Good starting points for your research are the two official websites for the Presidio of San Francisco, the NPS and the Presidio Trust. On the official NPS website there is this page on “History and Culture” which gives you thematic links to people, places, stories and collections (with old family pictures, portraits, historical pictures of places at the Presidio). Here the Presidio Trust website. By the way on the same website read “Lovers’ Lane: One of San Francisco’s Oldest Travel Coridors“.
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“California, and the Bay Area specifically, are places of great biological diversity owing to the wide variety of environmental conditions found here. On the San Francisco Peninsula, conditions leading to high biological diversity and species with limited distributions (endemic species) include 1) the interaction of maritime weather and Mediterranean climate to produce localized climatic zones, 2) the development of diverse habitats and barriers to dispersal by mountains and bay, and 3) the presence of a variety of geologic and soil conditions, such as nutrient-poor sand dunes and serpentine-derived soils. This combination of conditions allowed for a flourishing adaptive radiation of many closely related species….” |
We had an introductory workshop on new emerging technologies which help us in creating, analysing and managing geographic information. This was aimed at providing a general framework to better understand what we actually do when we take or create geolocated pictures.
GPS (Global Positioning System) is a system for providing precise location which is based on data transmitted from a constellation of 24 satellites. GIS (Geographic Information System) is a mapping system which combines positional data with descriptive information to form a layered map.
This wikipedia page is extremely rich and well done, is a good start for who’s interested in more GIS.
More links: GIS.com, FreeGIS, Open Geospatial Consortium
Today we spent much of the day in lecture, learning about how to use the Nokia N95 phones that we were loaned for the duration of the class. The phones can take geolocated photos–photos with the location embedded in them–so they’re very useful for the class.
This evening we had an amazing lecture from Bob Stein, a New Media specialist and member of the Institute for the Future of the Book. He mentioned, off-hand, that he was also the driving force behind the Criterion Collection. Tomorrow we’ll have a more extended lecture from him, regarding Sophie. Expect more about Sophie coming soon!
Also, be sure to check out our flickr stream, located here:
The first day at the Presidio was a success! We managed to tour around the main post, introduce the class, then make memory maps. For the uninitiated, these memory maps are google maps screenshots annotated on flickr with personal, geolocated stories.
Click on the images to check out more stories.
Tomorrow we’ll be going over GPS data and having a big seminar from the maker of Sophie. Now I have to drive to Safeway to buy dinner for tomorrow!
From the San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
The California State Automobile Association produced its first road map in 1909. It showed major highways in California and Nevada, and was sent free to all members.
Ninety-nine years later, San Francisco’s CSAA is set to produce its last paper map, another victim of the shift to digital technology.
The auto club, which serves Northern California, Nevada and Utah, is phasing out its 12-person cartographic unit by year-end, the association said. Members will still be able to get paper maps at no charge, but they will be produced at AAA national headquarters in Heathrow, Fla.
The AAA map has become something of a traveler’s icon over the decades, a no-cost product appreciated for both its utility and its beauty. In the tightly-knit mapmaking world, CSAA’s products are a yardstick by which other roadmaps are measured.
“They’re exemplary, especially the county and regional series. The standard of design and accuracy of the work is fantastic,” said Stuart Allan, founder of Allan Cartography in Medford, Ore., one of the deans of mapmaking in the West.
The association is getting out of mapmaking for reasons of “cost and efficiency” as demand for traditional maps declines, said CSAA spokeswoman Jenny Mack. But road maps will still be available to members, she said.
“Free maps are one of our most popular member benefits,” she said. “We’ll continue to provide the same high-quality maps we always have.”
CSAA’s exit from cartography is part of a technological transformation remaking the map field. Digital direction-finding tools, particularly Internet maps and in-car navigation systems, are drawing growing numbers of users at the expense of paper road maps.
In 2007, as members used more digital services, CSAA’s demand for paper maps dropped 13 percent, Mack said. Meanwhile, use of the association’s online TripTik Travel Planner has been growing at double-digit rates since it was introduced in 2000.
Currently, CSAA and the automobile club of Southern California are the only regional auto associations still putting out their own maps. CSAA issues 99 of its own maps, primarily of regions and cities in its service area.
Mapmaking is a craft that requires high-level research and graphic design skills. In addition to drafting the maps, CSAA cartographers regularly prowl the highways and streets of Northern California, checking where intersections are located, the spelling of road names, and the thousands of other bits of information a map contains. Close lines of communication with highway agencies, such as the California Department of Transportation, are essential.
Cartographers say they wonder how many paper maps the national association will continue producing. And they question whether cartographers based thousands of miles away will have the local knowledge and contacts to maintain CSAA’s standard of accuracy.
“I don’t know if (AAA has) the resources, now that this is suddenly dumped in their laps,” said Curtis Carroll, sales and marketing director of Benchmark Maps, also in Medford, Ore.
“The vast majority” of CSAA’s paper maps will remain available in their current form, although it’s possible some will be “consolidated and combined,” Mack said. “Any decisions on what maps continue to be made will be based on member demand.”
While cartographers mourn the loss of one of the profession’s elite units, they say that it shouldn’t be a surprise.
“These online and free mapping sites are easy to use,” said Dennis Wuthrich, chief executive officer and founder of Farallon Geographics Inc. in San Francisco, a digital geographic data service. “They let you define a starting point and an ending point.”
Moreover, with global positioning and other in-car navigation systems, “the car basically knows where it is on Earth,” he said.
Paper maps won’t disappear entirely, but are likely to become specialty products, such as the tourist maps handed out by Chambers of Commerce.
“Street maps with the level of detail as we know it on a paper sheet may not be with us in a decade,” Carroll said.
Stuart Allan said people are gaining clear directions, but sacrificing information that lets a user see the whole picture. He cites the example of James Kim, the Bay Area journalist who became marooned on an Oregon mountain and died in 2006 after following online travel directions that led him to a little-used forest road.
“It’s just like people can’t do simple math in their heads when they’re tied to calculators,” Allan said. “You will be able to flow like a sheep, but you will never be able to think.”
Wuthrich noted that digital maps can be kept up-to-date in real time, something that can’t be done with a roadmap. But, he admitted, there’s one way the traditional map is superior.
“You can boot it up right away,” he said.
E-mail Sam Zuckerman at szuckerman@sfchronicle.com.
Welcome to the Remixing El Presidio blog. We will be updating this blog with news from our class at the San Francisco Presidio. Here is the class description:
The idea of this field-school has developed as a result of both the design charrette held in August 2007 by the archaeologists of the Presidio Trust to plan their research and public programs of the El Presidio (Spanish and Mexican) fort and the Presidio Trusts new plan for the Main Post including the Anza Esplanade. Ruth Tringham is a consultant on this project. In addition the UCB Dept of Anthropology is currently administering and sponsoring a large private grant (Shaw Foundation), which includes funding for the new Coordinator of Public Programs for the El Presidio (Levantar) project at the SF Presidio.
The course will be on “New Media and Cultural Heritage” and will focus on the real world challenge of creating interpretive walks and other installations for the public that involve wireless technology, digital geomapping, storytelling etc, globally and, specifically, at the El Presidio fort and the de Anza trail (the Levantar Project), which is the current focus of research of the Archaeology Group at the SF Presidio. The course will involve the design, field trial, and documentation of these different formats of representation of cultural heritage places. The aim is to seek alternatives to permanent markers of information about places, leveraging different forms of digital media. The course will take advantage of the many specialists in these technologies in the Bay Area with whom we have contact and who have offered to contribute their help to the course (CyArk, Cultural Heritage Imaging and others). It will also build on our own research in the Remediated Places project at Catalhöyük and the SF Presidio.
Please check back often, as we will have ongoing updates!
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