Francis Harvey

Abstract

We stand on the cusp of an era when anyone with internet access can make a map. With six billion mobilephone subscribers and 2.3 billion internet users will GIS play much of a role in how make and use maps? This paper begins with this question and explores some of the dimensions of how GIS will change in a new world – a world where GIS is integral to countless online activities and hence disappears from most uses. This is world not without GIS, but a post-GIS world of ubiquitous location technologies. While many of these developments,they have negative potential and the article points to areas to consider carefully.

Keywords: GIS, information society, internet, data-driven science, ubiquitous computing

Francis Harvey, University of Minnesota, Department of Geography, Environment and Society, MN 55455, Minneapolis: USA