ABSTRACT
The intent of this chapter is to define the terms technology, aesthetics and affordances as they pertain to the field of GIScience. Drawing from the work of critical GIS scholars, this chapter begins with a reorientation of the term technology from conventional understandings of GIS technologies, as a collection of software and hardware, towards a more expansive assemblage, encompassing things like skill, emotion, practice and so on. As such, the aesthetics of GIS here are understood as a practice of experiencing by ‘seeing’ the world through a kind of digital abstraction that can predetermine users’ experience and the outputs they create. This chapter thinks through the concepts of affordance to figure how geospatial technologies and media give clues as to their function and facilitate interaction. Here affordances are the intended design features of the software (e.g., the use of graphical icons in menu bars signposting the user to a particular process), but also unintended affects that can render bodies vulnerable to harm.
