The Hidden GIS Technocracy

Abstract

The trend toward geographic information systems that are more powerful, less expensive, and easier to use seems to be unequivocally a democratizing, counter-technocracy trend, but goes hand in hand with a centralization of the geographic modeling programming that underpins the GIS. These paradoxical trends give the illusion of growing democratization of GIS technology, while in reality, there is a growing danger of a hidden GIS technocracy, owing primarily to the lack of recognition that such a technocracy exists. While the decentralization of the technology is likely to prevent any major widespread cataclysms, individual organizations implementing a GIS may experience problems caused by the implementation of geographic modeling programs that may be inappropriate to their needs. The remedy for such problems is awareness of the hidden technocracy and of the potential for trouble. One way to increase this awareness is to promote the use of lineage information for the geographical models embedded in geographic information systems in the same way that the GIS community has pressed for lineage information on databases.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 73 citations exist upstream.