Tech and data converge to create better maps about our shared worlds - TechRepublic
▻http://www.techrepublic.com/article/tech-and-data-converge-to-create-better-maps-about-our-shared-worlds
Learn how open source, open data, and agile development is driving innovation in mapping software, particularly from startups CartoDB and Mapbox.
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of maps to humanity, from our ancestors sketching the heavens on cave walls to ancient civilizations creating invaluable records of the known world, from trade routes to coastlines. For millennia, maps were painstakingly created through first-hand observation. As the instruments used to create cartography became more sophisticated, enabling measurements relative to the sun and stars, so did the accuracy of our maps, leading to commerce, warfare, and exploration of the oceans and skies on a scale that our ancestors never anticipated.
Today, hundreds of millions of people have near-magical maps in our pockets and palms and on our dashboards that are dynamically built upon data and show our position on the face of the Earth with extraordinary accuracy using the Global Positioning System (GPS). We also sometimes blindly trust those GPS systems too much, unfortunately: truck crashes into bridges have been sourced to consumer-grade GPS systems, and far too many drivers have followed GPS directions into danger.