Computers, Society, and Nature

Goodchild posits that the “breaking down of traditional barriers between expert and non-expert has already led to widespread awareness of the power of GIS among the general public” (p. 13). He also notes that more recently, there has been a shift in GIScience to allow for a more basic understanding for everyone, away from a focus on experts within the field. As the amount of volunteered geographic information (VGI) increases, it is likely that the shift from error to uncertainty may also continue as GIS becomes less concerned about technicalities (science) and more about rethinking how to represent our world (tool-making).

On the other hand, Goodchild discusses the ability for technology to dynamically monitor various aspects of the Earth. Improvements in geographic sensors such as RFID can vastly increase the amount of accessible data. As discussed in class, the development of many fields such as computer science have progressed from being a tool, to toolmaking exercises, and lastly to becoming a science. Perhaps we are witnessing this transition taking place in GIS as well, but what does this mean for volunteered contributions and incorporating human values into GIS?

Citizen engagement will arguably increase if it is understood that a wider range of values and perceptions can be better incorporated (through more universal usage of GIS and technology improvements) into how we rethink the representations of our environment. If the concern is an access to funding and resources, perhaps the GIS as a tool vs science debate will become irrelevant as the popularity of GIS grows and as citizens become increasingly both the producers and consumers of geographic information.

Goodchild, Michael F. (2010). “Twenty Years of Progress: GIScience in 2010.” Journal of Spatial Information Science, 3-20.

– jeremy

Wright et al. question whether or not GIS can withstand the stress of such varied usages, which demand that “critical analysis and reflection extend beyond the techniques of toolmaking to encompass questions about the social responsibilities of toolmaking” (p. 356). In a bid to assert its role within the scientific community, GIScience has arguably relegated many aspects of human geography to the sidelines. In terms of gaining access to sources of funding, it is understandable that many would take this position, since incorporating the values and varying perceptions of human beings might be considered a ‘soft’ science.

Despite this, perhaps distancing itself from traditional notions of ‘value-free’ science is where GIS finds its strength. It seems as if our understanding of human geography may be muddied by scientific theories, which have the ability to prove contradicting opinions. Look at the climate change debate, for example, which may seem to only involve ‘hard’ science, but is complicated by the fact that it directly involves the way in which people live. Is it possible for this kind of science to be effectively applied to dynamic societies when the need for social change is present?

When GIS projects are developed, they are able to consider their intended use and the values of those affected throughout every stage. A project aimed at improving Montreal’s accessibility for disabled people, for instance, may incorporate a variety of perceptions of the city, which change depending on season, age, level of disability, etc. It is possible that through improvements in technology and our ability to graphically represent many ways of seeing the world, GIS as toolmaking allows us to include the societal effects as best as we can.

Wright, Dawn J, Michael F. Goodchild, and James D. Proctor. (1997). “ForumGIS: Tool or Science?: Demystifying the Persistent Ambiguity of GIS As ‘Tool’ Versus ‘Science’”.  Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 87,2, 346-362.

– jeremy

The article by Wright et al in 1997, describes three positions on GIS, that of a tool, that of toolmaking and that of a science and summarizes the debate on these three positions based on listserve discussion from 1993. I agree that these positions exist but do so in harmony. However, it seems to me that there should be some consideration of the evolution of the tool of GIS in terms to the thought process that led to its development as it was not arbitrarily designed but was designed for a specific purpose following specific principles. I would argue that geographic information science was needed to develop geographic information systems and since that time, this science was not eliminated but forgotten and is only being consciously rediscovered at present.

As for any discovery or new knowledge or awareness on a subject gained through science, a problem or issue must first be recognized as requiring additional analysis. In this case, it was necessary to recognize that a more sophisticated and faster way of overlaying data could be accomplished on a computer than by hand. From this, additional geographic information was stored and analyzed on a computer in GIS. The decisions of how exactly to do this were based on knowledge from various disciplines such as statistics, economics, cartography, computer science and geography (Goodchild 2010 p.5) and were the roots of GIScience. In my opinion, these decisions, although perhaps made by only one of these disciplines such as the data models produced by computer science or that spatial adjacency mattered from geography, have now been synthesizes under the name of GIScience. That neither of these individual disciplines could produce and utilize GIS on their own suggest that there was out of necessity a new science was created to combine and further examine issues.

Thus, the roots of GIScience, the decisions that were made before GIS could be created, preceded GIS itself and it is only now that GIScience has been given a name and debate has arisen over what exactly it encompasses as science. To me, it is the decisions that were made in the creation of GIS that constitute GIScience as these decisions could have taken different paths at the time of creation and the concepts and questions of GIScience today as noted by Goodchild (2010, p.7) were addressed originally in some intrinsic and perhaps unintentional form in the creation of the first GISs. GIScience evolves today as these initial decisions are critically examined in terms of their impacts on research using GIS as a tool.

Wright, Dawn J, Michael F. Goodchild, and James D. Proctor. “ForumGIS: Tool or Science?: Demystifying the Persistent Ambiguity of GIS As ‘Tool’ Versus ‘Science’”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 87.2 (1997): 346-362. Print.

Goodchild. 2010. Twenty years of progress: GIScience in 2010. Journal of Spatial Information Science. 1(2010) pp.3-20

-Outdoor Addict

Wright et. al have an interesting methodology for analysing the debate on the status of GIS(cience). Unforunately, graphing GIS-L posting on the “GIS as a Science” topic is probably not quite as helpful to the analysis as a  literature study, questionnaire, or live conference. We should remember when reading this paper that the frequency chart does little to show the state of debate, especially with such low frequencies (rarely more than 1-2 postings per day). However, the paper is still able to highlight and explain the arguments for all sides.

One area neither paper looks into in great detail is the state of the GIS industry and related industries. This is important as the academic GIS scene is only secondary to the economic output GIS produces. Looking at the state of industry today though, it is clear that GIS, whether you see it as just the software and hardware tools, or as a way of thinking, is here to stay. Demand for the technology will not disappear, nor become obsolete. Therefore, one can be pretty certain that we will be doing GIS in the future, no matter what form it takes. This can bring some to question whether the debate on the status of GIS is necessary at all (the short answer is ‘no’). It may eventually be that GIS becomes so ubiquitous that it becomes ‘too integrated’ into our lives, and certain knowledge of software and/or techniques becomes common knowledge within other fields. However, GIScientists should still ask themselves – “what would industry be like if there was no one to care about GIScience problems – problems of visualisation, resolution, data management and so on”. How would GIS systems have turned out if they had solely been developed by computer scientists or cartographers? Regardless of whether or not GIS is a science or tool, there will always be people around to think about GIScience problems, and that is what should matter, not the survival of research labs or government grants (in the current market, I am optimistic that money will not be too much of a constraint). GIS is in one of those positions where it can be influenced by any number of fields, since its applications are so wide-ranging. This makes it very flexible and greatly increases the chances of growth and advancement of techniques. Trying to narrow GIS into a definition of a science may not be the best approach if one wants to promote development, especially since GIS is so dependent upon the its tools and toolmaking characteristics. Currently, GIS is generally taught as more of a tool in university. The technique-based approach is certainly useful in created a workforce skilled in GIS analysis. In the computer industry, the two main degrees one can receive are an IT degree or a Comp. Sci degree, both of which are very different from one another. I think it is accurate to approximate the former to the ‘tools’ approach, and the latter as the more ‘science-y’. GIS right now tends to be viewed as akin to IT management – the challenge right now is to either turn it into Computer Science, or somehow split the two.

GIS is a field very much based upon computing technology, and as we well know, the advances in computing are often so fast and surprising, that it is difficult to predict even 5 years into the future. If the question of GIS’s status is not resolved today, it may very well be in 5-10 yrs depending on what new advances come up.

On a side note, I don’t have any definite areas of interest in Geography, but may be interested in looking at human-computer interfaces for the project.

–Peck

The ambiguity and debate of what GIS actually is convoluted, and the intricacies are accented by the exchangeability of the ‘s’ in GIS. Systems, science, studies—what should we call it? Does it make a difference, and who cares? The point of legitimacy from the Wright et al reading and class discussions stands out as unveiling the business behind the sciences, but how is this being followed through in practice?

McGill is a research university and the program is called Geographic Information Science, which according to Wright et al should “measure progress based on the accumulation of research results and contributions to human understanding,” (358). However, after taking a handful of GIS courses it seems to me that GIS is being taught as a tool, with the emphasis being placed on “their essentially technical, service orientation” (357). It’s undeniable that GIS is on a spectrum, and I think that it is one that the user (scientist?) will move across with increased familiarity. How can GIS be used as science without the initial introduction to it as a tool?

From my point of view GIS can be a tool, toolmaking, and a science at different times. I don’t think the McGill program is providing an equal focus on all facets (at least in the 300-level classes) despite being called “science”. There is great stress on applications, but I feel the “science of GIS” as I now understand it may be shorthanded, and I hope to see more of it in 506.

Wright, Dawn J, Michael F. Goodchild, and James D. Proctor. “ForumGIS: Tool or Science?: Demystifying the Persistent Ambiguity of GIS As ‘Tool’ Versus ‘Science’”.  Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 87.2 (1997): 346-362.

– Sidewalk_Ballet

 Goodchild’s (2010) summary of the progress of field-defining debates in GIS over the last 20 years points out several issues. He briefly reminds us of the GI Systems vs. GI Science debate, lists advances and newly identifiable theories in GIS, and poses important questions for the future. Of these issues, two stand out to me as the most pressing for public perception of GIS and the nature of GIS’s data.

How GIS manages to formalize the representation of spatial phenomena across scales is crucial to a wide range of fields. Current tools such as inverse distance weighting allow for interpolating and assigning weights based on geographic location. Even the now-ubiquitous way Google Maps has visually represented different scales (finer details visible only when you zoom in close) has changed how the public imagines different levels. The widespread impact of how GIS represents different scales has enormous potential in facilitating negotiations and public opinion on battles that require mass coordination, such as mitigating climate change. Imagine how the limitations of our current national environmental regulations could be exposed if intuitive software was developed that could easily show the origin and travel of acid rain clouds from individual factories.

Goodchild’s second major point involves the future of volunteered geographic information (VGI) in a world that is increasingly wired and sensored. There is a major deterrent to continued VGI contributions when the “knowing where everything is, at all times” is not properly regulated to handle privacy concerns. This also brings into question how much data in the future will be comprised of VGI, and how much by private interests. The proper intersection of convenience, security, and quality needs to be discussed to ensure that the average citizen’s VGI is fairly represented and is not repurposed by private companies.

– Madskiier_JWong

Wright et al.’s paper provided a summarized history of the debate over GIS as a tool or a science and opinions from a forum exchange. I felt that our in-class discussion overemphasized the societal pressures that favour those fields popularly deemed “sciences”. While politicization undoubtedly plays a role, I also accord sciences merit by whether they offer a fundamentally different way of understanding something (and thus generate new knowledge).  

A sticking point from some of the opinions shown in Wright’s paper emphasized that GIS is a tool and a feat of engineering. If this is to be accepted, progress in GIS should be measured merely in terms of faster computing, greater data storage, more efficient processes – linear improvements. Yet, innovations like the incorporation of streaming data provide a new understanding of the temporal dimension of spatial phenomena. Perhaps geographically distanced people tweeting at the same time may be more socially similar than we would expect based on their isolation from one another. Immediate reports about a flood may emerge from a spatially clustered origin, reflecting new understandings of emergent behaviour. Both these examples escape being labelled as simple technological advancements because do-ers of GIS take this raw data and run it through a suite of their own manipulations and methods (e.g. geocode, vectorize, overlay).

Implicitly then, there is evidence of a conscious and rational decision to represent data as maps with linked attribute tables. GIS fundamentally offers a different understanding of what a police station may be: engineering perceives it as load-bearing pillars, level surfaces, and well-joined edges. GIS offers topology, relationships to surrounding polygons, and a correlative effect with nearby crime rates. Thus, I would argue terming GIS as a science has some merit beyond societal pressures.

– Madskiier_JWong

Posted by sah:

I think the debate surrounding whether GIS is a tool or a science may have been blown out of proportion in the field of GIS. In fact, I particularly agree with the idea put forth in GIS: Science or Tool? which suggests that GIS may exists along a continuum, from tool to toolmaker to science. Despite this suggestion, the way the author dwells on GIS as a computer application in this paper in my mind express both an underestimation of the power of GIS, as a tool or science, as well as mark on this paper as outdated, a product of its time (1997).

The authors quote Tomlinson, saying, “…Tomlinson was clear enough in his definition of a GIS as a computer application designed to perform certain specific functions…”. To me this implies that GIS is little more than a computer application—a fact repeated later in the article, when the authors say, “Many of those who argued on the ‘tool side’ of the issue could not see how a computer application could be described as a science”. I would argue however that GIS is spatial analysis that can be facilitated by Geographic Information Software. An example discussed in class involves community participatory mapping as a form of GIS, without using a computer, but still ultimately creating a functional product to analyze the space in which this community lives. And this can be made into data points to be input into a computer, if necessary.

So to put it briefly, whether GIS is a science or tool, we must realize today that we cannot underestimate it, for it continues only to evolve, as we can see from the ideological change over just 10+ years since this article was published.

Wright, Dawn J, Michael F. Goodchild, and James D. Proctor. “ForumGIS: Tool or Science?: Demystifying the Persistent Ambiguity of GIS As ‘Tool’ Versus ‘Science’”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 87.2 (1997): 346-362. Print.