Wang’s article is on cyberGIS; software that operates on parallel and distributed cloud-computing rather than the typical single-computer sequential GIS. This software, particularly the CyberGIS Gateway, reminded me of our class discussion on how GIS is taught in a research-oriented university. Initially I was frustrated that research-oriented schools are apprehensive to teach a step by step class on using ArcGIS. However from a practical perspective it doesn’t make sense to teach one software when there exists so many open-source softwares that catch-up quicker to the demands of researchers and businesses. It appears that our computing capability, especially through cloud computing, is increasing so rapidly, as are our datasets, that CyberGIS will become the future.
As we move towards CyberGIS the hope is that the traditional cost and skill barriers to GIS will fall, opening up the toolset to a wider range of disciplines. Then should the challenge of CyberGIS be to make the toolsets easier for this wide range of people to use? The development of easy tools for hydrology and emergency management allows decision makers to access powerful networks of computers to manage complex data. In this sense I think CyberGIS can empower smaller organizations to make good decisions, rather than corporations or governments. Often big-data applications are criticized as being the tools of large corporations like Google possessing expensive infrastructure. CyberGIS allows smaller organizations to compete with large firms and possibly break down the hegemony of these massive companies by performing complex analytics without the expensive infrastructure.
-AnOntarian