Serge Wroclawski

“ They can use this information to improve their map accuracy, but Google has already announced that is going to use this information to track the correlation between searches and where you go. With 500 million Android phones, this is an enormous amount of information collected on the individual level about people’s habits whether they’re taking a casual stroll, commuting to work, going to their doctor, or maybe attending a protest. Certainly we can’t ignore the societal implication of so much data in the hands of a single entity, no matter how benevolent they claim to be. ”

“ In terms of map content, OpenStreetMap is both neutral and transparent. OpenStreetMap is a wiki-like map that anyone in the world can edit. If a store is missing from the map, it can be added in, by a store owner or even a customer. In terms of display (rendering) , each person or company who creates a map is free to render it how they like, but the main map on OpenStreetMap.org uses FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) rendering software and a liberally licensed stylesheet which anyone can build on. In other words, someone who cares can always create their own maps based on the same data. ”

“ Companies like Foursquare use gamification to overlay what is essentially a large scale data collection process, and even Google has gotten into the game of gamification with Ingress, a game which overlays an artificial world onto this one and encourages users to collect routing data and photo mapping as part of effort to either fight off, or encourage, an alien invasion. ”