Browsing thru my Flickr contacts today I came across this blog post:
Zooomr is up again…
… What they did do was expand on the stuff I’m completely uninterested in, like GeoTagging. …
Shocking! Somebody who isn’t excited about geotechnology!
Seriously, this post made me think about the ongoing hype around recent geotechnology. I’m referring to the “mashup industry” as synonym for geotechnology intruding entertainment. Let’s stick with geotagging: the only people I can see who are geotagging their photos right now are geeks, early adopting geo geeks. Of course everyone is stunned by tools like Google Earth, but no one of my “normal” friends is even asking for loading photos into Google Earth and view them on the globe. They just want to watch the pictures like my parents already did with their old photo albums,.
Geotechnology as part of the entertainment industry is unlikely going to be the “next big thing”.
I think there are good chances that technologies like geotagging will sneak silently into our day-to-day life. It definitely will be a handy feature, even for non geo geeks like my aunt, if you have a button next to the picture in your photo organizer which tells you the place or shows a map where the picture was taken. But first the demand for this button must be created. Why would I need a digital map in addition to the photo when I have my mental map know exactly where the picture was taken?
I don’t own a mobile phone because I needed one. I wanted a mobile phone because somebody told me that I want it. And now I can’t imagine how my life worked without mobile phone.