Android

A Beast in the Field: The Google Maps Mashup as GIS/2
Christopher C. Miller
Sue & Radcliffe Killam Library / Texas A&M International University / Laredo / TX / USA

Abstract
Over the last decade or more, geographic information systems (GIS) have proved themselves nimble and potent tools in myriad academic, civic, and political disciplines. A body of scholarship followed GIS on its rise to wider acceptance and adoption, however, that questioned its nature and the way its power was wielded. This scholarship ultimately produced various models for ‘‘GIS/2,’’ an amalgam of GIS’s power and the grassroots democratic activity that might have been fostered by it but largely was not. This article revisits going models of GIS/2 and finds them to be so much vapourware compared to recent developments in online geospatial applications. The article argues that for all of the well-intentioned effort put into GIS/2 theory, the most progressive real-world candidate for GIS/2 has been produced only recently, by another rare combination indeed: two Austin, Texas, 20-somethings and the online search monolith Google. The Google Maps mashup, a very twenty-first-century beast born of code from disparate Web applications, exhibits great potential to be a real live GIS/2. Moreover, there is one mashup in particular that, while perhaps not quite mature enough to realistically match 15 years of GIS/2 scholarship, is still possibly the finest working example yet of the ideas and concepts posited therein.
Keywords: geographic information systems (GIS), GIS/2, public participation GIS (PPGIS), Hurricane Katrina, Google Maps, mashups, Scipionus

´ ´ Resume
` ´ ´ ´´ ` Depuis dix ans ou plus, les systemes d’information geographique (GIS) se sont reveles des outils puissants et tres efficaces dans une myriade de disciplines universitaires, civiques, et politiques. Les tenants de ces disciplines ont de plus en plus ´ ´ accepte et adopte le GIS, en remettant toutefois en question sa nature et