GIS as media?

Abstract

The dazzling development of GIS technology in recent years has rendered each of the traditional , mostly instrumental, views of GIS—as spatial database, mapping tool, and spatial analytical tool—inadequate to capture the fundamental essence of this technology and its social implications. Each year brings new software packages from innovative developers that are easier to use, more powerful, and more easily adopted by users with minimal training. GIS and mapping tools are increasingly available on the World Wide Web (WWW), and an increasing number of sites oŒer advanced GIS services such as route Ž nding and geocoding. In-vehicle navigation systems using GIS technology are becoming part of our daily lives (Cowen 1994). In the next two years cellphones in the US will be required to be geographically enabled—to be able to report their current location to an accuracy of 100m—in the interests of accurate response to emergency calls. New imagery is becoming available from commercial sources with spatial resolutions as Ž ne as 1m, and is being distributed through new mechanisms such as distributed geolibraries and spatial data clearinghouses (NRC 1993, 1999). New methods of data documentation are being used to support widespread sharing of spatial data via the Internet. These new trends contrast sharply with the earlier view of GIS that prevailed into the early 1990s, as tools contained within a standalone computing system, serving the needs of their professional users by performing various forms of analysis that were too tedious, time-consuming, or expensive to perform by hand, on data collected and assembled for the purpose. These latest new developments in GIS have convinced us of the need for new conceptualizations (or metaphors, for lack of a better term) for what GIS actually is and will become in the near future. We believe that the complex relationship between GIS and society can be better understood if one conceives of GIS as new media. Media are generally understood as means of sending messages or communicating information to the general public, and mass media are the instruments by which mass communication takes place in modern societies. Mass media are also the most eŒective means of broadcasting information to large numbers of people in a short period of time. In a very general sense, GIS can be understood as a new technological