Abstract
The question of wilderness and technology has been widely debated in the human dimensions of natural resources, with scholars showing the impacts of technology upon the wilderness experience. However, these works have not fully addressed the impact of geographic information system technology on wild space. Our chapter addresses the impact of GIS on wild space with special attention to how wild space is misunderstood as mere resource to be discretely ordered and regulated. Specifically, this chapter looks at both the existential thinking of Martin Heidegger and more contemporary social-ecological work. We show how geospatial technology surreptitiously divides information about wild space from being in wild space. We discuss the phenomena of Google Trekker and remote viewing, and juxtapose them against being in wild space. We dismiss the misconception that geospatial representation does justice to the focal space held by wilderness. We argue that specific danger lies in any blind assumption that geospatial wilderness data exhausts the truth of wild space. In conclusion, this chapter, by closely examining the systemization of wild space information, sheds new light on the potentially overlooked difference between understanding wildness and understanding geospatial wilderness attributes.
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Douglas, M.L., Borrie, W.T. (2016). Unraveling the Coil of the Wild: Geospatial Technology and Wilderness. In: Carver, S., Fritz, S. (eds) Mapping Wilderness. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7399-7_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7399-7_9
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