Deep obeisance

Sometimes you just gotta give it up. So here it is--massive props to NCPR's code developer Bill Haenel, so great a geek that I am not worthy to lick his mousepad. His pioneering work in the wonky world of geodata has made North Country Public Radio the very first station or network in public broadcasting (or anywhere else in media that I am aware of) to be able to render all of its library of content onto maps.

Before you yawn, consider. One of the great defects of the internet has been that it serves communities of affinity at the expense of communities of residence, sucking huge amounts of attention and energy out of the places where people live, and transferring it into the no particular place of cyberspace. Reattaching "whereness" to the content of the internet can go a long way toward redressing that imbalance.

If, that is, others decide to follow the trail blazed by Bill for NCPR. Most work on internet mapping has focused on one-off efforts to map a particular sequence of events or group of related content. These efforts age out of relevance quickly, and apply only to a tiny fraction of content produced. Bill's approach is holistic instead, incorporating place into the DNA of everything NCPR releases into the wild. If other media follow suit, for the first time there will be "places" in cyberspace that actually correspond to the places where we live. To see some baby steps at exploiting these new capabilities, check out the map links on the home page at ncpr.org.