This week’s readings gave me the hope that we will now be moving toward geospatial ideas, whic does not necessarilly mean maps. I thought that Moretti’s approach was very interesting because he addressed literature, maps and organizational trees, rather than the standard maps, showing the geographic location of something. I am glad to have this wrtten, but I do believe that Moretti could have gone a lot farther with this. I am not sure if this is because I have spent that past year dwelling on ways to use geospatial technology with history and ideas of geographic relationahips used in non-traditional ways, but I felt that the book was an extremely brief introduction to these ideas. I recongnize that these were not all geospatial ideas in this book, but they certainly have leanings toward becoming geospatial. Anytime that you start out trying to chart something, you are looking at some form of mapping, which can become a slippery slope. Additionally, in many situations of charting, it can be said that the subjects can be better represented in a geospatial manner. There are so many uses for geospatial representation that I find that people have a tendency to overlook, or not think of. I am looking forward to this class explaining some of those things and lifting the hurtful stigma that has been laid upon geospatial technology.I hope that I am not misinterpreting this all, but anytime that I start to see organization like this, I think of spatial organization. Either way, when we get there, I think that it will be fun.
Although Cohen’s article did not really hold the promise of fun that I found in Moretti, I did really appreciate it. Data mining and data organization and cataloguing has always been a mystery to me. I have no problem searching for things, or at least I didn’t think I did, but Cohen made me realize that there is a great deal that I don’t know about data mining. I would like to learn a great deal more about the subject, though, and I am sure that I will get the chance to in the coming years. I can just add this to the list of many things that I feel that I am far behind the curv on and hope that I will get the chance to improve my self on in the coming years.
I agree with you about the article by Dr. Cohen. It makes you stop and think of how much more information one could have found if they were data mining and other ways to search.
I think that there is a small difference between “real” GIS work and the type of mapping that Moretti discusses, and that is that the first must follows cartographic rules and standards. I think that my background distorts my impression of this a little, becuase I have been trained in cartography and there have been times in my classes here that i have had to remind myself to stop being so uptight about cartographic rules and become more open to maps that I would say are more abstract or fanciful. I believe that both types of maps are legitimate and equally importnat in their realms. It is accepting the other realms that I must adapt to.