Finding the 'invisible' millions who are not on maps
bbc.com
bbc.com
They also don't differentiate some closed borders! I had an idea in mind to travel across the Arab Maghreb[0] (well excluding Libya for obvious reasons) after the COVID-19 situation start to get better. However, Google Maps said that I can drive car between Algeria and Morocco, which isn't the case[1]. I chose to reroute it to pass through Mauritania instead, however it suggested a non paved road (according to the satellite images) and it seems from my research that the area that Google maps suggested in Algeria is closed for foreigners.
EDIT: OSM seems to suggest to go through Mali instead which indeed a better choice ( well road-wise, giving that I want to go through Mauritania).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Maghreb_Union
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algeria%E2%80%93Morocco_relati...
It's quite easy to contribute if you've any OpenStreetMap experience -- sign up for tasks on https://tasks.hotosm.org/ and you can see a list of open projects. There are often specific requests, like taking a tile of aerial photography and mapping out the roads and buildings.
[1] https://millionneighborhoods.org/
> People are living and dying without appearing on any database.
What if they don't want to appear on any database? The motivations given later seem laudable, but it troubles me that it should be considered wrong simply to not appear on any database. Probably not what was meant, but it sounds like it.
> It's shameful that we - as cartographers of the world - don't take enough interest to even know where they are.
Shameful? Like, I should be ashamed of myself for mapping my local area, where I live and walk every day, rather than travelling to remotest Africa and mapping there? Again, I'm sure this isn't what was meant, but that is literally what it says.
When reading further down the article it seems more sensible: giving the locals the tools and training needed to map the areas themselves. I'm just getting really sick of the ongoing narrative that says a) we should be ashamed of being born in a developed country and b) all other places on earth need to develop just like us.
Does OpenSteetmap have road quality? If yes, this could be used together with satellite photos for training
I know. Context. Context. There's nothing wrong with the above, with last sentence in context.
But that last sentence makes me cringe, these days. The thought! The very thought that a human being may be anonymous, not counted, not known, not measured, watched, their every whim calculated and predicatively known, their essence stored for the ages.
A human! Look, over there! A human, and.. and... it's not in our database! YOUR NAME, NOW! YOUR ID, NOW! Who are you? What is your precise address? Who were your parents? Where do you bank, work, live? Write all your friends down on this piece of paper, everything you ever read or do, NOW!
In other contexts, in other paragraphs, that same sentence would be uttered by Gollum archetypes at Facebook, Google, the CIA/NSA/etc, well.. essentially, everywhere. The horror for them. Gollum, writhing at the thought, horror on his face:
"People are living and dying without appearing on any database."
How can this be?! HOW! Not tracked?!
All those that wish to profit, or mistakenly believe knowing when we take a dump, will "make them safe". Watch. Watch, spy, sneak, slither, control. Get the precious, hold it close, data is the new gold, the new devil, the new evil.
And they covet it.
All those little gollums, writhing their hands, wanting their precious, their precious data.
shudder
"People are living and dying without appearing on any database."
Isn't this, like, a good thing? Now on the other side, of course this is the definition of a first world problem, but not having a say in whether or not I actually want to appear in big techs databases isn't exactly ideal either!
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/20/17254312/facebook-shadow-profi...
I strongly dislike the urge of modern humans to categorize and analyze everything (very non-tech sounding, I know).
It can have it's upsides, but it's also disgusting in its own way. And just like you I thought to myself how I love analysis, but I don't have enough confidence in fellow men to feel ok with them doing the analysis.
The quote is specifically about business, but the concept is universal. In the case of this article, Ivan Gayton is interested in controlling disease & improving health. He needs to measure the population to understand the spread of disease.
Not exactly. He _wants_ to measure the population to understand the spread of disease.
My advancements will succour thee and into the warm boosm of modernity embrace.
It’s a problem that I’m sure most of us have seen play out at work. Companies tend to be divided into specialized departments, but if any of those departments gain too much influence over the rest of the company, things can go badly. Overly influential sales or security departments are a common thing people like to complain about. But if you end up with a company led by its sales team, it’s not really the sales teams fault, they’re just doing their job and advocating for the interests of the sales team. That failure would be with executive leadership, who’s supposed to listen to the advice/concerns of many different groups, each with their own specialized area of interest, and balance all their needs out according to some sort of over arching strategy.
The same thing happens in public policy. For example, police are always going to advocate giving more power to police, because it helps them do their jobs and achieve the goals of their organization. That by itself is not a problem, because the role of government is to listen to those concerns and then to balance them out with all of society’s other interests. If that doesn’t happen to your satisfaction, it’s a failure of government, not of the police.
It’s also one of the reasons why leadership during a crisis or after a tragedy is so prone to producing bad outcomes. Because those circumstances put one area of interest in the spotlight and make it very easy to forget about everything else. That’s how we ended up with the patriot act.
I'm not trying to convince anyone here, merely broadcasting information that I am privy to which I suspect most here may not be.
In my youth I was a very zealous Christian, and went on mission trips to Peru, South Africa, Honduras, and Mexico.
When I reflect back on those times I feel ashamed of my assumptions about the people we were trying to "save". I am now hyper-sensitive to the idea that some ways of living are qualitatively "better" than others.
Certainly in South Africa, around Johannesburg the poverty I witnessed in their "townships" was truly painful, but that itself was caused by colonialism, and rough history of apartheid.
The dead sibling comment to yours does make a point, we shouldn't assume these cultures (OP cultures - not mapped, not tracked) don't want to adopt some of modernity's benefits, but we also shouldn't assume that they do.
There was no religious component to this. Only good outcomes have come from this (and the other two are still doing it). I do not regret doing it except that I clearly have far greater comparative advantage making money and giving it away than doing this myself. Also I enjoy writing code more.
The problem is not that these people are not mapped, the problem is that you cannot participate in healthcare without being mapped.
And as far as data... yes ir is now CRACK to organizations.... the word USER has a drug meaning too, and it’s probably very appropriate. The GDPR and Cali rules are just the beginning of detox... E2E all the things is coming.
Effectively, some citizenship rights, some entitlements, and to some extent some rights can be set aside due to not having a document that isn't compulsory. Yep..
[0] in French: https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1036
[1] in French: https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F11601
In most developed countries this is the attitude towards wildlife for example. Unless all migratory birds are counted, their nests photographed, their legs tagged, their beaks measured and catalogued, it is as if they wouldn't exist. This is considered a shortcoming, a deficit, and environmentalists organize "bird tagging" events where they try to remedy the situation. In traditional societies wildlife is just there, and it is fine to leave it "illegible".
There are further links in the post.
How do you propose monitoring the health of bird populations, making recommendations for areas that need to be protected, or a myriad of other things without having the relevant data?
It's easy to smugly talk about how developed nations are obsessed with numbers and figure when you ignore that those numbers and figures are used to form policies that have tangible effects.
In my mind "left alone and given sufficient space" is better than "protected and managed". Unfortunately the choice is most often not between these two, but between "protected and managed" and "destroyed".
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
As someone who enjoys being invisible I liked their comment very much and don’t find it out of context here at all.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/how-app...
I didn't even have a name until I was a year old. When I mentioned that to my astonished wife, I did some research, and found that it was common in that era, and even today in many communities, not to name a child for a year or two.
It used to be that you didn't have to be tabulated in anyone's database until your parents wanted to use you as a tax deduction. Mine never did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation