What
is the "Digital Earth?"
Al Gore's Vision (Version)
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A “multi-resolution, 3-D representation
of the planet, into which we can embed vast quantities of geo-referenced
data”
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“higher and higher levels of
resolution to see continents, then regions, countries, cities, and finally
individual houses, trees”
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“[user] moves backward in time
to learn about […] history, peruse digitized maps overlaid on the surface
of the Digital Earth, newsreel footage, oral history, newspapers”
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“To support the Bosnia
peace negotiations, the Pentagon developed a virtual-reality landscape
that allowed the negotiators to take a simulated aerial tour of the proposed
borders. At one point in the negotiations, the Serbian President agreed
to a wider corridor between Sarajevo and the Muslim enclave of Gorazde,
after he saw that mountains made a narrow corridor impractical.”
“The Digital Earth: Understanding
our planet in the 21st Century,”
(Al
Gore, 1998)