Shown above is the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica (the grey line) on both Google MAps and Bing Maps.  They’re not identical, but they’re close enough right?  Let me point you to a piece on SearchEngine Land about a recent military ‘event’.

A Nicaraguan military commander, relying on Google Maps, moved troops into an area near San Juan Lake along the border between his country and Costa Rica. The troops are accused of setting up camp there, taking down a Costa Rican flag and raising the Nicaraguan flag, doing work to clean up a nearby river, and dumping the sediment in Costa Rican territory.

There’s a lot to take away from this, most of which people in the field already know.  People rely very heavily on visualization, without properly checking backgrounds, which doesn’t normally result in Military action but frequently results in misrepresentation and poor understanding of the facts.  Being an Expert in visualization is only partly about isosurfaces and algorithms, a large part of it is in understanding how the resulting visualization is be perceived on both a physical (Human Vision) and psychological level.

Let this be a lesson to you: What you think may be a simple data glitch could actually result in a war between neighboring countries.

via Nicaragua Raids Costa Rica, Blames Google Maps.

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