Lab 4: Introducing ArcMap

At the beginning of the class, I thought the ArcMap was an extraordinary complicated and time-consuming tool, especially after it updated to 10.1. Therefore, my original goal is just to follow the steps and finish this boring task as soon as possible. Actually, I did not even care about what the tutorial want me to do during the first two tasks. However, following steps is really easy but meaningless, so I started to pay attention to the logic and meaning behind the tutorial. I soon found that all the instructions follow the human's thoughts. For example, when I think of making a new road, I will first decide a direction and length, and then decide where to turn and how much degree to make that turn. While when I manually draw the map, I just follow my thoughts and seldom separate the whole procedure into steps or even ignore my logic. Therefore when I need to communicate with computer, I felt it is hard, tedious and unnecessary but the way of thinking ArcMap provides is straightforward and accessible. It does not require a high level knowledge about computer and it maps a more accurate graph as long as I can give a clear order. 

ArcMap opens a new window for mapping. It could not only draw different theme maps targeting to the same place with various data, but also allow us to design new features and analyze certain issue more technologically. In the future, I hope ArcMap could release a dynamic map, which contains all the information in a single map and changes different view modes according to people's selections. For instance, in any global map, people could first select an area. Then it will appear several available buttons like "population density", "land use", " noise contour" and so on so forth, so people could check any kinds of graphing information they like in one map. Therefore people could have a more comprehensive view about any place they concern and could reduce confusion during changing different maps. Like three maps above, people could have a general view about land use boundaries and population density boundaries in two maps, but it is hard for people to differentiate their boundaries in a single map. However, when we have a dynamic map, we can access all the information in one map and could easily recognize their differences and similarities. 

Also, I hope we could one day use 3D version ArcMap. Elevation is important geographical information. However, in most maps, author did not include this information. It is reasonable in a paper map, but, in computer, I think people would like to see more information than those in paper map. Nowadays, even Google Map does not provide elevation-included 3D map, so if ArcMap could show its huge advances to the audience, it will be much popular than Google map and attract more people to try ArcMap. ArcMap is a more academic tool than Google Map, which we used last week, so it should have a better and larger database. If it can access to population database, it should also access to other useful and interesting databases. Therefore we should better exploit these databases. 

The most powerful strength in ArcMap is its undoubted manipulation over data. ArcMap could visualize nearly all kinds of data. However with more and more serious government censorship, ArcMap may one day be an effective tool only for officials but not for ordinary people anymore, since ordinary people could not access to all kinds of databases. Especially, when government wants to speed up modernization, it may block or cover up certain data. Also since ArcMap is really dependent on data, so every tiny error in data input, processing and output would lead to an unimaginable aftermath. For example, I made a typo on population task but the whole picture distorted dramatically. If I do not have a finished picture for population task two, I would never find I was wrong. Therefore it is better to have a self-check step before mapping.

All in all, ArcMap is a really powerful and useful mapping tool. For further development, I hope it could have a more personalized panel, a more comprehensive database, and a self-check program inside the whole program, if possible.