Technological Change and GIS

Objectives of this lecture

1. Reminder of project schedule
2. GIS Marketplace resource
3. Influences between society and GIS (BOTH WAYS!)
   • Notions of "Progress" (was GIS inevitable?)
   • GIS as an "Industry" (Notions of economic change)
   • Objectivity

GIS as Progress

Different views of time and historical process:

<AutoCarto 11 presentation on views of time: SLIDES how antiquated!>

Reversing the arrow of progress:

Was topology inevitable? <presentation at AAG 2000>

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GIS as an economic structure

Most mapping technology over the past two hundred years has increased the specialization and centralization of technology. They also relocated the creation of information from the field to office workplaces. Divisions of labor appeared where the processs used to be all connected.

Examples:

Plane table surveying (geometry in the field) to airphotograph and satellite image

Names appeared on plane table quadrangles, but not from the 'industrial' photogrammetry (the result was more scientific and thus impersonal)

Objectivity?

Does GIS provides an 'objective' approach to information?
Does `better information make better decisions'?

Is the technology we see now inevitable?

Every piece of geographic information invokes some set of assumptions, a framework of axioms. Some axioms may be more widely accepted than others, but they remain open to reexamination. 'Objectivity' is thus a myth...

The technology we see developed under a peculiar set of conditions, embedded within its a local system of meaning and interpretation, so it cannot be seen as inevitable.

In fact, the technology, as we have it, was constructed by a particular set of actors (people, institutions, funding agencies, applications projects, computer resources, societal pressures, cultural expectations, etc...) at a particular time. When originally proposed, none of the final choices were
clear.

The technology becomes defined by later use, not when "invented".

The choices might seem "irreversible" later on, but not when tentatively proposed.

The use of computer technology does not cleanse a data source from the procedures that were used to construct it.

"All measurements are theory-laden."

All geographic information shows the marks of decisions made in choosing what to control, what to measure, what could be left out...

Even the idea of "context" isn't as simple as it seems. There is no unifying neighborhood that delimits the zone of influence on a given technology.

"Every event has its own past."

There is not some "master narrative" that assures that all persons everywhere share a common framework. Events are local. People are bounded in what they know and who they know about. This sounds negative, but it can also be a good thing..

It is not surprising, of course, to say that a human enterprise is "constructed", of course it has to be. "Construction" shouldn't mean some kind of criticism that it should have been done differently... (See Professor Hacking on the "Social Construction of What?")

Thus, GIS can only be taken as 'objective' by those who accept a common set of assumptions. There is nothing magic about an automated system that will resolve deep social and cultural differences. Yet, some of the positive directions of the GIS activists make sense. Many commonly accepted social purposes have been thwarted by the lack of appropriate information. Rather than the blanket assertion that more information automatically improves the situation, society must take some responsibility for their ignorance and the ethical choices between different activities.