Massive online activity - all is not as it appears - More

[Update: another thorough review and insider's view of same on LinkedIn Pulse
Update2: and a follow-on Pulse post also, prompted by a comment on yet another]

This is one more follow-on to the Pokémon Go series, which suggested we cool our jets. In my previous post, I compared Pokémon Go to sandbox video game MineCraft, online game Foldit that helped crowd-source the resolution of complex protein structure and Sim City the granddad of virtual worlds. Here are juxtaposed in Google Trends their search hits as a measure of interest in these.

Massive online activity - all is not as it appears - Fin

[Update: interesting tweet exchange w @0mgould at bottom]

I wrote over the past weeks why Pokémon Go is not what it seems:

• from being hailed as the next big thing in geospatial (neither open nor intended to be)
• to hiding the access / marketing in&outs its hosts indulge in (internet privacy anyone?)

Massive online activity - all is not as it appears - Cont.

[Update: Caveat emptor, lawsuits already started on Pokémon Go trespassing - BBC
Update 2: follow-on posts here & here on geo-ramifications to virtual reality mapping]

I posted last week re: spatial ownership issues Pokémon Go raised, from the personal (visiting family the weekend it was released in France)

Beautiful maps in current affairs

At presentation in London on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea was given a few years ago by Dr Parson of the Southampton UK National Oceanographic Centre. He described how nations were given an opportunity to claim Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) beyond the standard 200 nautical mile limit (viz. UNCLOS and UNEP). The reason AAPG hosted this is because most such extensions revolve around petroleum and mineral rights in the Offshore Continetal Shelves (OCS).

No such thing as a free lunch

To great press and technocrati fanfare, the UK Ordnance Survey freed up its data... somewhat! This was promptly announced on mapperz and Ernest Maples blogs. And commented on as far away as the US west coast by Ed Parsons and Geoff Zeiss currently in America - does location matter?

Arctic Dreams

I spent a summer in the Arctic in 1986, the year as Barry Lopez wrote a book titled as above. At a recent job in Kazakhstan, I met ice engineers whose colleagues I knew in Calgary two decades earlier! How do you get marine engineers and naval architects in the middle of two continents in Calgary and Atyrau? By developping offshore oil&gas in the Arctic Islands and the Caspian Sea!