ABSTRACT
By offering an understanding of Geographic Information Systems within the social, economic, legal, political and ethical contexts within which they exist, the author shows that there are substantial limits to their ability to represent the very objects and relationships, people and places, that many believe to be most important.
Focusing on the ramifications of GIS usage, Digital Places shows that they are associated with far-reaching changes in the institutions in which they exist, and in the lives of those they touch. In the end they call for a complete rethinking of basic ideas, like privacy and intellectual property and the nature of scientific practice, that have underpinned public life for the last one hundred years.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |7 pages
Introduction
part |48 pages
The World According to Geographic Information Systems
chapter |13 pages
Reason and Language in Geographic Information Systems
chapter |15 pages
On Space in Geographic Information Systems
part |72 pages
Geographic Information Systems in Practice
chapter |6 pages
On the Roots of Geographic Information Systems
chapter |22 pages
The Reshaping of Geographic Practice
chapter |13 pages
Who Owns Geographic Information?
chapter |29 pages
The Digital Individual in a Visible World
part |22 pages
Living with Geographic Information Systems