As explained in MacEachran’s paper, Geovisualization is much more than just making maps; it tackles the issues of displaying spatial information in a more accurate and precise sense. As i’ve seen through my research for location privacy conners, there is an incredible amount of data that has spatial information attached to it; > 80% according to the paper. Displaying this information effectively can be challenging.
The article handles these difficult questions quite well by handling the themes and the conceptual questions to create an idea of the field of geovizualization without fixing any limiting examples; examples that would maybe devalue another aspect of the field. by maintaining a certain level of abstraction the paper is able to address the concepts quite well. This however does make it a bit tricky to have a concrete idea or example of what is being discussed at times.
Personally, I find it slightly frustrating to not have something more concrete to ties these concepts and problems too. But, i suppose it’s simply the nature of the field; if we had the answers we wouldn’t need to tackle these abstract concepts. however, the article was written in 2001; perhaps some of these problems have been addressed since. Im very curious about how we can move past classic conceptions of cartography; what will the nature be of these different kinds of information and why will it be better to display them in certain ways.