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Article Excerpt
Introduction
Geographic information systems (GIS) have emerged during the past four decades through a complex interaction of actors. One key element has been the research community. This community has slowly become aware of the breadth of the network involved. Originally, the research community focused on the technical component, the technology itself. If organizations were considered, they were often seen as an impediment to be overcome. If social concerns were mentioned, they were in the remote sense of a driving purpose, not a source of constant interaction. More recently there have been much more nuanced approaches to the interaction of society, organizations, and GIS technology.
This paper will use a historical perspective on the development of GIS. It is written from the position of a participant, one of the members of that community whose ideas and conceptual frameworks have evolved over the decades. My personal experience does not include the early period that is the subject of this paper, but I have worked with many of the participants, absorbing their stories along with accumulations of their papers, manuals, computer output, and other artifacts.
Beyond the personal experience, my argument has a theoretical basis that originates from a symmetrist view of technology--one that does not presume which actors are necessarily more powerful or more important (Latour 1993). This approach requires careful attention to history and to geography, since a similar pattern may not lead to similar results if some other element has changed. In that sense it presents a contingent view of the process, but not one which is completely exceptionalist.
What do these terms mean? The exceptionalist view treats each circumstance as isolated and incommensurable. Each time and place are just what they are, with no real ability to generalize. At the other extreme there are various flavors of technological determinism that pervade not just the GIS technical community, but many of the critics of GIS. The determinists depend upon generalization. They presume large forces that apply always in the same manner, not dependent on circumstances. In between, there is some room for a middle ground, a contingent view that balances large forces and the specifics of history and geography. As always, this middle ground requires constant attention to avoid the troubles on either extreme. My goal is a comprehensive view of all the interactions that sustain the interactions of people and organizations as they deal with knowledge about the environment. I seek assistance in the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies (STS).
Origins?
The linear logic of origins and heroic inventors demands that some single event be declared the original invention. Yet, inexorably, that invention in turn has its own origins. It would seem impossible or unimportant to draw a firm line at any one point to call that more original than any other in the chain. The popular metaphor for this dilemma is "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" The argument does not stop with this linear recursion. Linear causative logic conceals many lateral connections--that events interconnect in complex interactions. In the words of Usher (1954), "Every event has its past." The whole idea of an origin vanishes in some complex culinary melange of chickens, eggs, spices, too many cooks, and no clear logic of who comes first. A number of authors have addressed the confusing confluence of concepts, people, and artifacts that make origins difficult. Pickering (1995) uses the term "mangle" to convey the sense of being pushed by events. The work of the psychologist Deleuze (Deleuze and Guatari 1976) applies a botanical metaphor; in place of a tree structure with a clear path back to the root, he proposes "rhizomes," the twisted underground structures of plants such as lilies that can connect in multiple places without any dendric structure.
Yet, the dilemma does not leave us without any theoretical basis. The field of STS has been confronting the imbrications of society and techno-science for decades. Works such as MacKenzie's (1990) study of missile accuracy provide clear evidence that technological determinism just does not hold. While certain U.S. missile programs show a clear increase in accuracy over time, this is the result of substantial effort by actors who desired that particular result, not something inherent in the technology of gyroscopes that ensured missile guidance. During exactly the same period, the progression of Soviet missiles involved quite distinct gyroscope models, and the pressure towards greater accuracy was not found at all in China or France, due to different military strategies and different financial resources being available. The most telling argument is that the civilian navigational sector (using the same gyroscope technology) did not evolve toward greater accuracy, but toward lower cost and higher reliability. MacKenzie's conclusion is that one cannot study the political pressures...
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