Georesearch in realtime

Yesterday, I came home after a bike ride and was able to find answers on the internet to my questions about the wildlife and places I saw on the ride. In 1998, the last time I’d gone out (running) in the same landscape, the information wasn’t on the net yet. It would have taken hours of research and travel to find the same information. The internet is a thing of wonder.
Jon Udell fantasizes about being about to have geo-information available immediately, as you experience the landscape. That would be both cool and horrid. The reason I put a blackberry in the drawer is that it intruded into experience. I’d go for a walk on a sunny day and see email, not trees and flowers.
It’s one thing to see mysterious weathered structures in a marsh, and an odd-looking drawbridge that looks like it rotates sideways, and rush-like plants growing at the side of the water, and observe variations in the color of pools, another thing to learn about the abandoned town, and the man who tended the drawbridge, the ecosystem that depends on those plants, the salt concentrations and microorganisms that influence the color of the water. I didn’t need all that information right while cycling, the salty breeze and the landscape was plenty.
Wordsworth defined poetry as emotion recollected in tranquility. A corrolary — you’re not writing the poem while in the midst of the emotion and sensation. I think it would be great to be able to bookmark a landscape, and come back to learn about it later, and not forget. Being able to look the landscape up later is enough cyborg for me.

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