Podcast #28: Rational Geographic — Map Chat with Aaron Straup Cope
Podcast #28: Rational Geographic — Map Chat with Aaron Straup Cope
The history and the future of geotagging: this week Paul Ford and Rich Ziade talk to Aaron Straup Cope, a programmer who works with maps and geographical datasets. The conversation covers his time as one of Flickr’s earliest employees, data visualization, gazetteers, the evils of Wal-Mart, geocoding (and reverse geocoding), and one of the most controversial decisions in online mapping — Google’s decision to cut off the poles and make the world a square.
[on the early days of Flickr]
Aaron: It’s a weird thing to explain to people, because the expression that I’ve always used is a terrible expression, because it comes across as all the worst habits of the way people talk about technology now, which is the sort of macho “killing it,” “crushing it” rhetoric, which is pretty tiresome.
Paul: “Bonin’ it.”
Aaron: Yeah.
Rich: I have never heard —
Paul: “Kickin’ it.” “Throwin’ up on it.”
Aaron: I mean the way that I described it was, and again it’s a terrible description, but it was that there was a culture of shame, which meant that you felt bad if you weren’t working as hard as everyone else, like…the people that I worked with? You were just sort of in awe of what they had accomplished.
Paul: This sounds amazing and it sounds very productive but also sounds like a terrifying cult.