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Beware, beware.
I am reminded of the Intergraph "workshop" every year at IMTA (they
don't do it anymore) where they basically said, "The Mac will be dead in
ten years, Windows is the way of the future... so you should use our
system." Any argument based on "X is fading fast, so you should buy Y"
is, at best, problemmatic.
To say that automated GIS is the future, and that cartography as a
human-controlled process is ludicrous.
I don't believe you can automate the designed element of maps any easier
than you can automate technical writing. Maps are used by people, and
for really GOOD maps that stand on their own, you need someone able to
adjust the map so it will be fully understood _by people_.
So why can't design be automated. I'm annoyed as anyone who tries to
make design be about sticking one's nose in the air and calling oneself
an "artiste"; it is about experience and a sense of visual proportion
and expression -- not emotional, "expressive" expression necessarily,
but expression in the sense of "let me try to express this idea to you."
That sense is something developed over time, and not something I can see
being automated except in creating very specific and narrow "styles"
(i.e. one could automate production of a standard map series, but not
the production of maps in general.
That said, the tools of GIS are designed for data crunching and on-the
fly rendering; the creation of graphically sound pieces is secondary.
Likewise, drawing tools are designed for efficient, intuitive creation
of graphically sound artwork, but have little in the way of spatial
data-crunching behind them.
My conclusion:
GIS and Cartography are names we give to two different but overlapping
functions. Both are designed to create tools for use by people to
navigate, analyse, and understand the world around them. Asking which
contains which is a bit like asking the same about history and regional
studies. The point in creating the specialties is to create focus on a
particular sort of tool.
The argument seems to me peculiarly academic, in that the answer means a
lot more in academic circles, where one's funding, tenure, lab-space,
etc., depend on demonstrating relevance. In the commercial world, the
question is moot: given a particular problem, the answer is to find the
_best_ tools, not necesarily the GIS tool or the carto tool. As near as
I can tell, there will always be a need for both types of tool-sets, and
very often both. I applaud Avenza's sense, especially, of trying to find
ways to make it easier for these two tool-sets to work together... we
have a long way to go.
--
Nat Case
Hedberg Maps, Inc.
Publisher of PROFESSOR PATHFINDER Maps
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