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Third Panel: Envisioning a Geospatial Society: Data
Driven and Web Serviced?
Keynote Speaker: James Steiner, Oracle, Inc.
In an ever-increasing, integrated "digital earth,"
with faster computers and smaller and more powerful mobile wireless
devices, issues related to data collection and dissemination to
a distributed, interoperable environment have become increasingly
critical. At the national level, GIS professionals are implementing
the Spatial Data Infrastructure and are actively involved in developing
interoperable GIS platforms and services. With GIS-based applications,
students and other users will be able to perform spatial-temporal
data analysis in near-real time in a collaborative multimedia
environment and to put events in an historical context.
In this session, the panelists will discuss efforts at Harvard
to use GIS technology to make accessible data from Harvard's repositories.
They will also discuss their efforts to create archaeological
and historical databases with GIS technology. In addition, the
panelists will explore the following questions: What issues will
a geospatial web-serviced society confront? Are we going soon
to live any place, any time immersed in a virtual reality? Will
our society succumb to a "loss of historical memory"
in the process, or will the exploration of digitally reconstructed
cities of antiquity through GIS technology revive classical studies?
What infrastructure is in place for guaranteeing timely and accurate
data collection and analysis, or will we be crowded out by an
infinite amount of information? What are we as an academic community
going to do about bridging the digital divide in GIS technology?
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