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<\/a>Peterson says that while maps have been around for several millennia and are great for telling people where something is, they\u2019re limited to a text-based, non-immersive experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really trying to do something better, and that is to be able to use the Earth as a way of interfacing all the information that\u2019s out there that\u2019s spatial,\u201d says Peterson. \u201cIf we look at our computer screen, there\u2019s a pixelation\u2014single colour in a single pixel and information tied to that pixel. If you look at digital video, it\u2019s done the same way. And so Digital Earth is actually exactly the same. It\u2019s no longer like a latitude and longitude. Any point is the same as any other point. But we partition the Earth into cells, and each cell can contain information about what\u2019s going on in that location.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those cells operate on a hierarchy with a parent-child relationship, which allows Peterson\u2019s program to divide the cells up. Through the data in the cells, users can examine the Earth. The more information there is, the more cells there are.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of putting tiles over the Earth\u2019s surface and assigning information into those tiles,\u201d says Peterson.<\/p>\n
Peterson\u2019s idea has received attention from national media, ending up in Canadian Geographic <\/i>and The Walrus<\/i>\u2019 special The Story of Canada in 150 Objects<\/i> publication. Last year, Peterson took his invention to the United Nations; they adopted his invention, which was a huge step forward for Peterson. He talked to them about what Digital Earth was and how it would benefit humanity. But humanity and community on a smaller scale are also important to Peterson.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard,\u201d he says. \u201cYou have to commit your life to it and say, \u2018This is a small piece that I can contribute,\u2019 and that\u2019s what I always like to tell my students.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Peterson first applied for a job at Camosun, he says, the college didn\u2019t reply to his request for an interview, but he remained persistent. Next time he was in Victoria, he visited the college; he says they essentially hired him on the spot when it became clear that\u00a0 he could fill a gap in Camosun\u2019s engineering staff. He says that he chose Camosun because it fit his mentality.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a really innovative college,\u201d he says. \u201cI came from here; I lived here for a couple years when I went to high school, and my mother took courses here.\u201d<\/p>\n
He loves what he does, but success comes at a price for Peterson. He flew 75,000 miles last year and spent 58 nights on the road. Peterson deals with a lot of blank looks, shaking heads, and adhesion to old ways when talking to potential investors about his ideas.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always hard. On a daily basis, it\u2019s hard financially\u2014long hours, a lot of rejection,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve been humiliated many times. When you\u2019re disruptive\u2014and this is the kind of technology that\u2019s very disruptive\u2014then those that are being disrupted will push back even if they don\u2019t really realize why this disrupts them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peterson finds this aspect of his work difficult; he is after peace, not conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll want to fight, and I\u2019m not really wanting to fight,\u201d he says. \u201cI would like it to be a better world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Perry Peterson first set foot in Victoria, he felt at home. A world traveller, Peterson is now teaching engineering at Interurban, but that only takes up about eight hours a week of his time. The rest of his life is dedicated to innovative ways of exploring the Earth through a computer screen. Peterson\u2019s company, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,198],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-september-20-2017"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14642"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14645,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14642\/revisions\/14645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}