Abstract
Geography, through geographic information systems (GIS), is changing science and society in fundamental, pervasive, and lasting ways. The GIS-based precision bombing of Baghdad changes the nature of warfare, foreign policy, and international relations as profoundly as did the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. In the U.S. proven applications already affect just about everything that involves location, movement or flow. Most GIS applications are beneficial, but some possess enormous power for good or evil, depending on how they are used. GIS-based human-tracking technologies, for instance, threaten to alter age-old social relationships- parent/child, husband/wife, employer/employee, and master/slave. Society cannot afford to continue “business as usual” with regard to geography and GIS, but remedies will require corrective actions as dramatic as those accorded to physics and nuclear engineering after World War II. Yet popular misconceptions about geography and simplistic views of GIS hamper public debate.
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