Maptastic!

Does anybody else think Geographic Information Science is cool? Oh my goodness, I just figured out that this is an entire thing. Like people have jobs doing it and stuff.

GIS takes maps and overlays it with attribute information. Probably the first and most famous use of this was by John Snow who figured out the source of the cholera outbreak in 1854 London by mapping cholera cases and water pumps. By doing this, it became instantly obvious that the source of the contamination was the Broad Street pump.




How cool is that? I was reading about this recently and then I hear this piece on NPR about a map by Amy Hiller of the Univerty of Pennsylvania School of Design indicating availability of well-stocked grocery stores and cases of food related diseases in Philiadelphia.

That got me thinking about the Salem Witch Trials and how there's a theory that it really was a battle for property, as many of the accused were women of property with no male heirs. Hey look! There's a map of that and it's even time based. In fact, there's a whole GIS of the Salem Witchtrials going on at the University of Virginia. And oh my oh my, it's all part of the Geospatial and Statistical Data Center. I totally want to go to the Geospatial and Statistical Data Center!

But here's the catch: I only want to do cool stuff like find the cholera pump and help poor people not have to take five busses to get a fresh vegetable and create cluster maps of losers based on hacked IP addresses from CL.

I don't want to create maps for the government or for market research. I don't want to use this newfound awesomeness for evil purposes. No I'm the Lloyd Dobler of GIS. But how does one make a living out of mapping supercool stuff?

Maybe I can make it a hobby of mapping supercool stuff. Maybe I can be the maptastic female Steven Levitt!