EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE - GPS, GIS, AND GEOGRAPHY IN THE 1990S
EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE - GPS, GIS, AND GEOGRAPHY IN THE 1990S
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DOI：
10.1111/j.0033-0124.1993.00131.x
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发表时间：
1993-05-01
影响因子：
1.8
通讯作者：
ABLER, RF
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
ABLER, RF
(TS（艾略特，小吉丁）修复这个演讲迫使我重新审视我对地理信息系统（GIS）和地理的一些想法，并在这个过程中，扩大我的知识视野。在继续之前，我应该提出两个警告。我对全球定位系统（GPS）技术知之甚少。在昨天之前，我还没有看到一个GPS接收器在运作或举行了一个在我的手。我必须补充一点，我对美国大兵也知之甚少。几年前，我用几个演示包玩了一个小时左右，但我从来没有在真实的问题上使用过真实的GIS。用毒品交易的行话来说，我是个推销员，不是吸毒者。为了让你们更好地理解我的观点，请允许我提供一些背景资料。我一生都对地理信息感兴趣，尽管直到我参与建立国家地理信息与分析中心（NCGIA）时我才意识到这一点。从我记事起，地图就让我着迷。当我还是个孩子的时候，我就对着它们发呆。中学毕业后，我的第一份工作是在地理信息系统（GIS）方面--起草和修改地图，这些地图记录了密尔沃基市路灯、变压器和供电线路的位置。我对地图的迷恋后来表现在我的本科工作中对制图的强烈兴趣，编辑了一本基于1970年人口普查的大都市地区地图集，在彼尔姆州立大学教了八年的制图，最近，共同编辑了宾夕法尼亚地图集。我对双向通信技术有着长期的兴趣，这是由我接受的下一份工作引发的。我在西部电气公司做了一年的中心办公室电话设备安装工，西部电气公司是旧贝尔系统的制造和建设部门。自从20世纪50年代末的那次经历以来，我一直着迷于人们使用内部通信网络来组织和管理地球上的地方和空间的方式。我在博士论文和随后的大部分学术研究中都追求这种兴趣。最后，请理解，我对谁是地理学家持开放的态度。正如科学作家奈杰尔考尔德最近指出的那样，“地理学家可能拥有课堂上的学术地理，但他们并不拥有世界，也不垄断对世界的描述”（考尔德，1991，xvii）。你们可能不习惯于把自己看作地理学家，但根据我在这次会议上所看到的，我认为你们都是地理学家。把东西放在地球空间的适当位置一直是地理学家的主要目标，既然这是你的工作，你至少是荣誉地理学家，即使你更喜欢称自己为或多或少令人印象深刻的东西。正如你即将看到的，这些长期的兴趣和广阔的地理视野丰富了我对全球定位系统的印象和直觉。
(TS Eliot, Little Gidding) reparing this talk forced me to reexamine P some of my ideas about Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and geography, and in the process, to expand my intellectual horizons. Before proceeding though, I should offer two caveats. I know very little about Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technology. Before yesterday, I had not seen a GPS receiver in operation or held one in my hand. I must add that I also know very little about GIs. I played with a couple of demo packages for an hour or so several years ago, but I’ve never used a real GIs on a real problem. In the argot of the drug trade, I am a pusher, not a user. So that you will better understand my perspective, permit me to provide some background. I have had a life-long interest in GIs, although I did not realize that until I became involved in the establishment of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA). For as long as I can remember, maps have entranced me. I mooned over them when I was a kid. My first job when I finished secondary school was in GIS-drafting and revising maps that recorded the locations of street lights and the transformers and wiring that powered them for the city of Milwaukee. My fascination with maps later took the form of a strong interest in cartography in my undergraduate work, the editorship of an atlas of metropolitan regions based on the 1970 census, an eight-year stint teaching mapmaking at Perm State University, and most recently, co-editorship of the Atlas of Pennsylvania. I have had a career-long interest in two-way communications technologies that was sparked by the next job I took. I worked for a year as an installer of central office telephone equipment for the Western Electric Company, the manufacturing and construction division of the old Bell System. Since that experience in the late 195Os, I have been fascinated by the way people use intercommunications networks to organize and manage the places and the spaces of the earth. I pursued that interest for my doctoral dissertation and in much of my subsequent academic research. Finally, please understand that I take a liberal view of who is a geographer. As science writer Nigel Calder recently noted “geographers may own the academic geography of the classroom, but they do not own the world, or have any monopoly of descriptions of the world”(Calder 1991, xvii). You may not be accustomed to thinking of yourselves as geographers, but on the basis of what I have seen at this conference, I contend that you are all geographers. Putting things in their places in terrestrial space has always been a major goal of geographers, and since that is what you do, you are at least honorary geographers, even if you prefer to call yourself something more or less impressive. As you will see presently, these long-term interests and that broad view of geography color and inform my impressions and intuitions about global positioning systems.