, GA, and the annual Educause conference. As usual, the greatest value came from interacting with others who are fighting the same fights on their campuses around the country. Some of the presenters need to take a course in blurb writing, because the descriptions in the program had very little to do with went on in their sessions...but in all it was quite rewarding. I was surprised how few of the attendees were familiar with weblogs, but was very pleased to see a good number of the keynote speakers talk about weblogs and thier importance. 9:25:54 PM    comment []