Of Predictions and (Geo)Hipsters

“Never make predictions, especially about the future.” – Casey Stengel

A few days ago, my friend Atanas Entchev asked me for my thoughts on coming trends in 2014for a feature he was preparing for his GeoHipster site. Being the obliging sort that I am, I provided a couple and I’ve been attempting to explain one ever since. This has mostly been back-channel via private messages and such but, today, the GeoHipster piece was the subject of the “#geowebchat” on Twitter. Twitter is very effective for some types of communication but quickly goes off the rails where nuance or anything long-form is required. So, it was time for a post. My prediction went like this:

I think 2014 will be the year Javascript takes over mapping and visualization in the geospatial world.

It was followed by an apparently too brief explanation that I will attempt to expand here.

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