The impact of society on the development of GIS

GIS technology is not only a tool to solve various problems people encounter in their production and life, but also a social process, that is, while GIS technology affects and changes society, society also exerts influence on the development of GIS technology。

The development of any technology is an evolutionary process, which is one of many possible development paths (Fig. 18-3). In the process of development, we will encounter various situations of choosing the direction of development. We need to determine one direction and give up the other. Usually, the determinants include practice, knowledge and social conditions at that time。

Figure 18-3: An illustration of the evolution of GIS technology [E. Sheppard]

The following two conditions play an important role in the evolution of geographic information system technology [E. Sheppard]：

The first is digital computing technology. The development of GIS is closely related to the development of computer technology, which means that the evolution path of computer technology also affects the development of GIS. For example, the adoption of digital computing based on Turing machine logic structure and the emergence of high-performance, small-size and low-cost microcomputers have a vital impact on the development of GIS.

Secondly, an important theme of development after World War II is that institutions can effectively organize and manage production and effectively distribute goods and services. Computer technology, including GIS technology, is the main way to achieve the above goals, and the specific demand targets also affect computer technology from another point of view.

In addition to the general factors mentioned above, the specific factors affecting the development of GIS include：

The urgency of the need for global positioning in society, especially in the military sector；

The degree of private enterprises leading the development of GIS；

Potential customers want to use GIS to solve problems and their expected efforts；

Factors affecting data availability and cost；

Geography is no longer regarded as a theoretical discipline, which can be used to evaluate the development and application of GIS。

Of course, the fundamental purpose of investing in GIS technology is its economic value. If the development of GIS is mainly carried out by private enterprises, it means that the development of GIS is commercially oriented. Whether it is developing data products or platform systems, it needs to be profitable commercially。

The above factors determine the development way of GIS, and form the current style of GIS software and application。

Once a technical scheme is chosen, it will have a certain inertia and have a great impact on the future GIS. For example, the hierarchical data model was first implemented in ODYSSEY, the software of Harvard Graphics Lab, and later adopted by ESRI’s ARC/INFO, and became the mainstream technical solution of GIS data model. Although object-oriented GIS appeared very early and was more technologically advanced, it did not achieve success in the market, that is to say, the development of GIS did not experience this approach.

最近几年来，地理信息系统无论是在理论上还是应用上都处在一个飞速发展的阶段。 GIS被应用于多个领域的建模和决策支持，如城市管理、区划、环境整治等等，地理信息成为信息时代重要的组成部分之一； “数字地球”概念的提出，更进一步推动了作为其技术支撑的GIS的发展。与此同时，一些学者致力于相关的理论研究，如空间感知、空间数据误差、空间关系的形式化等等。这恰好说明了地理信息系统作为应用技术和学科的两个方面，并且这两个方面构成了相互促进的发展过程。