neogeography

Neogeography (literally "new geography") is the use of geographical techniques and tools for personal and community activities or by a non-expert group of users. Application domains of neogeography are typically not formal or analytical.

==History== The term neogeography has been used since at least 1922. In the early 1950s in the U.S. it was a term used in the sociology of work. The French philosopher François Dagognet used it in the title of his 1977 book ''Une Epistemologie de l'espace concret: Neo-geographie''. The word was first used in relation to the study of online communities in the 1990s by Kenneth Dowling, the Librarian of the City and County of San Francisco. Immediate precursor terms in the industry press were: "the geospatial Web" and "the geoaware Web" (both 2005); "Where 2.0" (2005); "a dissident cartographic aesthetic" and "mapping and counter-mapping" (2006). These terms arose with the concept of Web 2.0, around the increased public appeal of mapping and geospatial technologies that occurred with the release of such tools as "slippy maps" such as Google Maps, Google Earth, and also with the decreased cost of geolocated mobile devices such as GPS units. Subsequently, the use of geospatial technologies began to see increased integration with non-geographically focused applications.