{"id":312,"date":"2012-03-02T10:01:41","date_gmt":"2012-03-02T18:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/insider\/?p=312"},"modified":"2012-03-02T10:01:41","modified_gmt":"2012-03-02T18:01:41","slug":"where-are-we-going-gis-and-the-millennial-generation","status":"publish","type":"insider","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/insider\/where-are-we-going-gis-and-the-millennial-generation","title":{"rendered":"Where Are We Going? GIS and the Millennial Generation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the dawn of humankind, people have sketched maps on cave walls and rocks. These maps documented and communicated important geographic knowledge, and helped our ancestors make better decisions about the critical choices that determined their survival or demise.
\nFast-forward to the 1960s. Computers had arrived on the scene and were beginning to be used to help us solve increasingly complex problems. \u201cIt was not until the IT revolution brought new hardware and software, removing earlier constraints, that hopes could begin to be realized and modern GIS could take shape,\u201d Prof. Brian J. L. Berry of the University of Texas, Dallas says in an article titled \u201cQuo Vadimus?\u201d in the upcoming Spring 2012 issue of ArcNews<\/em>. \u201cAnd take shape it has, creating the extraordinary new interdisciplinary area of geospatial information science.\u201d
\n
\n\"Look<\/a>
\n\u201cBut,\u201d notes Berry, \u201cthe full potential of the revolution has yet to be realized.\u201d He sees hope in the millennial generation\u2014those born in the 1980s and 1990s, characterized by their familiarity with and ubiquitous use of computing and communications technologies. \u201cImportantly,\u201d he adds, millennials \u201care among the one-fourth of U.S. Internet users who play games on social networks.\u201d And this segment is growing.
\n\u201cThe potential of online social gaming has, I believe, yet to be realized by geospatial analysts,\u201d says Berry. These environments \u201chave the potential to attract participants to work on real-world problems and craft potential solutions.\u201d
\nOthers agree. Prof. Ola Ahlqvist of Ohio State University notes that the virtual worlds that live inside today\u2019s games \u201cembed parallels to many societal processes that we regard as complex and \u2018wicked\u2019 problems.\u201d And this is where the real potential lies. As Berry says, \u201cThe fun is in the gaming; the opportunity comes in focusing on real problems in real places rather than on virtual worlds.\u201d
\nComputing technology is the most cost-effective resource we have at our disposal to help us solve the complex problems we are facing. A convergence of geospatial technologies and online social gaming could leverage the ever-growing online gaming community as a resource for real-world problem-solving.
\nHow can we move forward in using virtual worlds to help us better understand the real world? You can read more in Berry\u2019s article in the Spring 2012 issue of ArcNews<\/em>, which will be available towards the end of March. [Note: it’s now available online here<\/a>.]\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[275982],"tags":[23482,276312,276322],"class_list":["post-312","insider","type-insider","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vision","tag-citizen-science","tag-online-gaming","tag-video-games"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhere Are We Going? GIS and the Millennial Generation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/insider\/where-are-we-going-gis-and-the-millennial-generation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Where Are We Going? GIS and the Millennial Generation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Since the dawn of humankind, people have sketched maps on cave walls and rocks. These maps documented and communicated important geographic knowledge, and helped our ancestors make better decisions about the critical choices that determined their survival or demise. Fast-forward to the 1960s. 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