X-Envelope-to: GIS-L@UBVM.cc.buffalo.EDU
X-VMS-To: IN%"GIS-L@UBVM.cc.buffalo.EDU", djb
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Date:         Fri, 24 Jul 1992 11:13:00 GMT
              <GIS-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From:         STGG8004@IRUCCVAX.UCC.IE
Subject:      Value of Advanced Technology
X-To:         GIS-L@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu

A couple of postgrads here have drawn my attention to a provocative and
challenging paper that appeared recently. Some of the ideas raised deserve
wider reading, but the tone of the article - or at least parts of it - are
beligerant to say the least! The reference is

Neil Smith. History and philosophy of geography: real wars, theory wars.
        Progress in Human Geography 16,2 (1992) pp 257-271.

In the opening section (subtitled "GIS uber Alles"), he discusses the role
of GIS in the conduct of the Gulf War, and in the way in which the war was
conveyed to our living rooms by CNN et al. A few random (well, selected :-)
clips will illustrate the tone set, but I emphasise that these are reproduced
here (a) without the knowledge of the author of the original article (and I
hope he wil not mind that I draw wider attention to his paper); and (b) the
exerpts reproduced here may or may not represent any or some  or even none
of my own views on the matter (if indeed I have any :-).

        "The war against Iraq in 1990-91 was the first full-scale GIS war.
        It put geography on the public agenda in a quite palpable if
        impalatable way as it claimed an estimated 200 000 Iraqi lives
        (Barnaby, 1991). The Defense Mapping Agency and the National
        Oceanographic and Atmospheric Research Laboratory  provided the
        'digitized map data for the Desert Shield Operating area'; a
        California company provided the 'ruggedized DOS-based' software
        called Map, Operator, Maintenance Station (MOMS); the pilots
        slotted the resulting portable GIS packages into cockpit computers
        and the 'turkey-shoot' as a USA general called it, was on
        (Schulman, 1991)..."

He goes on to launch a lengthy attack on / critique of an editorial by
Stan Openshaw (in Environment and Planning A, 1991), in which Openshaw
is said to complain "that GIS is misunderstood and underloved". Smith
takes apparent exception to what he sees as Openshaw's claim that "Geography
suffers a crisis of fragmentation and only GIS can put it all back together
again". According to Smith,

        "...There is surely no question but that GIS provides a battery of
        sophisticated computer techniques of wide and variable utility. The
        problem, rather, lies in the outlandish disciplinary ambitions, the
        radical exclusion of other perspectives, and the dangerous and self-
        defeating renunciation of an intellectual (as opposed to a technical)
        agenda that too often accompany the programatic advocacy of GIS...
        Openshaw and the Iraq war notwithstanding, the GIS hoopla has cooled
        even as GIS techniques have become less exotic, and the time is ripe
        for a critical and contextual history of GIS beyond existing
        internalist treatments (Chrisman, 1988; Coppock, 1988; Tomlinson,
        1988; but see Anderson, 1969)."

        " That the text and context of GIS is heavilly underwritten by a
        military agenda is no secret, of course, but such connections -
        too often made in the abstract - become brutally evident on our
        television screens in early 1991".

        "...Technology does not cause war of course, but the traditional
        liberal argument that techniques are separate and separable from
        their uses is equally simplistic...even among more liberal advocates,
        embarrased into silence by the integration of GIS with military
        agendas, there is a clear sense of the larger social and moral
        imperative of GIS....GIS elevates to a new height the military
        constructions of geography, and this needs to be opened up for
        critical and historical investigation".

Most of the rest of the paper concerns itself with matters of geographical
thought and epistemologies, including the role of geography in war; the
feministic perspectives on geography; and the role of postmodernity in
all of this. He concludes that:

        "As Bondi (1990a) has argued, 'what postmodernism appears to do is
        to elide rather than deconstruct a dichotomy between ideas and
        materiality'. GIS practices a virtual image of this elision insofar as
        representations substitute for reality (Harley, 1989), fascilitating
        the denial of military violence."

Whether or not one agrees with Smith's thesis, this is a very thought-provoking
paper, and I strongly recommend anyone who is interested in the ethical (and
also even the epistemological) issues underpinning GIS to get hold of it.