Flying gurnard: Stanford - Launch Event for The Chinese Deathscape Digital Project

Dear Tom, (and David and Glen, whom Tom mentioned as central to this project),

Thanks for your excellent "Launch Event for The Chinese Deathscape Digital Project" - https://events.stanford.edu/events/833/83388/ - and brilliant work and I.T. platform. The question I approximately asked: how a Chinese scholar on your project might add a smartphone photo, say of a map (in Chinese) at the museum of the Xi'an Terracotta Warriors as a kind of mausoleum even, to your platform is interesting potentially for your colleagues and other students who might seek to extend the parameters of your project with time, or come into conversation with it. If such a photographer/scholar/student could also then geo-rectify this, and then subsequently overlay this with other geo-rectified maps and compare, - your data on related projects would also grow significantly with time.  

 

(For example, with regards to my actual-virtual ethnographic field site with many parallels to your project, I added this 2001 photo of the Harbin gate house around 2009 to Google Street View here - https://www.google.com/maps/place/Harbin+Hot+Springs/@38.7860806,-122.6518315,3a,109.6y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipOR33JEA3qzAchuAOEFPss-U_w6cXPc-OsiNgSE!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOR33JEA3qzAchuAOEFPss-U_w6cXPc-OsiNgSE%3Dw203-h153-k-no!7i576!8i436!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xde57c3ab0ecaa2c9!8m2!3d38.7860806!4d-122.6518315 - as an example of what could get very involved machine learning-wise if people were many maps, or even adding video of maps in your project). And I'll welcome people to add photos to a realistic virtual Harbin in Google Streetview (outside the Harbin gate, since Harbin doesn't allow photos on property, but also welcome people to add drawings of Harbin's pool area to this realistic virtual Harbin; see ~ http://tinyurl.com/p62rpcg ~ https://twitter.com/HarbinBook ~ http://bit.ly/HarbinBook ~).

And in asking after your talk at the podium about even re-conceiving the book, re your comments that the book isn't dead, please see this blog entry - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2018/12/leaf-re-conceiving-book-printable-on.html).

 

As we talked about coming down the Rumsey Maps' Center stairs, I'm also interested in facilitating a realistic virtual earth for everything - and particularly for developing a realistic virtual Harbin Hot Springs for actual-virtual, physical-digital ethnographic comparison, STEM research (including brain research), and at the cellular and atomic levels too, and with regard too to a new social science method I'm calling ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy. But after hearing your presentation, I'm also curious about a related approach one might newly call historio-wiki-virtual-world-graphy, where people might wiki-add historical data to an emergent realistic virtual earth (am thinking Google Streetview / Maps / Earth / Tensorflow, Translate + and with avatar bots) . What I appreciate much about your approach, Tom, is that you circumscribe your project, platform, map-URL-citation-approach and book project for scholars, as a way to both generate questions, and ask them as well, - but also in a way which is potentially in a network of people you trust (I think - is this correct?). 

And re adding further photos of maps, photos of people and even graves (and even corpses re your Chinese project) and also potentially videos of this, which could conceivably be integrated into the whole realistic virtual earth, here's the Google AI video "Our depth predictions" link I mentioned - https://twitter.com/GoogleAI/status/1131615568753115136 (with a related Tweet about emergent scholarly approaches to privacy - https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1131647658815176705 - and in a realistic virtual earth), with many implications for machine learning, privacy and a Google-centric realistic virtual earth.

In what ways might we explore further collaboration re possibly exploring making interoperable your map platform, which seems to be quite Google-centric, with creating a realistic virtual earth for related question-generating and new approaches to historical data and evidence (and re creating a realistic virtual Harbin, and explicitly developing a platform for ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy, and potentially newly for historio-wiki-virtual-world-graphy, which wouldn't interfere with your current great work, but which might eventually provide more helpful data for your projects)? 

Thank you so much for your great talk and work, and very nice to meet you. (Greetings too David and Glen!). PS: below you'll find an email to Nicole Hu, a brilliant Stanfordian working in a similar space.

All the best, Scott

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April 25, 2019

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