I was all set to get some deep insight from The Atlantic’s article “The Future of the Map Isn’t a Map at All—It’s Information”, but it turned out to be pretty shallow. Even the attendant video wasn’t much more than a promotional for some new Google tech.
But between the provocative title, and my noodling into GIS technologies, it got me thinking that geohacking is a great business for a tech oriented person, especially with today’s advances. Interface applications, Web and native? Check! Massive data processing? Check! Real time data processing? Mobile applications? Check! Relevance to problems that matter? Check! Open, gentle slope, avenues to learn and hack? Check!
Important enduring organizations and institutions, with big checkbooks, care about understanding and using geospatial data. And more technologies are making more of that data available, at lower cost, more regularly.
If I was still in my past life, I would urge every Computer Science student to take an intro Geospatial Information System course. Right up there with Compilers, Operating Systems, and Relational Database Systems. GIS techniques and issues are that enduring of a computational capability in milspeak.