My work as a cadastral cartographer forms the basis of this research. That work led to an examination of the practical considerations that an individual confronts in the task of updating location in the land parcel network within a digital cartographic environment. Such research entailed reviewing the role that the assessment cadastre plays within the land information metasystem of local government as typically encountered in the United States. I reached two major conclusions: first, there exists a practical need for maintaining current and historical knowledge of location within the land parcel network, which has an impact on other users of land information systems in local government; second, there is a social aspect to the way these systems are set up and used, which has an intricate and subtle relationship with the implementing technologies.
This second realization led into consideration of postmodern critiques of cartography and geographic information science. I also made use of regulation theory, with its concept of societal paradigms, to discuss the transition in cartography and geographic information science from a modern (Fordist) to a postmodern worldview -- a transition that still lies in the future.
In regulation theory, Alain Lipietz, notes [1994, p. 338] that when we turn to the future, we are no longer in the position of "discovering" the prevailing societal paradigm. Rather, the researcher identifies contending paradigms; the activist promotes one as against another. Lipietz identifies two potential successors to the Fordist "hierarchical organicist" paradigm: liberal-productivist (hierarchical, non-organicist), and "alternative" (non-hierarchical, organicist) possibilities.
I used the schema presented in Foucault's "archaeology of knowledge" (as described in Gordon [1980, pp. 243-250] -- substituting the term "agendas" for Gordon's "programmes") to articulate the conditions favoring two different sets of cartographic agendas. The first set of agendas includes representationalism and normalization (characteristic of the liberal-productivist societal paradigm); the second set includes anti-representationalism and plurality (characteristic of Lipietz's "alternative").
Which of the contending societal paradigms (and which set of cartographic agendas) will prevail depends in part on the availability of enabling technologies of power/knowledge. I posit that, for the "alternative" cartographic agendas, one such class of technologies includes those that facilitate the modeling and display of novel geographic and spatial metaphors; I name this category technologies of metaphor. Under this category I place programming languages, especially very high level languages (VHLL) using object-oriented or logic programming paradigms.
In approaching metaphor, I adopt Rorty's view (following Davidson), placing it "on the model of unfamiliar events in the natural world -- causes of changing beliefs and desires -- rather than on the model of representations of unfamiliar worlds, worlds which are 'symbolic' rather than natural. [Davidson] lets us see the metaphors which make possible novel scientific theories as causes of our ability to know more about the world, rather than expressions of such knowledge." [Rorty 1991, p. 163]
The expression of metaphors is not limited to natural language. If a technology is itself a language, a symbol system, a generator of texts, then metaphors can be expressed in that medium. Perhaps the most intriguing example of this type of technology, in terms of the present context, is mapping. Mappamundi and fantasy maps are obvious examples of metaphorical statements expressed in maps. But so -- when they first appeared -- were highway maps.
A computer language, as a symbol system, also generates texts, including graphics (including maps), sounds, code, and linkages between these elements. All of these are, potentially, means for presenting metaphors. Indeed, within software development, the whole enterprise of user interface design is a continual search for metaphors that will convey to the user what the application "is" and how it may be usefully approached. As a result, we have desktops, menus (which in previous times were encountered exclusively in restaurants), folders, and trashcans.
In my dissertation, I presented object-oriented (o-o) software development as a technology of metaphor. In addition to its capabilities as a technolgy that can build applications that in turn generate texts, the object-oriented paradigm allows much closer coordination between developers and end users. In some cases this enables agencies or groups to undertake software development projects in-house for which they would previously have had to contract out. The developer and user might be the same person, or on the same small team. In the case of entities (agencies, groups, teams) concerned with geographic information, this breakdown of boundaries between user and developer facilitates the development of software applications that instantiate novel spatial and geographic metaphors.
The ability to construct such applications depends not only on the flexibility and ease of use of development environments but also on the availability of reusable software components and on the scale and purpose of the application. In my work, I introduced the notion of a geographic information application, built up using a library of such components, to contrast with the current "toolkit" model of a fully-featured geographic information system.
As part of my research, I constructed a geographic information application that modeled the locational behavior of the objects of interest to cadastral cartographers -- parcels, monuments, property points, etc. Thus, if we take my experience as a guide, it is possible to develop a model of novel geographic and spatial metaphors in a running application, and it is possible that this development need not rely on vendors of full-fledged GIS software.
In naming the category of technologies of metaphor, and in identifying geographic information applications as a member of that category, I aim to enable the promotion of a cartography/geographic information science consonant with Lipietz's "alternative" societal paradigm. One aspect of the alternative societal paradigm is the advancement into dialog of a pluralism of metaphor. Or, to put it another way: the mobilization of technologies of metaphor in the field of geographic information may be empowering to users/developers seeking to model and display their own metaphors of space and place, and I see this as beneficial to a democratic society.
Various kinds of social entities -- whether agencies within local government seeking to fulfill their mandates, neighborhood groups confronting toxic waste, indigenous groups describing traditional sites, or cultural minorities defining their territory -- need to tell their story about the space and place that matters to them. And they often need to tell their story through the medium of maps. When it happens that the terms and categories these groups use in their descriptions do not fit easily into the frameworks available in the conveying medium, it diminishes their power over the space and place that is their concern. Their power is augmented by the ability to develop models (and visual displays that portray those models) that capture those terms and categories.
I see my research direction following two concurrent paths.
First, I intend to refine the prototype application I have
developed so that it may ultimately be deployed in a working
environment, partly as a test of the practicality of the model,
and partly to track how such a technology in a local government
context will impact (and will be impacted by) the conduct and
practice of handling geographic information. Secondly, I would
like to develop other geographic information applications, using
other spatial, locational, and geographic metaphors, partly to
explore how well o-o software development will model these
metaphors, and partly to gain more clarity on whether and to what
extent such a technology can be accessible to, and usable as a
development tool, by the end users that live by differing spatial
metaphors.
Dueker, Ken, and Daniel Kjerne. 1989. _Multipurpose Cadastre: Terms and Definitions_. Falls Church, VA: American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing and American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ASPRS-ACSM).
Gordon, Colin. 1980. "Afterword" in _Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972 - 1977 by Michel Foucault_, ed. Colin Gordon (pp. 229 - 259). New York: Pantheon.
Karnes, Daniel. 1995. _Modeling and Mapping New Metaphors: Toward Pluralistic Cartographies Using Object-Oriented Geographic Information Applications -- Or, A Dynamic Model of the Land Parcel Network_. Ph.D. dissertation. Seattle, WA: University of Washington.
Kjerne, Daniel 1990. High Touch/High Tech: Management Revolution in GIS. Paper presented at AAG Annual Meetings. Toronto, Ontario, CAN. 19-22 April 1990.
Lipietz, Alain. 1994. "Post-Fordism and Democracy" in _Post-Fordism: A Reader_, ed. Ash Amin (pp. 338 - 357). Oxford UK & Cambridge USA: Blackwell.
Rorty, Richard. 1991. "Unfamiliar Noises: Hesse and
Davidson on Metaphor" in _Objectivity, Relativism, and
Truth: Philosophical Papers Volume 1_ (pp. 162 -172). Cambridge,
UK: University Press.