Sometimes I get the feeling that people view GCI as a single entity/unit. It isn’t. It is, too misquote Yang, a ‘system of systems’. This makes GCIs seem very flexible and able to do anything – as improvements in any of the systems will advance the GCI forward. However, the challenges are still immense. GCIs may be used as a way of sharing, analysing, storing data etc., but they are still limited by the rules we have, such as the semantic framework for sharing of data. However, this may make a GCI start to look a little cumbersome, at least when you are viewing it as a single entity. This is something I am not sure of – whether GCIs are adaptive to changing environments such as ontologies.
Future changes were also interesting. Virtual Organisations could start becoming more permanent as enabling technologies decrease physical limitations. GCIs though are still relatively closed environments though, and may benefit from more open sharing. This is what is expected to happen with the shift to ‘geospatial cloud computing’. However, the article doesn’t really define geospatial cloud computing – what’s the difference? Aren’t we already partly there?
-Peck