On May 23rd we experience a geographic phenomenon. As of that date, the world's population became more urban than rural. This a major demographic shift and a milestone like no other.
What does that mean to the US Government? Last week I had the great pleasure of attending the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose. This event was especially eye opening, not just in new technology, but also how USGS plays a massive part in the advancements in geospacial science.The conference wow'ed me with plenty of cool product demos. There was Google's new Streetview. And a demo of the camera behind the making of Streetview. We also got to see a neat cell phone trick where you point your phone at a location and information about that local gets sent your phone (currently only available in Japan — lucky guys!).
But more important than all the cool gadgets is how USGS could play a major part in the evolution of geospacial technology and its contribution to our existence. Last week's urbanization tipping point means so much more to the planet. That this is happening at a critical juncture for the planet when we are witnessing the sixth mass extinction of our living resources along with other such ramifications of rapid climate change, should be sufficient to motivate a collective partnership between USGS and other organizations for distributing our data in the most user friendly means possible.
Unfortunately, most I met at the conference are under the illusion that USGS doesn't want to give the public access to the data. Others that know its available have odd ways of accessing it. Either they phone a friend who works here and hope that the friend will find it. Or others I met developed Perl scripts that scan and download USGS data regularly. This lets them store it locally so they can find it easier.
The bottom line of what I learned at Where 2.0 is that USGS needs to focus on collaborating with other organizations to form the genesis of an EOS needed to bridge economic, political, and social domains for our species. The technology is out there, we just need to tap into it.
