The ghost in the machine: spatial data, information and knowledge in GIS.

Canadian Geographer, The, March, 2003 by Nadine Schuurman

It has been a number of years since a paper on geographic information science (GIS) (as opposed to applications) appeared in The Canadian Geographer--a long dry spell or relief from an increasingly technical disciplinary focus, depending on your point of view. For those of you who lean toward the latter perspective this issue serves as an oeuvre to GIS and spatial representation as a way of communicating and integrating data from multiple disciplines. It is also an introduction to a much-changed GIS, one that is increasingly self-reflective. Those readers who have missed reference to GIS in this journal will find a multidimensional, integrative discipline that, perhaps, exceeds their previous expectations for representation and communication.

Only a decade ago,...