A VerySpatial Podcast - Episode 737

Well, it was first put in place by not the previous, but the one before that in 2015. And then it was rescinded largely under the previous administration. And then that kind of laid in sort of stasis for a number of years. Until there was a party shift within not just the administration, but within the FCC itself, because FCC what are they called appointees? I don't know. I called commissioners, I guess. They are put in for a certain period of years before, you know, they get reinstated.

And the, the Biden administration appointed additional democratic representatives. And that led to a three, two vote to reinstate net neutrality. So What does that mean for the United States? It just means that the FCC now has the ability to regulate the internet as a common carrier, which gives them a lot more power to say, this is what you can do and what you can't do.

This is the, what you can do in terms of charging, in terms of, you know minimum standards in terms of access and in terms of pushing it out to places that do not currently have what we would call good internet connection broadband to use the vernacular. So it's a pretty powerful thing. And I think it's fair to say most of us are very special. All of us are very special things. I think it's critical and I'm glad that they've reinstated it.

However, one of the challenges here is that it does highlight the That this stuff is very changeable from administration administration. And then there's been attempts to try to codify this into law. Unfortunately, in the congressional level, the bill just didn't go very far. So hopefully in the future, that'll change. Some states have tried to do it.

California has a law that, that sort of imposes net neutrality, but there's always been a fight between what's the FCC federal ability to regulate and the state ability to regulate. There's a couple of bills. I'm sorry. I'm just, there's a couple of Supreme court. cases that are addressing the idea of regulation and when it's kind of, it's going to be interesting how that, that shakes out and this could have a secondary side effect, but for now we have net neutrality again, which is awesome.

And the, the pandemic was a big driver of this because it highlighted the need to close the digital divide. You know, because of the situation of everyone being asked to be online, but not everyone having the capability or access. To do that. Yeah. I liked the quote from the commissioner that it went from nice to have to need to have. All right. I think that pretty much sums it up. Yeah, but my issue is it went from nice to have to need to have like in 2004. It is true.

Yeah. Now that out, which is a little bit next up in the news. Of course with AI and, and it's just so much involved in that. But one of the things is that, you know, government's not just here in the United States marketplace are trying to figure out. Not just how they might have to get into it in terms of legal structures and stuff, but also how government agencies will use these types of systems themselves.

So recently the White House here in the United States has actually laid out AI guidelines for how government here will use AI. So what they have to do in terms of telling people how they're using it, what they're using it for and appropriate safeguards. So this policy Has basically three general requirements. So just really quick, and this is kind of pretty standard, I think, with a lot of tools when you know, the government adopts technology.

So the first requirement is that federal agencies here in the U. S. will need to ensure that any AI tools that they are using aren't going to endanger the rights and safety of the American people. So that's a quote, right? And, and this is again, pretty standard. So they'll have to have safeguards in place. They'll have to have procedures. To make sure that they're not using a tool that potentially could cause problems in that sense.

And then they'll have to ask, also as part of that, have to be transparent about what AI systems they're using in government agencies. And so they'll be required to each year publish a list of the systems how they're assessing risk and how they're managing risk. And then finally, To accomplish all of this, there will be internal oversight of AI use in federal agencies through a chief AI officer.

So putting into place a structure, because as we've seen everywhere right now, right, it's, it's advancing much more rapidly than the understanding of implications, right, of impacts of using generative AI and these tools which are already being used across quite a few things. And so I believe the AI governance board, so that structure part of it has to be in place by the end of, nearly the end of May.

So, the chief AI officer and anybody else that's going to be responsible in that part, presumably lists will be in compiled, those types of things will begin probably may have already begun but if not shortly. Interesting, and they have to have this done by December 1st, which isn't Unusual date, but that's, you know, well, everybody takes off December because they've built up all their, their annual leave. So, you know, you have to get it done before you all go on vacation.

Yeah. And before this year's over, you would typically expect this stuff to go into place, you know, the first of the year type of thing, or first of the fiscal year, which would be October one. The really interesting thing here is that that is just under 30 days after the election. So this is all done by executive order.

So the Complicating factor here is we don't know right now what the outcome of the LXN is going to be, and who's to say this wouldn't be rescinded on January 22nd, which would be two days after. But until then. You know, so, that's, that's the interesting bit, but. What was interesting to me was, Everything they were talking about is highly spatial.

You know, we, we know geographers and geospatial people working in the areas of water systems, elections, emergency services, right down to when they're talking about transportation, medicine and law enforcement settings. So this is definitely something that impacts the geospatial community and their respective agencies. So UNESCO has a, I added 18 more sites to the UNESCO Global Geoparks Network. This brings the total number of parks to 213 in 48 countries.

I was working that out because it's greater than the number of countries, but it's concentrated within 48 countries, but they're hoping to expand that. The new geoparks are Brazil, China, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Poland and Spain. And the images are just gorgeous when you look at them. And then they also have added a new trans boundary geopark that's going to span Belgium and the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Started in 2015, the geoparks are a way to preserve our geologic heritage. Both in terms of reaching out to the public, but also sustaining it and preserving it and doing some good practices with conservation. So it's pretty exciting to see and you know, this is a great idea. The geoparks are an attraction, but they're also a way to preserve our geology and geography or physical geography of the world.

Well, you say physical geography, but really it's, it's just as much the cultural geography because these things are highlighting the physical aspects, but it brings in people. So you get tourism, you get economic change, you get the kind of cultural conversation about how this particular geologic feature impacts or has driven these communities. So there's a lot of, you know human and physical geography tied up in what ostensibly is a geologic park.

You know, I think the name Geopark fits it better because it does incorporate a lot of the geography. And the ones that have already been named, there's some of the sort of most iconic, unique landscapes and, and natural formations around the world. And just the list is just amazing. I mean, if you wanted to put a bucket list, where are just amazing places I'd want to go in the world? I think that it would be a good place to start is to just look at some of those.

Yeah, you really owe it to yourself to check out the link in the show notes and look at the pictures. They're like Barbara said, astounding. But my favorite is where the Yellow River interacts with the other river in China, and it's just I mean, it's amazing contrast to see those two come together next up a little bit different. So we often talk about the, the importance, the infrastructural nature of things like open street map, but at the same time, it's also open.

Anybody can participate in it. And so what happens whenever you have infrastructural with, Hmm, I want to change this. And recently, Pokemon Go has given folks a reason to go in and change it. So Pokemon Go, of course, an app that's been around for a few years now that people have been utilizing. Great, gets people out. Lots of wonderful things to say about it. But, one of their recent updates there is a new Pokemon who's only showing up in beach areas.

And instead of spoofing, Like many people have done traditionally their location instead they're going in and editing up and street map which Pokemon go pulls from for its base map data and putting beaches in places where beaches weren't before or aren't in real world. So yeah, you know, we get this infrastructural data set that suddenly seeing the increase in beaches around around the world. Yeah, the presumption is, is that people will do this in in good faith for. Good intent.

And that's not always true. I mean, there's this is a silly reason, obviously, but it does raise the question of what's being done subtly different for geopolitical reasons or whatever it may be. And that's the dangers to this. So it's, it's great, but also it's, you know, It needs guardrails, arguably.

What's funny to me when I read it, as I've recently watched an interview with the creator of OpenStreetMaps and then he talks about maps as entertainment and here it's actually collided with actual entertainment. But the other thing is I feel like this really wants to be a John Green book or novel about adding these beaches. You're going to have to explain what John Green is for everybody. No, that's okay. We can, people can go to YouTube and find him and Hank.

Enjoy their time doing that or go and see what turtles all the way down or up, whichever one that it is that came out this week, the movie version of the book. Sorry. To continue on with the data thing, Overture maps, which of course we spoke with them not that long ago, maybe six, eight months ago about their foundational data set that they're working with a lot of different organizations to provide this accessible though, not. Open data set.

They're basically rolling it out now in a beta version. So they've been, you know, slowly building up and adding things to it and making clear that, you know, it wasn't ready for prime time yet, even though anybody could use the data they were making available at that time. But now they are to the point where they're releasing the beta of the production ready 1. 0 version. of Overture Maps. So, if you're interested, go over, check it out.

You can download it from various sources, as well as, I think there's a couple places where you can go ahead and connect to it. through various calls. So I'll leave that for you to figure out where those are if you want to take advantage of it. But, you know, most importantly here, places of interest, buildings, transportation, administrative boundaries and their base land and water data set are the ones that are going to be part of this 1. 0 version in 40 different languages.

So they're going to support international use. So head over and check it out. And that's it for the news. Now, yes, this is, this is weird. Sue probably hasn't even seen the link yet. And this is a word that I came across today. We've, I don't think ever talked about before and.

With that, it's one that may have been around for a while, it's one that is curious and does have potentially an impact on the way that we talk about these things, but nobody's really talking about the term metageography. This term apparently comes from two sources, one in 1997, which is actually the second one. Not the Russian one that we'll talk about later on.

This is all according to Wikipedia, by the way, where it's a set of spatial structures through which people order their knowledge of the world. Okay. So it's our understanding of geography is the ontologies. It's the epistemologies. It's how we understand it, right? Is that how you guys would take that?

Yes, and I know we haven't talked about this before, because this is the first time I've ever interacted with this word before that I know of, so I certainly, but we, we may have to, I think it's fair to say we've talked about the concept without necessarily the term, maybe obliquely, or around the concept, but. Oh, a few times. Yeah, it's, it's an interesting. idea.

The, the, the interesting bit for me, the 97 book is a critique of metageography among is a longer time, but would suggest that the term predates the critique, right? In, in theory, but again, that comes back. We could say that the 1969 Soviet geographers wrote that metageography is concerned with the study of the common basis of geographical regularities and the potentials of geography as a science.

So maybe that's, that's the What the 1997 book is referring back to, but I mean, I didn't, this wasn't a term that I heard in any classes or have read about until today. No, I mean the closest would be, and this is not even accurate, but semantic geography maybe, that would be the closest idea that we did talk about in classes. Yeah, but semantics are about how we describe the geography, not how necessarily we understand the geography.

So I would even, I get where you're saying that it's similar, but even there, it's just, it's just different enough. Yeah. It's the closest, but it's not right. It's not, it's not exactly it's, it's an interesting idea and you can see how, well, if you know, if you know the history of the Cold War, you can see a little bit, I think of how the Soviets may be one of the ones to talk about this.

to think about this because, you know, the history of the we have the Eastern block and, you know, Western Europe and we have East Berlin and West Berlin, and we have that sort of way of organizing Europe, which was the dominant power. You know, sort of arguably the dominant feature of getting into colonialism for much of the last couple of 300 years.

So you could see how they would sort of approach this and think about, well, what does it really mean to think about Eastern block countries, which for those who may be unaware of the history of the Cold War is following World War II the Soviet Union sort of, What's the word? It's not annexed, they didn't formally annex it, but they certainly made a line. They didn't leave. Yeah, they didn't leave, they made a line, they said, this is our sphere of control.

You know, that's Poland, Romania, Hungary. The Czech and Slovak republics, which prior to that were made in Czechoslovakia. And then what am I missing here? The Balkans, Yugoslavia, yeah, that area, they sort of said, this is our sphere of influence and this is Eastern Europe as opposed to Western Europe and for filmmakers with the geography of that area at all, it's kind of arbitrary where that line was at. There's no particular reason it has to be there.

And of course, Germany following World War II it was the Eastern Soviet Union and the associated smaller countries going in into Eastern Germany and taking over that area. Following the war or to end the war, so to speak. And then of course, the U S Britain and France for the majority of the, of the people moving into the West, other countries as well, but that's the majority one.

And they sort of met in the middle and then like, like Sue said, they just didn't, the Soviet Union just didn't leave. So the United States and didn't leave. And that's how we get NATO and Warsaw and all that sort of stuff. So you can sort of see how you would start thinking about this stuff, about how you think about this stuff. That was the history of Cold War in like the beginning of the Cold War in what, two minutes?

So, sure, I glazed over a lot of details, so just don't, don't eviscerate me an email. That's well, you see it anywhere where people are, you know, talking about and basically saying that, what are we, what are we saying when we talk about different regions? You know, a lot of people are reflecting on their own. Place in the world and how you navigate it. So it's, it's pretty interesting because it's like Jesse said, what do we mean when we're talking about certain things?

Which is really a good thing to ask for anyone that's doing geography and geospatial work. Yeah, I was gonna say like something like this, I'm not sure, I mean, I'm not sure I would agree, like go say, well this is meta geography. But I think what they're trying to get at with it, the notion that our division of spaces, right. Is much more than just simply what's across the space of or what's across a map or something, you know, that terms and and the east west one is a good one that you gave.

I mean, I often have this discussion here with students and classes related to the word the South, the term the South. But it is a good way to think about how we have expectations for what these geographical terms mean, right? And those expectations aren't the same. So then how we then organize things based on that because one of the things about East and West, right, is that that's also you know, it's a, an opposition, a binary, right? That, that predates even the Cold War.

So when you have looking at the Far East, right? In the Age of Exploration, right? And thinking and seeing that as, as the exotic, the different, the other, right? And so but also we now look at North and South differently. And so here we have divisions that have formed, but they are, they are sort of geographic.

Orientations, but if you ask many, many different people, right, even who think that they might share that, that definition, they will not and trying to tease that out, right, can be really tough. Answer this question, is West Virginia North or South? Exactly. And that's, that's a perennial cultural question that the state itself struggles with. Much less people outside of the state, you know, I'll still left out mid. Yeah. Right. And then there's, there's additional like qualifying terms.

So I think that something like this, like the sort of, because if you, if you go look at it, you say, all right, I'm going to go to Wikipedia, right? This is one of those things that is, is much easier to maybe grasp in the examples than it is in the. Sort of definition of it. And so these are the kinds of examples, but, but yeah, I think in the North South question, so I will always ask students you know, we do things often based on our perception. So what is your perception of the South?

Like, where does it begin? And then I throw a map up and I ask them to draw a boundary and immediately. the, the arguments begin, right? Well, one person might have some familiarity to say, well, it, it's the Mason Dixon line and then, you know, the rest of the class go, what even is that? Right. And they have to explain what that is.

Some others will go, well, it's where it's really warm or it's where, you know, you, you speak a certain way and then as they come up with, with, you know, their qualification, they see that, that there's a lot of difference there, but the amorphous concept. Of the South, right? And again, I'm keeping with a specific example, colors a lot of the ways that that region is dealt with, right? And it even it finds its way into to government policy. It finds its way into culture.

It finds its way into economics. And so to kind of look at those things it is just going beyond, say, a map that we can read and say, here's the boundary, right? It's that we're describing space and places with terms that are constructs based on our, our worldviews and, you know, often in opposition. So the East West, right, was a, set up as an adversarial kind of thing with the Cold War example.

LESLIE KENDRICK What's interesting to me is, I think, you know, this would be an argument because I've, I've seen this, but that this is playing out in things like the new National Geodetic Survey, where they've actually renamed what we would say is a datum as a spatial reference or a spatial framework for this very reason, talking about, it's about the, the point from where we're viewing the world. So I think that there's some overlap there or recognition of.

The world's vast and we're trying to comprehend it and we're bringing our own meanings to it. Yeah, Jesse sent me down a rabbit hole by throwing this country, this country, geez, this, this concept out. If you Google it down a bit, you have there's a book that came out in 2012 called Introduction, the modernist novel as metageography. Which was, which is, looks very intriguing and I may have to get a copy, but I like this bit which is from a short story published in 1955.

It says an inmate got so badly caught up in the India Pakistan, Pakistani India rigmarole that one day he, while sweeping the floor, he dropped everything, climbed the nearest tree and installed himself on the branch, from which vantage point he spoke for two hours on the delicate problem of India and Pakistan. The guards asked him to get down. Instead he went on, went a branch higher and then threatened with punishment, declared, I wish to live neither in India nor in Pakistan.

I wish to live in this tree. It's kind of interesting, you know, introducing the vertical to even this, this argument, discussion, maybe not argument. So yeah, we have this term and you know, everybody's jumped on it very quickly. The question is though, you know, what, What does it mean to us today? And, you know, we have this area of geospatial technologies that, you know, we weren't really focusing as much on then with the Soviet definition of from 1969.

There is that influence of the positivist slash spatial science. So, you know, there's a lot of different things that could be talked about here. We've kind of jumped on that cultural world geography kind of take that the, the Wikipedia article Lint was leaning towards. There we go. So, thoughts? It, it's interesting. And the terms. I basically am trying to understand this concept within, like I did earlier, within the guise of things that I know or understand.

So one of the ones that came to mind immediately was fuzzy boundaries. This notion that what is this versus what is that is a very ambiguous, fuzzy non determined spatially inaccurate concept as many cultural things are. It becomes very easy for us to understand when you're completely inside of a thing or completely outside of a thing. Like, we understand the difference between the middle of nowhere Kansas and the middle of New York City as being distinct from each other.

But the boundary at which an urban area Becomes or alters from an urban area into a rural area becomes a lot less determined are easily definable for most people. So that's 1 of the ways that I kind of thought about this was that it's a little bit about what you see. It depends on where you sit and how it's very. Fungal and fuzzy. Yeah, that's what I liked about it.

Because it, it it adds, you know, multi dimensionality and complexity to the discussion by bringing in the, you know, the framework, the framework for, from which you use it. And so it allows for multiple layers of looking at something and questioning it, which brings us I think into thinking more geographically. And this is from a very quick overview of looking through. research and literature, just scanning through. We, we have all of these different directions we can go.

What, I don't know, is this something that, again, it's something that I hadn't really heard of before. It's something I hadn't thought about in this context. I mean, these are all things that we had talked about in various other ways. I mean, everything from the map of grits to, you know, the thing that Sue was talking about with different ways of defining where the South is and such, but.

You know, is this a, I don't know, is this a modern conversation to have in our, our area and era of environmental justice, social justice, sustainability that we're kind of in right now in geography? Where does this conversation of metageography play? Or is it kind of a colonial idea? Let me throw, let me throw another wrinkle into this.

Another way to think about meta geography, and, and again, all I did was a Google search of meta geography to figure out what was, what was, you know, being discussed. There's a 2000 March, 2000 article in, oh, what journal is this? It doesn't matter. Just Google it. And it's entitled world City Network, A New Meta Geography. It's from the analyst and Association of American Geographers. What I think they're arguing is that.

The connectivity of urban areas become its own metageography is how they're applying that term. So the connectivity of Newark and Baltimore, New York City, Baltimore and Boston that in D. C. That becomes its own. I think in this term, greater geography, I think, is what they're defining as a metageography.

So. I just throw that out there because and they start off talking about connectivity and the connections and they reference Gould, who says you cannot have a geography of anything that is unconnected. No connections, no geography. I think that there's a different way you could think about the term metageography and I think that's an interesting way to start teasing at some of your, your question. Does this have any utility in the, in the modern world?

Maybe when we start talking about those connections, those interconnectivity, the metageography makes a little more modernistic sense to me.

When I was looking through, again, just scanning through it when there was talking about demassification, you know, getting down to more you know, of the specific data and specific knowledge in a region, it made me think about the push in journalism towards we don't need to talk about, you know a region when we can talk now about specific places and use the right I mean, use the correct terms because the public with the, the Internet has a lot more exposure

to geographic literacy, geographic knowledge and to me, this also seems like we can be talking about things in more specific sense than just the, the general idea of these regions, which have a lot of meaning attached to them and step out by talking about the places within them as their, their own place. And I know that that's talked about in other areas of of geography, but that's what I was thinking when I was reading through.

Some of the information on metageography, I think focusing on the meta part, you know, just like anything with meta that gives you more information that you need to, to talk about something.

I mean, that's what I've been thinking as, as I've been listening and looking at a few things and, and again, going from examples because and yeah, yeah, feel free to disagree and whatnot, but you know, we, we apply the term meta to something right where we're suggesting we're going to go beyond from a starting point.

Right, for that, that, so what is kind of my question is why use this term for a particular analysis when a lot of the examples that we've seen that, that we gave in this, that are even starting off, it's very basic in the Wikipedia article, right, those, those concepts, so I guess that is the question when you're doing a metageography or when you're trying to use that term to characterize the perspective you're looking at, what are you moving beyond?

So that's the part that I'm thinking like, what would be, why, why would you want to use the term in something you're doing, or why would you want to highlight it? Because what is it telling you, right? What is, what is different about what, what you're looking at? So the, the the quote about the spatial, relatively non examined or unexamined yet spatial frameworks through which, you know, we do things, right? So that's, that's kind of one example.

But again, I think that, What is the geography that we're going meta on or geographies? I think this would be multiple geographies So I think that's the interesting thing to me and as we're sitting here I'm listening and thinking about it that I'm I'm working through myself because I I see kind of being gotten at, right? And looking at these constructs through an example quite clearly. So see, so clearly I'm seeing it as the example moving outward to kind of what is it then we're doing.

But maybe not so much than working from the definition to a new, a new case of it, if that makes sense. So the interesting thing here is, is if you follow down the Google Path long enough, you get to the original article, which was in a journal called Soviet Geography, which is Underneath. There was a journal called Soviet Geography and the problems of Meta Geography is the name of the article. It was published in 1969 and Meta Geography.

This is the quote from the abstract Meta Geography is concerned with the study of the common basis of geographic regularities and the potentialities of geography as a science. I'm going to mess up this word. It's from linear algebra, but from the viewpoint of metageography, geographical space is the egen space of geographical entities. These entities are multiscalar and they are universal threshold scales associated with the differences with different sets of irregularities.

I'm sorry, with regularities from geographical entity has two aspects. It reflects general laws and it's unique. So in other words, what they're trying to do is they're trying to say, this is a thing.

As opposed to this other thing using concepts from linear algebra and it's 1969 and it's, you know, right around the, the initial fights between, you know, as, as Marxist geography started to rise and to start, you know, we're looking at the, the, the, the quantitative, I don't want, you know, what to call it at that point is sort of ebbing of the power of quantitative and, and, and importance of quantitative or the stranglehold really into thinking about geography.

This was essentially trying to say, well, let's, we can talk about individual district units because they have spatial parameters that are cohesive. And we can say, this is this, and that is that that's where it starts from.

Hence the critique of medical medical critique of meta geography in the 97 book or piece, I don't know if it was a book or an article where they're trying to get at the idea of, of continents and saying, okay, well, You know, does Europe as a continent make sense distinct from Asia as a continent? I don't have to use that example, but this is clearly what they're kind of getting at is that, does it really make sense?

If you think about as we move from East to West, there's a blending of things and the distinction is a lot less fuzzy than you think. So it's an interesting term. And I really think that. To Jesse's question, does it have relevance? I think it's incredibly relevant. It's just not a term we use much. It didn't make it into the, into the whole discourse of how we think about geography and positionality and power connections and all that kind of stuff.

So do you think it would have value as, as a way to bring together these, the, these types of analyses of examples, right? Places where this, this idea that and so you gave, you've given a couple of examples, but this idea, right, is, is that geographies that we are familiar with or talk about in a certain way, like regions, right? So that Barb mentioned regions or using things like state boundaries. And by that, I mean, actually country states boundaries, right?

Or those types of things from which we begin to talk about geography, then saying, well, we have these other concepts and those are talked about in different disciplines. They're talked about in different sub disciplines of geography. So maybe a term like this is a way to focus some of that, is that maybe? Maybe it's some of its utility. When, when you scan through the, the literature, I'm just doing a quick Google scholar search.

And since 2020, it, you know, it's being used for things like like you said, looking at a different perspective on public art territory or geopolitics or even physical hydrography boundaries. So I think it's almost like a, a term that signifies you're going to do some critical geography of how people have understood how A place is defined. It's also also in historical geography. It seems to be using used a lot for that.

We're going to go revisit this idea of the, the map or the territory and historical geography. And I'm going to turn it, turn it on its head. I think the term metageography, as it was originally defined in 1969 is. The contradiction myself is the should die. It doesn't it doesn't have a lot of utility.

I don't think because they in the abstract talking about us, that We had to develop a calculus of spatial structures, and that's the only sound approach to the investigation of complex spatial systems. So basically saying, look, you need statistical analysis and math and that mix of a science and that's just all we need. And I think that we as a discipline have moved beyond that. Many years ago, it was in contemporary for 1969.

But that idea, we've kind of moved a bit beyond as being the only way to do this. But I think if we expand the idea of metageography to say, we're starting to concern ourselves with, you know, So, I think it got to what I was hoping it would get to that. We have multiple definitions of what this is and they've changed over time, starting with the Soviet with the very spatial science idea through to ones that were during the resurgence of regionalism in the nineties kind of showed that out.

And then as Barb was pointing out, our more recent ones are getting more closer to that. a modern idea of of what geography currently is focusing on. But again, geography is all of these things. And so that's why I was humming while Frank was saying his last things, because there are people out there who very much want this to be a calculus of space. And think the rest of us who are doing weird human stuff are just, you know, Wasting our times and things like that.

So just as we think that they're kind of focused too much and that's okay. Cause it's a big discipline. It's why we have a conference. You know, with a G that has 10, 000 people at it, we have, you know, events that are associated like the Esri conference. That's what? 115 or 15 or 18 at this point. The I. G. C. International Geographical Conference will be this August and who knows how many people will be there.

You know, we have all these people coming from different directions in this massive discipline. And so a term Like metageography that doesn't get talked about a lot has a lot of room to kind of slide from idea to idea because it doesn't get talked about a lot. It doesn't get nailed down.

And you know, we think metageography is going to be the geography of geography, but with maybe the exception of Frank's middle example where people were kind of aggregating based on mega better geography, that would be the only one that was really about a geography of a geography. The rest have been more going back to Frank's earlier description of a semantic geography or an ontology or an epistemology type of focus. And so it isn't one thing.

It's what someone needs it to be in the moment, right? Is anybody else, or am I just imagining that? What, what you're saying, if I may, is that geography has a lot of space. But no, I don't think you're wrong. I think that I agree. I just got in trouble for saying that I agree that metageography allows for the discussion of a lot of dimension out dimensionality to the discipline and initially was trying to make a science. Right?

And so I, I think that we've well established that there are parameters of geography, which are clearly science. Thanks. in any definition. It's not the totality of geography, but it does exist. And so I think it, it, it somewhat met its goal. But the interesting thing is, is that this is where, you know, definite definition of terms does matter significantly because on the one hand, yes, it applies to a lot of different things, but That kind of means it doesn't mean anything also.

So we do actually have to sort of define our terms when we're talking about this. And that's a hard thing to do because it does cover such a broad spectrum. That's, it's such a cool name. It is a cool name, you know, it's a cool name. And so it can encompass a lot, you know, and I was thinking where did I heard meta and then I realized it's the, you know, the study of Facebook. Well, the other place, more appropriately, that. Would take you to the boring places. Metadata. I love metadata.

That's what I was thinking when I first saw it and what I still think when I see it. Yeah, but you're in the minority. Most people aren't metadata. Well, hopefully everybody who listens to this podcast would have thought about metadata first. I would have metaphysics first fair. So I was I was leaning towards that. So getting into essence and ghosts and things that aren't necessarily understood by the current physics.

Yeah. Isn't that, isn't that the take that, see, see down here, we don't even necessarily agree on how we think they want. This is, this is my thing with, with organizing terms, right? Is that this is attempting to define as, as any term like this is attempting to define the nature of the inquiry that that's going on to say that this is something that, that That we can give form and substance to.

But but as we were just saying, it, it doesn't because everybody disagrees or agrees but takes their own spin on it. Yes, exactly. But that, that's, you know, that's very similar to many other things, but, but yeah, so, so I was more thinking along those lines. Yeah. So, I don't know. Were there any follow up kind of ideas? I have a follow up to Sue that apparently the geography of the paranormal is spectral geography. Yeah. Absolutely.

I think she was thinking metaphysics more in the, you know, ontology kind of way. But even so. Abital. Yeah. That's good to know. So bring it back into a more heavily used don't, doesn't matter. We've talked about it now, so we can move on. from MetaGeography. Or we won't. I don't know. I don't know what will happen. I will mull it, actually. I mean, again, I think that, that concrete examples of what is being talked about, we all, we all kind of have applied in, in different situations.

Yeah. No, we have. We just haven't talked about it as MetaGeography. Yes. I mean, the whole conversation around deep maps could completely It could be MetaGeography. Absolutely. So, you know, it's It could be a meta deep geography conversation. Yes. On to the events corner. As always check out these events if you're near them or not. If you're in Salt Lake City, June 6th you can check out state of the map us.

And the International Geographical Conference of 2024 will be taking place the 24th to the 30th of August in Dublin. It was just 20 years ago that we were at the IGC for Glasgow. Yes, just across the We did not get abstracts in, in time for Dublin. Yes, and then ironically, we went to Dublin after Glasgow was done. During that trip. Yeah. So as always, if you want us to add your event to the podcast, send us an email to spacial. com.

If you'd like to reach us individually, I can be reached at Sue at veryspatial.com. I can be reached at Barb at veryspatial.com. You can reach me at Frank at veryspatial.com. I'm available at Jesse at veryspatial.com and you can find all of our contact information over at veryspatial.com slash contacts. As always, we're the folks from Very Spatial. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in a couple weeks. What's not to love about Idaho? The secret is out but no one knows.

All of the heartburn from years ago. Don't forget Idaho. Idaho. Remember when we sat on our back porch and stared out for miles? And now when we look out we see bricks and tiles. What's not to love about Idaho? The secret is out but no one knows. All of the from years ago. Don't forget not to love about. Here's the code Don't forget I'd at home Don't forget I'd