Directions in GIS

The purpose of this paper is to discuss research directions in GIS. In doing so I will deliberately broaden the meaning of "GIS" to include a wide range of activities within the broad rubric of digital geographic information, since it seems to me that "GIS" is now generally used in that broad sense, rather than in the narrower sense of a software system designed specifically to store, retrieve, and analyze existing geographic information (Maguire 1991). We seem to be reaching a point where digital technology is encountered in almost all aspects of the communication of information, and the same is true of geographic information. It no longer seems important to ask whether information is digital or not-rather, the important questions seem to concern the degree to which the digital format imposes itself on the information, forcing us to modify, transform, or otherwise alter the information in order that it can be handled and communicated in digital systems.