Where Will the Geospatial Industry be in Ten Years?
Author: Cary Mann
Date: 10 July 2008
To predict 10 years into the future is no easy task. For perspective, we need only look back to 1997. Clinton was President, the Euro was a proposed currency, and Harry Potter was about to be published. In computing, Windows 95 was the desktop standard, the Internet was the emerging medium for the masses, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin had begun to collaborate on BackRub, the search engine that later become Google.
Determining an outcome without knowledge of all facts is a fool's game, and, of course, many critical facts are unknown to us at this time. It's possible, however, to predict with reasonable certainly several trends that will shape our industry by 2017. So in the spirit of Alan Kay, the computer scientist who quipped "The best way to predict the future is to invent it," here are my thoughts on what the next 10 years might bring.
Prediction one: GIS disappears.
Prediction two: Infrastructure gains focus.
Prediction three: Hardware advances reshape the way we use computers.
Prediction four: Personal gives way to shared.
