6 ms·

Things like this make me think that it's a shame humanity is duplicating all this work instead of collaborating to do it once. One of the awkward failures of ca

by ajkjk 9y ago

Things like this make me think that it's a shame humanity is duplicating all this work instead of collaborating to do it once. One of the awkward failures of capitalism, I guess. At least when your product is something physical you end up with twice as many outputs. When it's just data you just do the same work twice.

todd3834 9y ago
Isn't open street maps exactly that? I guess the shame is that big corporations don't all contribute to that rather than try to compete? It is a thought provoking idea but I struggle to see which side I prefer. I think competition is one of the things that drives innovation.
- danso 9y ago
  FWIW, Samsung is the corporate booster behind Mapzen, which provides free mapping APIs while contributing to OpenStreetMap: https://trademarks.justia.com/860/91/mapzen-86091461.html https://trademarks.justia.com/860/91/mapzen-86091461.html https://mapzen.com/about/ https://mapzen.com/about/ > Mapzen is an open and accessible mapping platform...Based out of the Samsung Accelerator, we support the geo community through building tools and collaborating on open source mapping projects. We believe that a healthy mapping ecosystem is one that is diverse, sustainable, and accessible to all.
lquist 9y ago
I think I understand what you mean but I think that is actually the proper functioning of capitalism not a failure. If Apple/TomTom/etc. didn’t create maps, Google wouldn’t invest resources in making theirs better.
clement75009 9y ago
As the article shows, there's always some subjectivity in mapping. It is essential that there be competition and different approaches to that enormous task.
arikrak 9y ago
You can say that about every single instance of competition. Yet when governments run things they don't generally do as good a job...
drewda 9y ago
Agreed! That's a big reason why I've enjoyed working with colleagues on a fully "open" approach to mapping software and data at Mapzen: https://mapzen.com/blog/our-magna-carto/ https://mapzen.com/blog/our-magna-carto/ We've made much use of: - http://www.openstreetmap.org/ http://www.openstreetmap.org/ - https://openaddresses.io/ https://openaddresses.io/ And founded efforts like: - https://transit.land https://transit.land - https://whosonfirst.mapzen.com/ https://whosonfirst.mapzen.com/ - https://aws.amazon.com/public-datasets/terrain/ https://aws.amazon.com/public-datasets/terrain/
stvswn 9y ago
Competition is a feature, not a bug -- you're recalling a trope that has been a reactionary criticism to Adam Smith for centuries now, and was a core tenet of Marx's ideas -- that with a little central planning, there wouldn't be all of this effort wasted on competition. The original communists really believed that a planned economy would be more efficient once enacted. The fascists believed in the same basic inefficiency argument, but they thought that the government could control it while stil maintaining private property and traditional social structures. In comparison to those two, neoliberal economic theory has done pretty well for itself.
ucaetano 9y ago
> One of the awkward failures of capitalism, I guess. No, it's actually a feature: competition. With a single product in every category it would be impossible to have diversity of ideas being tested and competing. It is the same with evolution.
- taurath 9y ago
  Here’s the thing though - if everyone shared data, they could compete on the UX. Nobody says that pharmaceutical companies aren’t competitive on the end product, but they have a shared data set in the form of all the university research. Of course they get their own data, but being “free” to not have to do basic research themselves means they can put more resources towards the end product than data gathering
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    > if everyone shared data, they could compete on the UX Why? Google seems to have a gigantic advantage in data, which is highly valuable. Why would they give up that advantage, if they spent millions, if not billions, of dollars creating it? And what would be the incentive to create such data if there's no economic gain from it?
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      >And what would be the incentive to create such data if there's no economic gain from it? // If the data is useful then there is an _economic_ gain, just not necessarily a profit. If you meant "if there's no profit from it" then it was spoken like a true capitalist. Why do anything if you're not going to be paid for it. Why visit your mum in hospital? Why give money to the homeless for food? Why create software for others? Why teach a child a fun game? Love, altruism, interest, expediency, fun, ... and a million other reasons besides.
      - tomrod 9y ago
        All of these items fit into the rational expectations and utility maximization framework.
gumby 9y ago
> When it's just data you just do the same work twice. Monocultures are dangerous too. People differ on what to measure and how. Competition gives us an opportunity to try something new and potentially better. Especially when there isn't a network effect (e.g. phone protocols). Also, the cost of this mapping apparently isn't especially high.
spaceflunky 9y ago
This is the wrong way to think about things. Competition is good. If it weren't for the need to compete, would Google have spent billions on innovations like Street View, Satellite imagery, Google Earth, etc. Or would they have just said, "MapQuest has won the internet maps game, let's just let MapQuest do their own thing. No use in doing the same work twice,"
- dljsjr 9y ago
  I think you slightly missed the parent comment's point, which is not that they should have walked away but rather have said "man, we really want better maps and imaging for navigation, MapQuest has a great head start, we should work with them to make it even better". I'm not sure what economic model encourages that sort of behavior, though.
  - Nomentatus 9y ago
    Agreed. Yet this sort of sharing has happened in some fields - for example, with game engines. Which I never thought I'd see, way back when. The best of these now tend to be opened up (for royalties.) Perhaps that needs to have more regulatory or government encouragement; although like yourself I'm not quite sure how to do that and still keep incentives in place. Particularly where only one or two firms are really competitive.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  What if all the data was public and shared and different people could build their own representations. What if everyone collaborated? I disagree with the competition is always good. There are many cases where you are duplicating work. The best standard rarely wins (PCI vs MCA .. MCA was superior in many ways technologically .. was even hot pluggable, but PCI had better licensing). We get into a lot of repetition and the 'best' product rarely wins. It's more about marketing your product in a way people desire it. Example: Beats Audio Headphones.
- wiz21c 9y ago
  Please don't conflate competition and diversity. Competition is not a condition to diversity. I'd say that competition enforce a trade off between diversity and concentration of power.
salviasloth 9y ago
if they weren’t you’d just be complaining about how monopolies are a failure of capitalism.
ineedasername 9y ago
Not quite. I think "competition" is overly glorified, but it does some things well. In this context, routing around path dependence is a key benefit. The upstart competitor in a field doesn't have to "waste" a decade of investment & infrastructure to bypass a methodology that has reached its maximum utility. The old method was cheaper for the incumbent to maintain, no amount of good will and collaborative spirit would convince them to turn their back on it for an unproven alternative. Any industry that has ever been "disrupted" is an industry shaken out of path dependence
7952 9y ago
The reuse value of this kind of data is critically dependant on the methodology used to create the data. A lot of Google data tends to understandably be focused on their own products and lack quality in a more generic sense. Something as simple as a building outline can be represented in several different ways depending on what you need and require a completely different methodology. The building outline needed by law enforcement is different to what an architect or pizza delivery company needz. When specific about the type of data there is a lot less competition than you might expect. And for commercial companies it makes sense to make as much money as possible front that.

by ajkjk 9y ago

todd3834 9y ago

Isn't open street maps exactly that? I guess the shame is that big corporations don't all contribute to that rather than try to compete? It is a thought provoking idea but I struggle to see which side I prefer. I think competition is one of the things that drives innovation.

danso 9y ago
FWIW, Samsung is the corporate booster behind Mapzen, which provides free mapping APIs while contributing to OpenStreetMap: https://trademarks.justia.com/860/91/mapzen-86091461.html https://trademarks.justia.com/860/91/mapzen-86091461.html https://mapzen.com/about/ https://mapzen.com/about/ > Mapzen is an open and accessible mapping platform...Based out of the Samsung Accelerator, we support the geo community through building tools and collaborating on open source mapping projects. We believe that a healthy mapping ecosystem is one that is diverse, sustainable, and accessible to all.

lquist 9y ago

I think I understand what you mean but I think that is actually the proper functioning of capitalism not a failure. If Apple/TomTom/etc. didn’t create maps, Google wouldn’t invest resources in making theirs better.

clement75009 9y ago

As the article shows, there's always some subjectivity in mapping. It is essential that there be competition and different approaches to that enormous task.

arikrak 9y ago

You can say that about every single instance of competition. Yet when governments run things they don't generally do as good a job...

drewda 9y ago

Agreed! That's a big reason why I've enjoyed working with colleagues on a fully "open" approach to mapping software and data at Mapzen: https://mapzen.com/blog/our-magna-carto/ https://mapzen.com/blog/our-magna-carto/ We've made much use of: - http://www.openstreetmap.org/ http://www.openstreetmap.org/ - https://openaddresses.io/ https://openaddresses.io/ And founded efforts like: - https://transit.land https://transit.land - https://whosonfirst.mapzen.com/ https://whosonfirst.mapzen.com/ - https://aws.amazon.com/public-datasets/terrain/ https://aws.amazon.com/public-datasets/terrain/

stvswn 9y ago

Competition is a feature, not a bug -- you're recalling a trope that has been a reactionary criticism to Adam Smith for centuries now, and was a core tenet of Marx's ideas -- that with a little central planning, there wouldn't be all of this effort wasted on competition. The original communists really believed that a planned economy would be more efficient once enacted. The fascists believed in the same basic inefficiency argument, but they thought that the government could control it while stil maintaining private property and traditional social structures. In comparison to those two, neoliberal economic theory has done pretty well for itself.

ucaetano 9y ago

> One of the awkward failures of capitalism, I guess. No, it's actually a feature: competition. With a single product in every category it would be impossible to have diversity of ideas being tested and competing. It is the same with evolution.

taurath 9y ago
Here’s the thing though - if everyone shared data, they could compete on the UX. Nobody says that pharmaceutical companies aren’t competitive on the end product, but they have a shared data set in the form of all the university research. Of course they get their own data, but being “free” to not have to do basic research themselves means they can put more resources towards the end product than data gathering
- ucaetano 9y ago
  > if everyone shared data, they could compete on the UX Why? Google seems to have a gigantic advantage in data, which is highly valuable. Why would they give up that advantage, if they spent millions, if not billions, of dollars creating it? And what would be the incentive to create such data if there's no economic gain from it?
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    >And what would be the incentive to create such data if there's no economic gain from it? // If the data is useful then there is an _economic_ gain, just not necessarily a profit. If you meant "if there's no profit from it" then it was spoken like a true capitalist. Why do anything if you're not going to be paid for it. Why visit your mum in hospital? Why give money to the homeless for food? Why create software for others? Why teach a child a fun game? Love, altruism, interest, expediency, fun, ... and a million other reasons besides.
    - tomrod 9y ago
      All of these items fit into the rational expectations and utility maximization framework.

gumby 9y ago

> When it's just data you just do the same work twice. Monocultures are dangerous too. People differ on what to measure and how. Competition gives us an opportunity to try something new and potentially better. Especially when there isn't a network effect (e.g. phone protocols). Also, the cost of this mapping apparently isn't especially high.

spaceflunky 9y ago

This is the wrong way to think about things. Competition is good. If it weren't for the need to compete, would Google have spent billions on innovations like Street View, Satellite imagery, Google Earth, etc. Or would they have just said, "MapQuest has won the internet maps game, let's just let MapQuest do their own thing. No use in doing the same work twice,"

dljsjr 9y ago
I think you slightly missed the parent comment's point, which is not that they should have walked away but rather have said "man, we really want better maps and imaging for navigation, MapQuest has a great head start, we should work with them to make it even better". I'm not sure what economic model encourages that sort of behavior, though.
- Nomentatus 9y ago
  Agreed. Yet this sort of sharing has happened in some fields - for example, with game engines. Which I never thought I'd see, way back when. The best of these now tend to be opened up (for royalties.) Perhaps that needs to have more regulatory or government encouragement; although like yourself I'm not quite sure how to do that and still keep incentives in place. Particularly where only one or two firms are really competitive.
djsumdog 9y ago
What if all the data was public and shared and different people could build their own representations. What if everyone collaborated? I disagree with the competition is always good. There are many cases where you are duplicating work. The best standard rarely wins (PCI vs MCA .. MCA was superior in many ways technologically .. was even hot pluggable, but PCI had better licensing). We get into a lot of repetition and the 'best' product rarely wins. It's more about marketing your product in a way people desire it. Example: Beats Audio Headphones.
wiz21c 9y ago
Please don't conflate competition and diversity. Competition is not a condition to diversity. I'd say that competition enforce a trade off between diversity and concentration of power.

salviasloth 9y ago

if they weren’t you’d just be complaining about how monopolies are a failure of capitalism.

ineedasername 9y ago

Not quite. I think "competition" is overly glorified, but it does some things well. In this context, routing around path dependence is a key benefit. The upstart competitor in a field doesn't have to "waste" a decade of investment & infrastructure to bypass a methodology that has reached its maximum utility. The old method was cheaper for the incumbent to maintain, no amount of good will and collaborative spirit would convince them to turn their back on it for an unproven alternative. Any industry that has ever been "disrupted" is an industry shaken out of path dependence

7952 9y ago

The reuse value of this kind of data is critically dependant on the methodology used to create the data. A lot of Google data tends to understandably be focused on their own products and lack quality in a more generic sense. Something as simple as a building outline can be represented in several different ways depending on what you need and require a completely different methodology. The building outline needed by law enforcement is different to what an architect or pizza delivery company needz. When specific about the type of data there is a lot less competition than you might expect. And for commercial companies it makes sense to make as much money as possible front that.