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Neogeography opens up a world of potential when it comes to information sharing and spatial thinking. With easy-to-use technology like My Maps on Google Maps, virtually anyone can create mashups and display information in a spatial way. With billions of people in the word and increased availability of internet access, there is an abundance of custom maps that range from useful to entertaining to bazaar. With this abundance in information comes the potential for great leaps in technology and progression as a society. Neogeography allows users to interact with the world around them in new ways. One way that these maps have the potential to help people is through interactives maps such as the one found at http://www.meganslaw.ca.gov/. This map plots sex offenders in California so that anyone can pull up the map and see where sex offenders live in their neighborhood. While this is not desirable for the sex offenders themselves, especially if they are trying to move on from a mistake in the past, or to a person trying to sell a house that happens to be located next door to an offender, it does give useful information to families living in an area with many registered sex offenders. These families may want to take extra precautions to protect their children. It allows parents to recognize individuals that live nearby that have committed atrocious acts, so that they can better protect themselves and their families. If having this information available prevents even one horrible act from occurring, then it would be difficult to argue that this information availability doesn’t have positive consequences.
While neogeography is revolutionary in terms of the organizing and displaying information, the question arises, as it does with every breakthrough in information technologies, can this be a bad thing? It could be certainly argued that neogeography has dangerous pitfalls. For the same reasons that neogeography is good, such as that it allows data to be viewed spatially by users, it could also have undesirable consequences. One example of this is the mashup found at www.eightmaps.com, which is a mashup of Google Maps and Prop 8 Donors. This map shows the locations, names, occupations, and amounts donated of people who donated to pass Proposition 8, a highly controversial proposition on California’s ballot in November 2008 that banned same sex marriage in the state. This map is a user-friendly way for anyone to see which people in their town, or even street, donated to help pass Proposition 8. This subjects the donors to consequences such as vandalism or violence from those whose lives affected by the proposition passing. Another pitfall of neogeography is that the information on the maps may not be accurate. Unless the maps are from a credible source, their utility is limited by their reliability. Neogeography opens up new possibilities, some good and some bad, that can and will change the way we think about the world.
