View Downtown Prague- Old Town in a larger map
Neogeography
is a misnomer because it has been around since the 1920s. However, with the
expansion of the Internet to the public, there has been an explosion of
ordinary people using neogeography in everyday life. It can be very useful and
deceiving at the same time.
Neogeography
has many applications that can help people locate locations, directions, maps,
etc. It makes the population much more aware of their geographic location and
encourages them to create their own maps to share their experiences. For
example, a traveler might use neogeography to write a blog and create a map to
illustrate where they have been, what they have seen, and what they recommend
to other tourists. All of this information can be easily accessed from the
Internet and viewed by anyone. Some examples of these programs are Google Maps,
Yahoo Maps, and MapQuest. These sites are made accessible by application
programming interfaces, or APIs. Neogeography is also used on social networking
sites such as Facebook and Instagram in order state the location of a person or
where a picture was taken. Neogeography
has definitely put a more fun, social way of looking at geography.
There are
some drawbacks with all this easy access with neogeography. Due to the lack of regulation
of what can be posted onto the Internet, the information that people post does
not necessarily have to be accurate. Therefore, the travel blogs, directions,
instructions, coordinates, etc. do not have to be correct. It is very hard to
catch these mistakes because the Internet has become such a huge domain that it
is nearly impossible to keep track of every single post onto the Web. This
leads to a proliferation of inaccurate information and therefore creates a
false image of what is true in the “real” world.
