The news about a 'mapping
mistake boosting tourism' piqued my interest and I set about checking the
'four corners' in Google Earth - the coordinates being available in wikipedia. The place is nothing out of the ordinary but has become a tourist attraction because one can spread-eagle across a U.S Department of the Interior 'marker' where the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet (the only point in the United States where the boundaries of four states intersect) and gain the pleasure(?) of being in four different states of the USA simultaneously. I questioned my students and friends about what makes a certain 'human designated' geographical location so special? None could give me a satisfactory answer to questions like - why would you like to be photographed straddling the prime meridian? Why does crossing the equator excite you? Does crossing the tropics or straddling these imaginary lines at some place on earth mean anything?
The 'conferred' uniqueness of a 'location' and the opportunity, foresight and ability to convert it into a tourist attraction is best witnessed at the Greenwich observatory. If tomorrow it is reported that due to some geodetic miscalculation, the physical demarcation of the prime meridian is 'slightly' flawed, it would result in a tourist gold rush - just like the 'four corners' but on a grander scale. Please do toggle-on state boundaries and the grid in Google Earth and check the 'four corners' site - surprised? let us not come up with 'scientific' explanations about the different datums blah..blah...ditto for Greenwich observatory.
Speaking about profitable blunders - how about sub-prime lending and the resulting economic nose-dive benefiting
geospatial...
Dr.
Hrishikesh Samant
