Sometimes I wish I had studied cartography and remote sensing in college 📡🌎

Truth be told, it wasn’t really a serious option some 20 years ago. While a handful of colleges offered classes in GIS and remote sensing, it was very much in it’s infancy …

• Back then computers had very limited memory, hard drive and processing power — hard drives were rated in gigabytes and memory in hundred megabytes — and no ultra-fast solid-state hard drives
• With large GIS files, it would have been impossible to download them over a dial-up internet
• The quality of GIS data back in 2000 was rather poor as sensors were crude, GPS recorders were a new and expensive technology, the Census TIGER/Line files were rather geographically inaccurate
• In 2000, a lot of now-freely available on the Internet data was only available for purchase, and it was expensive and came on multiple CD-ROMs
• While there was rather cryptic but powerful GRASS back then, there was no Quantum GIS, which has become a very powerful open-source GIS program in the past twenty years

The disadvantage to not having formal training, is one doesn’t see things in an ordered, formal way. I learned how to make maps and use GIS data in a hands-on-way, and only learned the minimal terminology and methods required to get desired output. I understand the doings of map making, but not so much the theory. I have been reading open college textbooks to pick up some more of the formal theory behind maps, but a lot of methods are crude and just based on experience of what works.

But I am kind of glad that I don’t do map making professionally. It really frees me up to do my own thing, on my own time, not having to worry about conflicts with work. If I do a map or GIS research for an activist group, nobody can say I’m utilizing work equipment, skills or data I acquired from my job. Instead, I am doing it totally on my own based on my own studies and knowledge.

I’ve looked a bit at college classes nowadays, but they’re rather expensive, and I’m not sure how much they would benefit me. I guess it would be something to put on a resume, but I am generally happy with my current career, and the cost is high for getting a certification in something I am fairly familiar with at least on a practical perspective. Plus, I often think any classroom learning would be out of date, compared to what I am using nowadays with Quantum GIS and other open source tools and data.