Lab 3: Neogeography

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Neogeography

As our technological world moves forward, neogeography is becoming a powerful and popular tool. Neogeography allows us users to create and share maps we find interesting and relevant with our friends. This can create a fun bonding experience between individuals. Websites like Yelp and other social sites also use the concept of neogeography to help users locate places based on other people's posts. This is useful because it gives users access to information about nearly any place around them. Often, any type of information can be found in one spot in a very organized and concise manner. Furthermore, neogeography increases awareness about geography since anyone can learn to create maps by watching very simple tutorials on sites like YouTube. Therefore, neogeography allows everyone to contribute to the development of our digital world.

Nevertheless, there are several disadvantages to neogeography as well. For instance, since neogeography is user-centric and user-generated, it can provide a large amount of unreliable information. This can have severe consequences if other people use that unreliable and false information to plan trips. The fact that it is user-generated also means that professionals are not needed to create a map. However, a lot of people do not know how to create useful and effective maps and can often include too much information that can overwhelm other users. On the other hand, they may also lack too much information, which can confuse other users. There is also the security and privacy issue. Neogeography allows anyone to track one's location, which can be very dangerous. Lastly, the expansion of our digital world also results in less exploration in the real world. People can now explore places online in a surprising amount of detail. First-hand experience and exploration with places can potentially become obsolete.