More "GPS" That Isn’t
A very nice article in the Dallas Morning News today entitled “Zip Codes Paint Portrait Of Dallas” by Cheryl Hall (good work, Cheryl). I suggest you go read it and also spend a little time with the included interactive map on the same page … then come back here and tell me you privacy concerns … or your kudos, for that matter.
You can go direct to the map here
Years ago when GPS wasn’t even a common public access utility and fellow named Jack Dangermond and his wife, Laura formed a little firm in Redlands, California, to do land use analysis studies. Today their company is called ESRI (and by the way, still debt-free and privately held, big props to the Dangermonds for resisting the all to common sell out to venture capitalists who make all the money and stifle all the initiatives) and is the world leader in specialized Geographic Information System (GIS) software. GIS simply means taking a database of, for an example, property ownership records and displaying and analyzing those records visually by plotting the records on a map … tying the geographical aspects of the data to the textual.
When GIS got started there was essentially no competition for ESRI’s products, there was ESRI and everyone else unsuccessfully playing catchup. Software being what it is, ESRI today has many competitors, some very capable. But ESRI saw the proper vision from the early days. They don’t just make the software … they actively find the data to go behind the GIS and integrate it … sometimes for a fee (and a good fee, too, ESRI’s annual revenues are at least 2/3 of a billion bucks) and often for free as well, to get the word out to the world and make the world aware of the “Power Of Place”.
The Dallas example is a great illustration of this principle in action. All the data “behind the map” is available somewhere … often even for free such as the volumes of information collected by the US Census. Individually, though, the data don’t do much. Collected, standardized and, most importantly, displayed on a map by readily understood geographic subdivisions such as Zip Codes the data become powerful and insightful.
But I mentioned privacy at the head of the article. There’s no private information being disclosed here, so why even question it … what do you, gentle reader, care if someone collects non-identifiable data regarding the demographics of your and makes it publicly available?
Tried to buy homeowners insurance in Florida lately? Wonder why your auto insurance costs twice what a friend across town pays? Wonder why home mortgages are hard to get approved on “your side of the tracks” but seem to be nearly given away across town?
You’re looking at the reason, folks. ESRI makes a lot of those millions and millions in profit from firms who decide what they will offer and how much the customers will pay based strictly on where those customers live and who lives there with them. When you talk about or think about privacy and GPS issues, make sure you go a little deeper into your mental review. It isn’t the knowledge of where someone is that might adversely affect their life … it is the knowledge of their location and all the other aspects of their lives gathered together on one computer screen that gives me a little shiver up and down my spine.