Putting the ‘soul’ in GIS (geospatial cyberinfrastructures)

Throughout the course, we have discussed various ways in which GIS can be manipulated for unethical ends. For instance, we have asked: to what extent does online advertising which discriminates based on assumed demographic characteristics exclude marginalized populations?; to what extent can business practices (such as Uber’s “surge pricing”) contingent on GIS data be considered appropriate?; and how does military involvement in the development of GIS operations implicate the field? In their article “Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure: Past, present and Future”, various goals at making CGI more inclusive, democratic, and multi-disciplinary are expounded upon. For instance, we are promised that CGI will aid “to advance citizen-based sciences to reflect the fact that cyberspace is open to the public and citizen participation will be essential” (264) and provide a standardized way for a multitude of actors including “government agencies, non-government organizations, industries, academia, and the public” (264) to manipulate geospatial data. Yang et al argue persuasively that the complexity and interdisciplinary scope of contemporary problems such as developing “strategies to reduce energy consumption and stabilize atmospheric emissions so that global temperature will not increase… [and choosing] a housing site that minimizes the risks of forest fire, flooding and other… hazards” (267) demands a coordinated approach and that CGI–with its enabling technologies such as web computing, open-source software, and interoperable platforms–is able to provide a coordinated platform for this problem-solving. But in this push to make GIS simultaneously more democratic and legible to a variety of actors, how will GIS remain an ethical science? Already in the “closed” world of GIS where meaningful operations require access to knowledge and resources, energy companies have assembled legions of capable GIS technicians to explore for extractable resources, and companies have established marketing departments engaged in ethically dubious GIS practices. So what does the world look like once the barriers of cost and knowledge to GIS use are removed or, at least, decreased? Do the ‘good guys’ win their case more often because they now have access to a multitude of data once available only behind a walled fortress of GIS elites? Or does the ease of access allow the data to go completely unmonitored its use? In other words, if we continue to hold that GIS is a science, how can the field maintain a ‘soul’–its own Hippocratic Oath, if you will–and maintain a reasonable set of ethics best practices? And how does it remain a science when its increasing scope and level of interoperability will have many academics and non-academics using it primarily as a tool?

-CRAZY15

Comments are closed.