Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
In this chapter, the question is posed: what lies in the future for GC? From both theoretical and
practical perspectives, most of what could be foretold in 1999 has come about. Intractable problems
have become tractable (Saalfeld, 2000); new methods for handling and visualising vast quantities of
information have been developed and become commonplace, for example, the word cloud; human-
computer interaction has reached a level that was science fiction in the 2002 movie Minority Report ;
the Internet is now how we pay our bills, do our shopping and communicate with our friends; and
the World Wide Web has led to visions of cyberinfrastructure and cloud computing (Foster and
Kesselman, 1999; Foster et al., 2001, 2002), a digital earth (Grossner et al., 2008) and the paradigm
of volunteered geographic information (Goodchild, 2007). Significantly, these trends have led GISci
into new application areas, across academic disciplines, and strengthened this emerging field of sci-
ence (Janelle et al., 2009). The future trend is quite obviously toward interdisciplinarity, an aspect
that GC has somewhat pioneered. Yet what exactly does the future hold for GC? What new trends
in both GISci and computing will impact that future? To quote Aristotle, if you would understand
anything, observe its beginning and its development. With this in mind, this chapter re-examines
the past of computing and of computer-based mapping and analysis. Surprisingly, the pasts are not
as separate as might be imagined, and so this confluence is used as a jumping-off point to examine
the future, 50 years hence.
Geographers are often taught the history of the discipline's traditions and paradigms. Varenius'
Geographia Generalis (1650) established both geography's basis in observational science and its
use of applied mathematics. Later came the quantitative revolution, the spatial analytic tradition
and the birth of geographic information systems (GIS) and GISci. Yet geographical preparation
rarely includes the history of computing and the deep links between mapping, spatial analysis and
computational methods.
Missing also are the theories around which computer science is based. For example, the Church-
Turing thesis is an essential part of understanding computers, programming languages and com-
puter logic. A formal expression of the theorem states that for a process symbolised as M ,
1. M can be set out in terms of a finite number of exact instructions (each instruction being
expressed by means of a finite number of symbols)
2. M will, if carried out without error, produce the desired result in a finite number of steps
3. M can (in practice or in principle) be carried out by a human being unaided by any machin-
ery save paper and pencil
4. M demands no insight or ingenuity on the part of the human being carrying it out
Today, we would express the Church-Turing theorem as any task that can be reduced to a series of
incremental steps that can be automated. In programming, we are taught that complex tasks can be
simplified into steps and steps into sub-steps, so that eventually their solution becomes trivial. This
approach is often called divide and conquer , and without it, few computing solutions to complicated
problems would be forthcoming. The sequential processing that the theorem embeds, however, has
probably restrained research into the reasoning behind parallel programming, an area that is likely
to be of continued research in GC.
Analogue computing and geographical problem-solving may go back millennia, yet it is the
Herman Hollerith mechanical tabulator, submitted for his PhD dissertation and patented in 1889,
that is credited with reducing the time needed to process the 1890 census from an estimated 13 years
to just one (Figure 19.1). Hollerith used punched cards, an idea favoured by Charles Babbage in
his analytical engine, borrowed in turn from Joseph Marie Jacquard's weaving loom of 1805
(Figure 19.2). The link between the census and computing continued into the digital era. Digital
computing's earliest origins have recently been re-evaluated, and John Vincent Atanasoff and his
student Clifford Berry are now credited with developing and building the first ABC (Atanasoff-
Berry computer) during 1934-1942 at Iowa State College. Contrary to what is stated in many
textbooks, in 1973, the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC) patents of John
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