As I go through the process of capturing identification logic for the trees of New England I can't help but be astounded by the amount of information and the effort it must've taken to gather it all up. I have discovered that there are over 101 native trees in my "backyard" split amongst around 26 families. I have also started to appreciate the innumerable number of things required to properly identify them and the combinatorial difficulties that come with capturing all of that. And, as I've read bibliographies and gone looking for this data online I've discovered the veritable armies of scientists who've been solicited to put all of this information together. And this is just for trees in New England! What of the mushrooms, insects, birds, wildflowers, mammals, and fishes in all of other corners of the world! Yet I know field guides exist for much of these too. I cannot even begin to guess how much effort has been put into collecting and organizing all of this information and yet, as far as I can tell, none of it is properly digitized!
Now by digitization I do not mean sticking a pdf somewhere (which seems to be what passes for "digitization" in most cases). I mean properly representing the data in a machine interpretable form that's easy to use, scalable, and doesn't require vast amounts of knowledge on the subject of identification. I mean shape files stored in easily accessible databases, not images of ranges. I mean clear timelines of phenology, and well documented and organized artwork. Imagine what could be done if this data was in such a form!
Right now if someone comes up with an idea for a field guide, or phenology guide, or whatever other kind of guide, they must first collate all this information all over again! Or repeat all of research to get a slightly different version of it. If instead all of it was properly digitized you'd separate the gathering of the information from its presentation and use. People could devise all sorts of cool apps and applications for the data that could pull from well documented central databases. And their apps would simply grow with the information. Imagine how useful this could be in reconnecting people with their world. Imagine how many great projects could come of it - we'd only be limited by people's creativity!
Here then is another goal for reconnection - digitizing all of this interesting and wonderful information about our biosphere in such a way that the creation of applications can be disentangled from the collection of the data. If we could do this we'd vastly multiply the value of the herculean efforts already going into putting together these guides today.
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