R.E: at the risk of opening up an Allen-Keaton philosophical debate [1]....what exactly do you mean by PPGIS is self-reflective?
I am not an expert on PPGIS as you appear to be [2], but I was totally unaware (and am a non-believer) of this (key?) characteristic. Do you mean self-reflective in the sense of a closed loop of user participation and then feedback to users? Or are you implying some deeper hermeneutic-like ....thing? [1] 1975: Sonja (Diane Keaton): "That is incredibly jejune". Boris (Woody Allen): That's jejune? You have the temerity to say that I'm talking to you out of jejunosity? I am one of the most june people in all of the Russias!" - Woody Allen, Love And Death [2] http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/a4100777u35q1n44/ ______________________________________________ Michael Gould Dept. Information Systems (LSI) Universitat Jaume I, 12071 Castellón, Spain. email: gould (at) lsi.uji.es www.geoinfo.uji.es Message: 5 Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:37:30 -0400 From: R E Sieber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [Geowanking] was: novice vs experts HULK SMASH To: [email protected] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed As a proponent of PPGIS, I feel a little bit awkward because my field is supposed to be self-reflective. We critique the very discipline we promote. So do we criticize the need for expertise, whether it's science or technology? Sure. At the same time, we spend a lot of time investigating new tools that don't do further damage to the people and participatory processes they're supposed to serve. And we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to understand the complicated nature of participatory processes. But Tim, you put the gloves down. (In a good way.) To me, the main difference between PPGIS and neogeo is that there's self-reflection in the former and no reflection in the latter. For neogeo, it's all build, build, build. As much as I love the new tools and support the innovation (the very innovative streak that GIS may have lost!) it still comes out of the creative destruction inherent in the innovation. (Sean applied it to GIS but it applies far more to geoweb technologies these days.) New thing comes along and the past is smashed. The past could be ArcGIS 9.3 or Openlayers. Or geography. But there's no reflection on what's lost. Like what happens when the data can't be used anymore because it was tied to a particular software? Okay, the available digital data and free software and open source are supposed to alleviate that problem. But what about the time and applications lost because the only person in the community organization has left so all the opensource middleware falls apart when version 2.0 comes along. With the loss of the app, the democratic potential is lost. So that's fixed over time (although that's a big "if"). There's no reflection on what persists. In particular, the continued role of neoliberalism in neogo. Neogeographers come out of a smash the past, I built this cool technology and if you cannot use this app to lift yourself out of your deprivation then it's your own damned fault. Never mind that mere technology access doesn't alleviate the local political situation, the global political situation or gender differences or whatever. Never mind that the neogeographer is well-educated, particularly in technology, and therefore well-off relative to most everyone else in the world. And it's one step above social Darwinism. Instead of smashing paleogeo, GIS or PPGIS, I'd say what's needed is a neogeo conscience. We could start with ironic detachment. Was John Pickles prescient? I'm not much of a fan of John Pickles because he offered NO possibility that GIS could ever serve a democratic ends. Also he wrote in a style that remains completely opaque to the general public (even as he was casting opinions about the societal impacts of GIS). Geospatial technologies would always be held hostage to the capitalistic or militaristic ends for which it was originally conceived. (Pickles did come around years later and allowed for some democratic potential.) But PPGISers and PGISers (those who work primarily in developing countries) have been looking for alternatives and critiquing geospatial technologies even before Pickles and ever since Pickles. To think that critical theorists have left GIS alone since Pickles but have only emerged to critique the geoweb is wrong. If you'd like to hear the broad range of critiques and possibiliites of computerized and non-computerized mapping for democracy and participation, please join PPGIS.net. I know there are more than a few of you who are on both lists. To continued fist fights on the list and Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, Renee _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
