Beyond GIS: Geospatial technologies and the future of history

Abstract

GIS is a powerful technology with useful but limited application to history as practiced by most historians, appealing primarily to scholars who employ quantitative data and methods. But the spatial turn, especially as it is influenced by Web 2.0 technologies and practices, has resulted in a new hybridization of geo-spatial technologies that promise to reshape the discipline of history in ways reflective of postmodern concerns and epistemologies. In this new form, geo-spatial technologies are better equipped to construct the spatial narratives and deep maps that permit, indeed encourage, the sort of reflexive, recursive, and collaborative environments that will mark history in the future.