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GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS: A CRITICAL LOOK AT THE COMMERCIALIZATION OF PUBLIC INFORMATION Safiya Umoja Noble Abstract This paper is a political economic critique and exploration of the ways that private-sector companies in the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) industry have emerged and consolidated themselves. This includes a discussion about buying, analyzing and selling spatial data mined from the Internet and other public resources, and how this is packaged and sold to other corporations for profit. I detail GIS research and development projects and the activities that are fueling growth. One of the fastest growing sectors of the GIS business is data mining and information processing, where companies are able to capitalize on the flow of information through proprietary systems or public networks like the Internet, and as such, are accumulating great wealth. GIS software projects are often the outgrowth of direct political and economic policy and funding, and industry giants are afforded greater access to purchasing huge data sets and labor to analyze and re-sell it. Public adoption and usage of GIS tools via the Internet is creating competitive tensions within the GIS industry and producing complex new partnerships. What is most critical to explore at this moment are the details of the industry, who it serves, and in whose interest. An understanding of the GIS terrain will better equip the public in making informed decisions about how state 88 Graduate School of Library & Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign policies and consumer practices are contributing to, or disrupting, these activities. Keywords: GIS, political economy, communications, data mining, Internet, critical information studies, public good Contextualizing Systems Geographic Information Despite the claims that digital technologies are a source of liberation for everyone (Negroponte, 1995), scholars have challenged the utopian notions of digital technologies and the Internet as a resources fueling increased democracy, the proliferation of the expansion of social freedoms and increased social participation, in part due to the consequences of corporate control over information (Schiller, 2007; Schiller, 1996, Boyle, 2003; Benkler, 2004, Chun, 2006; Vaidhyanathan, 2010). Daniel Bell (1973) theorized that the rise of postindustrialism would be characterized by science and technology, and service and information based economies, and information would be the dominant commodity rather than manufactured goods. In this context, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be discussed as tools for information extraction, processing and analysis -- packaged and sold as data layers and business intelligence. GIS is used to further Safiya Umoja Noble develop information as both a commodity and a resource (Schiller, 2007). Yet, data derived through the top GIS software companies is owned and controlled by private companies – even if its consumer facing tools are free for use by the public. Contextualizing the political economy of GIS seems relevant to the debates over the value of GIS as a means of improving access to the creation and distribution of knowledge. Crampton (2008) notes how mapmaking efforts are now “distinctly public and citizen orientated” as photos, satellite images and geospatial data are being crowdsourced and deposited into commercial products like Google Earth. Information technologies like GIS mapping have also shifted social expectations and made previously professionalized mapmaking something accessible to many (Crampton, 2008), while noting the important tension in the field over professionalizing vs. reprofessionalizing (Crampton, 2008, DiBiase et al., 2006; 2007). These tensions are a continuation of the hotly contested debates over the future of GIS (Schuurman, 2000), in which knowing the landscape of how information is being increasingly privatized can be included. It is for this reason that I believe GIS can be traced and understood, particularly as information control and ownership shifts from the public sphere to the private sector. Schiller (2007) describes innovations in information communication technologies as a strategy for the expansion of capitalism, predicated upon the control and commodification of information. He characterizes this development as “informationalized capitalism” (Schiller, 2007). His historical research on the broader political economy of information communication technologies, fueled by state subsidization, information policy and deregulation of ICT markets like telecommunications and communications networks (Schiller, 2007) is important to understanding how GIS needs to be historically traced too. Despite the rhetoric of freedoms, including the freedom associated with the use of free or low-cost GIS, the reorganization of economic and social relations in the shift from the industrial to information society has led to even more uneven distributions of capital around the globe (Schiller, 2007; Mosco, 1988). Kling (2007) enumerates the many ways that information communication networks and technologies are being used in corporations and organizations to centralize and manage operations, including investments of up to 50% of their capital in information communication technologies (Kling, 2007). Kling’s work in social informatics, and case studies on the uses of software and technology in the workplace, demonstrate the ways in which work and labor has been reorganized. It is within this context that a closer inspection of the political economy of the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) industry is worthy of our attention. GIS: A Critical Re-definition “The American economy is now hostage to a relatively small number of giant private companies, with interlocking connections, that set the national agenda. This power is particularly characteristic of the communication and information sector where the national cultural-media agenda is provided by a very small (and declining) number of integrated private combines. The development has deeply eroded free individual expression, a vital element of a democratic society” (Schiller, 1996). Considerable work has been done to critique GIS as a tool for the expansion of the commercial, for-profit sector (Goss, 1995). This paper describes a history of GIS research and development activities, and the industries that are fueling these developments, as well as the lines of business that are of interest to GIS industry leaders. This research does not look at the impact of the consolidations of resources, money and data systems in the GIS industry: it instead outlines the business and technology trends in the GIS industry that are leading to a variety of mergers, acquisitions and strategic business partnerships in the corporate, for- profit sector. My hope is that a description of the activities that are driving the GIS industry will lead to more research questions about the impact of these activities, and in whose interest it serves. Volume 4, Number 3, 2011 89 GIS: Commercialization of Public Information Information is more important than ever. Schiller (2007) suggests that it is “the essential site of forprofit, commercial growth within the world economy” (Schiller, 2007) meaning information is playing the most significant role in the growth of corporations and private enterprise. In the software industry, one of the fastest growing sectors is data mining and information processing where companies that are able to capitalize on the flow of information through proprietary systems or public networks like the Internet are accumulating great wealth. What is needed is an exploration of the ways that the GIS industry has emerged within this larger context, and consolidated itself in order to exploit the wealth of information and profits to be gained from buying, analyzing and selling spatial data. One perspective on the GIS industry is that it has been subsidized by public contracts and university research, which have been facilitated by state, federal and local municipal governments and thus, these tools belong to the public as part of the assets that are afforded us through public goods like libraries or public universities. It could also be argued that software companies like Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google, are made more profitable by public use of “free” commercial tools like search engines and maps, and that this is in fact a contribution to the public good because we have greater access to information that is easy to use and readily accessible with computer and Internet access. However, a third position must be argued: the consolidation and privatization of user data is leading to an erosion of public interests and fostering the most significant expansions of capital that we have seen in modern times – expansions in the privatization of previously public information that undermines the collective interests of the public (Schiller, 1996). Schiller (1996) argues that Information can serve as both a resource and commodity. In one sense, GIS is a resource with “free” mapping software programs that help us find restaurants, directions and community resources. However, one often overlooked aspect of consumer-facing technologies is the hidden labor involved in developing free GIS software data layers. For example, “free” digital technologies like Google’s services use the labor of consumers to help refine its ability to present quality information (Vaidhyanathan, 90 2010). In this respect, “participatory GIS” efforts are a relatively unexamined aspect of the GIS software business, and free labor comes about through constant consumer interaction with these tools that allows technology companies to refine algorithms and information search patterns. And because GIS software projects are often the outgrowth of direct political policy and government funding, GIS industry giants are afforded greater access to purchasing both huge data sets and labor to analyze and re-sell data that once functioned as a public resource managed by governments and municipalities. Formerly, these data sets were accessible by the public, albeit cumbersome to manipulate or analyze. Aggressive new technologies and software applications developed by the industry are now ensuring that the mining of public data, coupled with the steady availability of commodified consumer interactions, and the ability to perform custom research, will generate a wholesale shift of information assets from public to commercial interest. GIS can represent complex and intricate information through data sets. These layers of data include everything from the roads and buildings to consumer behavior or purchasing behavior in a particular zip code or geographically defined space. GIS scholars have looked at the problems of representation of social groups in this process (Harris & Weiner, 1998; Craig, Harris & Weiner, 2002). Each layer of data is organized into databases and objects that are represented in photos, maps, lines, points and surfaces visually mapped to tell a story or provide intelligence. This kind of information includes resources that Schiller (1988) notes as public – information like the mapping of the air, earth, oceans, rivers and sky that might belong to everyone. GIS software provides access to new ways of visualizing our world, along with the political boundaries and borders within societies (Crampton, 2004), and can also include information about individuals that can be aggregated into detailed consumer profiles, exemplifying Schiller’s “commodified” information. Some of this information is available to the public via the Internet, and some of this information is proprietary. These informational layers become even more profitable when public information is data mined and coupled with proprietary data, turning it into information that Human Geography Safiya Umoja Noble is only available to companies and government entities that can afford it. GIS information also allows intelligence analysts to develop information models that take particular regions or hot spots and combine their topography and population with census data to design business practices. This facilitates a state or corporation to take action, as in the case of military strategic planning (Pickles, 1995), which often includes religious and racial distinctions in regions. The social relations and patterns of offline behavior in terms of racial, religious and gendered profiling continue to be consolidated in information communication technologies: The Internet is both reproducing social relations and creating new forms of relations based on our engagement with it. Technologies and their design do not dictate [racial] ideologies, rather, they reflect the current climate (Fuchs, 2009). In the past, public information like income, education, sex, age and race were valuable data points, but these pale in comparison to the matrix of data and public profiling through use of Internet-based tools that allow for even greater corporate power and influence in the market (Vaidhyanathan, 2011). Because these GIS tools are an increasingly significant part of the data mining practices that are reshaping corporate and government behavior in the digital age, it is important that we look at the developments in the industry and continue to research the impact of these tools. Patrick MacHaffie (1995) suggests that “even though it [information] is a ‘general purpose’ product, then it will be produced to serve a particular constituency, in particular those who serve to gain from the ‘digging,’ ‘gathering,’ or ‘harvesting’ the wealth of America and the world” (MacHaffie, 1995). According to MacHaffie, these large, “general purpose” databases and systems for mapping are part of the system of our public infrastructure. What I am suggesting here is that GIS companies are data provided from public and private sources as a mechanism for the accumulation and expansion of for-profit models. This is happening as a result of industry consolidations and a changing global environment of data mining and information sharing. By data mining, I mean the ability to use high performance computing technologies to process large amounts of data that could only be analyzed for new patters and relationships, typically using artificial intelligence and computers (Fayyad, 1996). By industry consolidations, I mean the shrinking sphere of GIS service providers due to the processes of mergers, takeovers, acquisitions and other strategic business partnerships. This shrinking pool of GIS service providers and software development companies have resulted in complex arrangements that make up a web of corporate friends, enemies, competitors and collaborators. This web of arrangements also includes active personal and political participation with legislators who control the flow of billions of federal dollars for emerging GIS projects over the next several years in the United States. Public Participation in GIS Consolidations Over the past forty years, information found in GIS software systems that spatially represent information has become increasingly mass-produced and marketed to Fortune 500 companies, public and private institutions and individuals amid low-profile controversies. Privately held companies like ESRI and Bentley are beginning to see encroachments upon market share as technology and media giants with mass consumer appeal like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft threaten the business models of proprietary software companies by offering many free and low cost enterprise GIS packages. The market leaders in GIS use techniques that include using both public and private proprietary databases from which they can mine government records, police reports, census data, birth and death certificates, banking and insurance information, public health records allowable by law, marketing and consumer behavior data, credit reports, mailing lists, surveys, media reports and psychographic profiles (Goss, 2000). GIS technology is complicated and requires intensive data collection and statistical software to process and make sense of spaces and places. The business of GIS is also reliant upon the adoption of software that is interoperable across companies, governments and institutions. For Volume 4, Number 3, 2011 91 GIS: Commercialization of Public Information Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, encouraging the public to contribute content is at play in their business models. These companies use public data just as the large GIS industry leaders do, with layers of information contributed by everyday people. Much of this mapping data is the result of long-term accumulation of information through Google and Microsoft search engine technologies. Their clients are not the public who use their free tools. Their clients are the corporations who pay for intelligence, which includes information about how we search, where we surf the web, what we like, and who we are – both online and off (Vaidhayanthan, 2011) “Free” and low-cost enterprise mapping services have become and will continue to be a significant profit center as GIS technologies are more deeply embedded in the information available on the Internet. This “information as a resource” versus “information as a commodity” (Schiller, 1996) tension is important to understand, because GIS data is both the visual mapping of the world as we know it and is “intelligence” for sale about the world we know. Detailing the ways that free labor is cultivated in these GIS databases from the public is worth exploration in a future research effort. In the case of Google, free maps made, web searches conducted, and websites developed and indexed become a source of information that can be packaged and sold about the world we live in, and those who live in it, to those who need it to expand into new markets or manage resource distribution. This participation in the creation of data, and the repackaging of previously free information like government research and records, is subsidized to the benefit of a small number of corporations. The process is two-fold and is manifest by 1) an individual’s labor and 2) the use of the information commons at an institutional level. By free individual labor, I mean that the use of free mapping tools by the public in Google Maps or Google Earth provides information about the individual user that is aggregated across millions of users to be sold to advertisers. Free tools, from email to calendars to maps are part of the information resource that is data mined to develop business intelligence for corporate partners. This laboring is the combination of both play and labor, known as “playbor,” (Grinnell, 2009) where consumers engage 92 in online activities as leisure but which are their creative process or contribution from which profit is derived (Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009). An example of this is Google’s Image Labeler where the public tags images and provides metadata for Google’s images. The second aspect of mining free labor is the way in which public records and information are datamined. This information originates from the taxes paid from our labor, and which lives in the public domain or commons through government records and research for our collective use and benefit. This is further complicated by the fact that many of the GIS companies that dominate the landscape today were projects funded by government contracts using taxpayer dollars, but without taxpayers sharing in the profits. As an example of how these tools come to be, a closer inspection of Google is necessary. Google Earth is a free resource online and is the result of corporate acquisitions, something that could not have happened without Google’s tremendous assets. The original map product, EarthViewer 3D was a product of Keyhole, Inc. and has aggressively morphed into Google Earth (a free web-based technology) and Google Earth Pro, a commercial subscription product priced at $495/year. Keyhole’s satellite mapping technology was originally funded by the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency in the U.S., In-Q-Tel, which engages companies to provide intelligence across several agencies including the CIA, Department Intelligence Agency (DIA) and National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA). In it’s current inception as Google Earth, it is also credited as having created the public interest and demand for mapping and directions by the public, and continues to fuel consumer use with its iphone application made available in May of 2008 and its ipad application released in 2010. Google Earth is not ranked or benchmarked by the GIS leaders in their annual reports and communications. However, it would be incorrect to leave out the work of Google Earth when looking at the overall GIS industry (commercial and consumer), given that Google is a $12.7 billion dollar company and, according to its Investor Relations reports, is estimated to be worth $144 billion dollars, according Human Geography Safiya Umoja Noble to Business Week in 2009. Currently, Google is in an aggressive battle with Microsoft to create the most robust mapping technology that will capture the attention and interest of “everyday” consumers. Google’s business model is based on advertising sales, mapping everything from restaurants to hotels and museum galleries, which is an essential strategy for selling more ads. Google and Microsoft are both hoping their mapping technologies, Google Earth and MapPoint, will provoke consumers to participate in making the maps more interactive and interesting by uploading ratings, photos and feedback about locations to their GIS databases. But, while the public is searching for information using free tools from Google, these tools and data collection methods that provide information for tools like “street views” are increasingly being contested. For example, in 2009, the blogosphere reported an impromptu protest of neighbors in an upscale neighborhood of Buckinghamshire, England who forced a Google “street view” car to turn around (Moore, 2010). Privacy and surveillance concerns and protests in Germany caused Google to extend its opt-out policy under pressure from the German government (The Local, 2010). Most alarming are the ways that GIS layers can include information about people that can be both aggregated and disaggregated into detailed consumer profiles and sold to advertisers without the knowledge of the public. These will be important practices to follow over the next decade of GIS software development and usage. A final note on public participation in GIS should address participatory GIS. Participatory GIS, the practice of making mapping tools available to underserved communities for the purposes of community empowerment, is worthy of its own exploration in another paper. This article will not attempt to dissect the details of the topic, however, participatory GIS is an important aspect of the business models of Google and Microsoft. Both companies are providing entry-level and easy-to-use maps for the public, unlike the GIS industry leaders like ESRI or Bentley that are focused on commercial and governmental use. There are many open-source GIS products that are specifically being designed for non-profits, educational organizations and community groups. However, this paper is only focused on industry leaders and their projects; hence a closer look at Google because its tools are increasingly positioned as “participatory,” “free” and available to the public for the purposes of empowerment. In this context, GIS for public use is often stemming from open source GIS software tools. Crampton (2008) describes the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement as the origin of the free tools that are offered by companies like Google. Crampton documents the rise of the history of FOSS and its contributions to free mapping tool availability on the web. The tradeoff in control by Google or Yahoo! maps is that only APIs are provided, not source code, leaving the companies in control, particularly over copyrighted maps and images that they own or that their subsidiaries or vendors own. Certainly, open source software (OSS) addresses some of the challenges that expensive licenses or proprietary software code present. The landscape of for-profit and non-profit organizations providing OSS (Kuan, 2001) and tools are often not subsidized by taxpayers or the public (Gaudeul, 2007). Open source tools are often developed and sustained by volunteers (Bergstrom, Blume & Varian, 1986) and it is often difficult for organizations to direct the trajectory of their development because they are not subsidized by the government or other interest groups for funding and resources (Gaudeul, 2007). In the case of GIS open source tools, which will be discussed later in this paper, the amount of resource necessary to address the interoperability standards and to foster wide-scale adoption in order to be sustainable and compete with highly-captialized competitors is staggering (Gaudeul, 2007; Mustonen, 2005, 2003). Critically Looking at GIS Industry Leaders Technologies are never neutral (Winner, 1986; Pacey, 1983). The literature on “GIS and Society” has begun to explore the political economy of GIS and the role of power in the use of GIS (Harris & Weiner, 1998). On one hand, GIS is seen as an objectivescientific tool for understanding the world around us. But GIS tools do not just measure distance and space, they are also a means of gathering intelligence and information. They construct a landscape and representation of places, people and processes Volume 4, Number 3, 2011 93 GIS: Commercialization of Public Information according to various commercial or political agendas. For example, the iphone application “Around Me” is an example of understanding how commercial interests are foregrounded in a seemingly “neutral” GIS tool. In this application, the iPhone maps the commercial retailers available to a user in a specific location, but simultaneously does not map public institutions, social services, friends’ houses, parks or scenes that are of a non-commercial interest. These representations re-create a physical world into a commercial world through GIS technologies, and this is a symbiotic relationship. While a user lives in the physical world and their movement is tracked, it is commodified and sold back to the user in an application that is designed to promote commercial services. GIS representations through this economy of information is both one of data mining user behavior (e.g., walking down the street) and repurposing or selling back a representation of the world that is intrinsically tied to commericialization (e.g., stop by The Gap around the corner and get 20% off a pair of jeans). Critical GIS scholars are looking at the social, political and economic ways that GIS tools are being used in society. Kwan’s (2002) critique serves as an important approach to looking more deeply at the politics of contemporary GIS debates: While many maintain that the development and use of GIS constitute a scientific pursuit capable of producing objective knowledge of the world, others criticize GIS for its inadequate representation of space and subjectivity, its positivist epistemology, its instrumental rationality, its technique-driven and data-led methods, and its role as surveillance or military technology deployed by the state. (Kwan, 2002). Kwan’s feminist GIS (2002) offers an important point of view on how people can begin to conceptualize reframing GIS practices in ways that increase knowledge and participation or engagement with GIS tools from a critical perspective. The tools 94 available or that need to be created could stem from our ability to envision different forms of creation and usages for interests other than corporations, such as non-profits or social action researchers. Kwan also crystalizes the literature about how GIS is embedded with power (2002). Geography researchers have spent considerable time and energy debating the effects of GIS on people and communities from many points of view (Schuurman, 2000) and Kwan’s feminist critique creates more room to think about GIS from a critical perspective, especially in re-conceptualizing ownership of data, as well as increased access and broader engagement and participation with GIS. Goss (1995) has a specific theory that Geodemographic Information Systems (GDIS) are growing because, “the corporate community is eager to purchase [GDIS] because of its capacity to monitor, model and control consumer behavior, and ultimately because they promise the capability to manipulate the market and consumer identity to enhance profitability There is considerable logic and efficiency in consolidating the GIS industry to the benefit of corporations engaged in providing resources to a public willing to use GIS tools for free or nearlyfree. It is not necessarily the use of technological tools like GIS software that are problematic; tools are also the product of creativity and are often used for the improvement of communities. I am arguing the accumulation predicated upon the willingness of an unsuspecting public to participate is problematic. Thus, the GIS software and hardware companies have moved from many to a few over the past forty years since the development of the personal computer. Interoperability, standards, regulation and adopted technologies are being bitterly contested and the industry will see increased benefit from state spending on infrastructure. GIS Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) should be the subject of further study because they it is another near-ubiquitous digital technology that demonstrates how software platforms become near-universal through market dominance,, and why a variety of open-source or proprietary software packages like GRASS GIS or GIS/Magik though having widespread adoption, have not become the industry standard, even though they Human Geography Safiya Umoja Noble too are publicly funded projects. It is essential to understand this mining of information from government and corporate databases as taking place within a web (and cloud) of complex and proprietary algorithms, software requirements, computer hardware and highlyskilled training the United States One problematic aspect of the proprietary GIS technology is that it is unavailable for examination which obscures the inner-workings of the programming code, and it is proprietary. Furthermore, GIS management and implementation through the consolidation of the industry into a handful of companies spun out of Department of Defense projects is deployed primarily through U.S.-based companies. The degree to which hierarchies are being reproduced digitally in geospatial programming is an emergent theme about how power is embedded in these processes (Crampton & Krygier, 2006; Schurman, 2000; Harvey, Kwan & Pavlovskaya, 2005). What needs to be understood, particularly by the public, is how GIS technologies are fostering digital enclosures (Andrejovic, 2007) that portend to create greater socio-technical affordances. What we believe is happening in terms of accessing GIS data to help us find things more easily is also enclosing our movements through high levels of monitoring and surveillance, especially as we locate data in cloud-computing resources. Critical and feminist GIS scholars have written extensively about GIS and surveillance and monitoring (Kwan, 2002; Goss, 1995; Pickles, 1995). Andrejevic argues that the “digital enclosure” is a more appropriate way to name the Internet cloud, as a way of theorizing about the “forms of productivity and monitoring facilitated by ubiquitous interactivity” (2007). He cites Schiller (2007), Boyle (2003) and Lessig (2004) who map and critique the current expropriation of data by private corporations -- counter to the liberatory, freeing ideas of the Internet popularized by the MIT Media Lab and Mosco (2004). Schiller (2007) argues against such “digital enclosures of non-proprietary information.” However, the limits of freedom can be tested by the use and control of data because constant contact with a network allows control over our own private devices like laptops and other networked devices and software systems, like GIS. Control over proper usage is being built into the technology itself and enforced through the network. Boyle (2003) suggests that expansions of control are removing innovation from the public domain, and “Behind the abstract words ‘innovation’ or ‘technological development’ there are lives saved or lost, communicative freedoms expanded or contracted, communities enabled or stunted, wealth generated or not” (Boyle, 2003). Acculturating strategies and tools like Google Maps, Google Earth, GMail, Google Docs and others serve as a means of securing personal information, email, documents, etc. in exchange for the ability to mine such information and sell it for a profit/ commercial purposes. By acculturating, I mean that the public is increasingly socialized to using “free” tools and these tools are being integrated across personal and professional activities. In the current scheme, Google retains the right to search our data in exchange for “free” tools and services. The precision and refinement of the ability to identify and commodify “patterns of interaction, movement, transaction and communication” (Andrejevic, 2007) serves as a vital resource and profit center for cloud computing companies like Google. These processes make the correlation of user data and behavior with communication and advertising exposure a likely and inevitable end. Examples of this include the attempt by Google & Earthlink to bring a city-wide Wi-Fi network to San Francisco, and the use of interactive technologies to reinforce intellectual property schemes and unprecedented data centralization and control. Previously non-proprietary data becomes commercialized and controlled at each point of transmission, from infrastructure to interface. These arguments underscore how networks populated by data aggregated geospatially is not essentially empowering, per se, in that it can be constituted in different ways and is increasingly controlled by media conglomerates. Digital enclosures are also physical enclosures that interact with other networks and systems (e.g., cellular, RFID, GPS, etc.). What is problematic is the way in which most people do not understand how they are being tracked and monitored Volume 4, Number 3, 2011 95 GIS: Commercialization of Public Information through these processes, which is Vaidhayanthan’s thesis (2011). Andrejevic’s (2007) detailing of the digital information enclosure, akin to the European land enclosure movement and its move from “violent expropriation into a freely agreed-upon contractual arrangement,” is of critical importance. We have become accustomed to trading public information resources and personal information for a place to be online. He critiques the notion of “freedom,” which we can say is replicated in the server-client model of digital spatial enclosures. We are free to store our collective and individual information on corporate severs and through the use of software and we access it in individual and convenient ways. However, the underlying model is predicated upon our loss of ownership and control, and serves as the creation of a new site of profit for digital landlords. What is problematic is the way in which these processes are obscured from the public and under-examined at a socio-structural level. Kwan’s feminist critique of GIS is that the current corporate uses of GIS are not the only models that need exist. She urges researchers and communities to work within the constraints of GIS-dominance and find new ways to use data within a feminist or radical framework. For these many reasons, look deeply at the industry leader, ESRI, which has a significant academic following and subscriber base supported by public and private universities financed by tax-payers and donors, as well as the other leaders important. ESRI is not only in the business of manufacturing information through its business intelligence consulting practice, it is also making money from those who are using ESRI software to map local neighborhoods and communities for “social good.” What is problematic for those of us re-envisioning GIS is that the very usage and storage of data in global software systems further entrenches them. The Consolidated GIS Industry “Access to high quality information, from journalism to research, is essential to a healthy and viable democracy” (McChesney, 2009). 96 “As information moves from the public sphere to private control by corporations, a critical juncture in the quality of information of available, and the public’s ability to shift and use it is at stake” (McChesney and Nichols, 2009). The GIS industry has been consolidated into five major companies over the course of the past forty years. Though there are many proprietary and open-source solutions, a series of spin-offs, mergers and acquisitions began in the 1960s that have led to the configuration of today. The first GIS system was created by the federal Department of Forestry and Rural Development in Ottawa, Ontario. Since then, governments and universities have played a significant role in funding research and development of GIS systems that include the Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis at Harvard, which spawned technologies that were used commercially by corporations, educational institutions and research centers around the world (Lovison-Golob & Fisher, 2009). This infusion of public funds subsidized the risks of developing expensive mapping software and was not possible without military contracts. GIS/GPS development was originally designed as a surveillance tool for the military. By the end of the 1960s, a handful of GIS companies were emerging, many of which continue to dominate the industry in 2009. M&S Computing (which later became Intergraph) was founded in Huntsville, Alabama in 1969. Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) in Redlands, CA (1969) started as (and remains) a privately-held consulting firm with its start in land use mapping. ESRI is now the industry leader with over one-third of the global GIS market, and claims it is the leading GIS research and development company in the world (ESRI, 2009). A decade later, Computer Aided Resource Information Systems (CARIS) began selling commercial GIS products as a start-up from the Department of Survey Engineering at the University of New Brunswick; although it never became a Human Geography Safiya Umoja Noble commercial leader with its December 2008 earnings at just over $23 million (compared to ESRI’s $500+ million). CARIS developed the first and largest GIS system for mapping through digitizing and scanning technology and its founder Dr. Roger Tomlinson is regarded as the “father of GIS,” (Geiner, 2007), even though the technology was never fully commercialized. Latecomers to the GIS software industry are Autodesk (1982) and GE Energy/Smallworld (1989). Smallworld was acquired by GE Energy in September 2000 after establishing itself as a global leader in GIS. Up and coming in the GIS industry is PB MapInfo, more commonly known as MapInfo since its founding in 1986. MapInfo was recently acquired by Pitney Bowes in March of 2007 for $408 million in cash, and is now known as Pitney Bowes MapInfo Corporation (ITNews.com, 2009; Pitney Bowes, 2007). Though there is a significant revenue difference among the top GIS industry leaders, a closer look at ESRI will help illustrate the ways that public resources, longevity, and strategic partnerships have led to a series of alliances among corporate “frenemies.” ESRI was incorporated by Jack and Laura Dangermond. Their first commercial product was Arc/Info, developed and released in 1981. Shortly thereafter, they landed their first significant project – a $10 million contract from the United States Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) to build the Digital Chart of the World (ESRI Retail, 2009). Within seven years, ESRI was billing $170 million dollars on projects for Mobil Oil, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and various federal, state and local government agencies. ESRI now provides more than GIS maps and products, which are best known to corporate and academic researchers rather than everyday consumers, One of its many lines of business is providing intelligence and market analysis for products and services, for customers that include the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security and a host of federal agencies and transnational corporations. What is significant about ESRIs growth is its ability to mine public (government) databases and load them into proprietary technology systems to which corporations and large institutions like universities subscribe. Business and government data are mined and then repackaged as “business intelligence,” interpreted and sold to the very companies and government agencies from which the data is mined. In an ESRI white paper, “2009 Methodology Statement: ESRI Data—Retail Marketplace” (ESRI Retail, 2009), ESRI discusses a database that provides information about supply and demand in the Food Services & Drinking Places retail market. This database has been developed with North American Industry Classification Systems (NAICS) data, and is the largest database of establishments drawn upon from many companies beyond the GIS industry. ESRI clients are able to merge this data with information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Retail Trade and the Census Bureau’s Nonemployer Statistics. ESRI calculates consumer demand based on spending data and consumption estimates from over 700 various products and services, which can be analyzed spatially in worldwide manufacturing and distribution patterns. Expensive software development requires a level of ubiquitous adoption across large enterprises like federal, state and local governments and agencies in order to be profitable and sustainable. An ESRI Unlimited Program enterprise-wide license for a university in the United States is priced by quote, and often difficult to openly identify, but individual licenses vary and begin around $160 per user depending on the enterprise (Indiana pricing, 2010). Transnational corporations need common knowledge management infrastructure to do business transactions across borders and within their complex organizations, as global positioning systems are fueling Wall Street, ATM machines and complex global commerce systems of shipping and receiving. In March of 2010, the federal government of the United States committed $8 billion dollars to GPS satellite upgrades to make these spatial analysis tools even more precise and effective for business and consumer use (Hennigan, 2010). With all this data, ESRI has developed a proprietary methodology to interpret the data for middle managers and policymakers using a “Leakage/Surplus model” that calculates “the balance of supply and demand” (ESRI Business, 2009) They claim that this level of data mining and interpretation allows their clients to Volume 4, Number 3, 2011 97 GIS: Commercialization of Public Information see how consumers are spending their money, and on what items or services, so that companies can control the flow of product into the marketplace. Consistent with Goss’ (1995) assertion, companies are increasingly spending money on information that they believe predicts consumer behavior “objectively,” despite the highly subjective behavior of human beings who make choices for a variety of reasons. The use of this information furthers the interests of global companies with access to business intelligence. GIS industry leaders like ESRI have become powerful information commodity brokers and incredibly wealthy in the process. ESRI provides forecasting across several industries, including harvesting information from more than 12 million U.S. businesses, in databases and reports compiled by infoUSA (ESRI, 2009). The primary industries reliant upon this kind of business intelligence and data analysis include banking & finance, education, government, insurance, law enforcement, media, natural resource managers (mining, forestry), petroleum (oil), real estate, retail service sectors, telecommunications, transportation and utilities companies and municipalities. It delivers its content through its leading product, ArcGIS, which is part of the way in which ESRI controls more than one-third of the global GIS market. Rank Company Name Annual Earnings (GIS business only) 1 ESRI** $600M+ 2 Bentley $450M 3 Autodesk $250M 4 Intergraph $200M 5 GE Energy/ Smallworld $100M Key Industries Banking & Financial Education Emergency Services Government Forestry Homeland Security Insurance Law Enforcement Media Natural Resources Petroleum Real Estate Retail Telecommunications Transportation Utilities (Architectural, Engineering & Construction) General Building Hazardous Waste Infrastructure Manufacturing Petroleum Power Sewer/Waste Telecommunications Transportation Water AEC Infrastructure Manufacturing Media Natural Resources Real Estate Restaurant Retail Service Bureaus Transportation Utilities Communications Defense Government Marine & Offshore Metals & Mining Nuclear & Power Generation Petroleum Pharmaceutical Power Public Safety Security Transportation Utilities [Unavailable] Table 1: Top Five Geospatial Worldwide Companies Revenue and Specializations (2008) Datasource: Daratch, Inc.: Bentley May 2009 Annual Report, Autodesk Annual Report Goss’ (1995) idea that “the corporate community is eager to purchase [GDIS] because of the capacity to monitor, model and control consumer behavior, and ultimately because it promises the capability to manipulate the market and consumer identity to enhance profitability” (Goss: pg. 131) is a useful lens 98 Human Geography Safiya Umoja Noble for looking at ESRI. Its client base of Fortune 500 corporations and governments is astounding, and its communications are illustrative of the ways that ESRI is helping its client base “enhance profitability.” In the ArcGIS Content Product Manager’s presentation at the ESRI Business GIS Summit, Christophe Charpentier gave a forecast for ESRI’s largest global GIS clients: Wal-Mart (the world’s largest retailer), Carrefour (the world’s second largest retailer), Starbucks (world’s #1 specialty coffee retailer), Citigroup (one of the largest global financial services companies), HSBC (one of the world’s largest banks by assets) and Allianz (one of the world’s biggest insurers). ESRI presentations quote senior company executives talking about their desires to expand and consolidate their market presence internationally. And, ESRI is there to provide the information to facilitate these global financial transactions, mergers and acquisitions—particularly in “emerging and developing markets” like Brazil, India, Africa, Central America, Indonesia, Poland, Russia, Egypt and China (ESRI, 2009). According to their company communications, ESRI’s client roster includes, “more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities” (ESRI, 2011). ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone mapping and spatial analysis” (Geoplace.com, 2007). Part of ESRI’s business strategy is to be “cost effective” by 1) acquiring existing content through previously described methods of data mining public and private databases of information and 2) leveraging public content, such as information that can be derived from large datasets of consumer behavior. In this way, ESRI further consolidates its industry leadership by using data that is generated or subsidized in the public domain. ESRI has a series of focus areas including: A/E/C (Architect, Engineering, Construction), Business, Defense and Intelligence, Education, Government, Health and Human Services, Natural Resources, Public Safety, Transportation and Utilities and Communication (ESRI Industries, 2011). Because ESRI is the largest company within the GIS industry, it’s important to see that their dominance is reinforced by their development of a comprehensive knowledge base consisting of personnel, web tools, research, training services and software service for a host of projects, from human genome projects to Smart Grid technology. Much of this is heavily funded by the federal government with a recent infusion of cash from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (also known as the Stimulus Bill). ESRI reports in its corporate communications: “ESRI has aligned its GIS products with other core information system technologies, thereby bringing asset management to a whole new level,” says Bill Meehan, ESRI’s utility industry manager. “The system of the twenty-first century has the capability to produce modeling for risk management, customer analytics and behavior analysis, and work processes. Integration scenarios go far beyond traditional asset management. They also include real estate, environmental health and safety, project networks, inventory management, CRM [customer relationship management] and call center advancements, and more. By working with GridWise partners, we hope to revolutionize the way power companies do business, a way that best optimizes the use of power resource and delivery systems” (Geoworld.com, 2007). According to SmartGrid News (Gridwise, 2009), the Department of Energy will distribute $3.375 billion dollars in grants toward Smart grid technologies and another $615 million for “demonstration” projects as part of the Stimulus Bill. At the forefront of the lobbying effort for access to the $4 billion is the Gridwise Alliance, a consortium of over 75 companies and municipal governments that are seeking grants from the government. GridWise Alliance leadership includes executives from IBM, Google, BAE Systems, and GE Energy T&D, to name Volume 4, Number 3, 2011 99 GIS: Commercialization of Public Information a few. Many companies participating in the Alliance provide services to companies that include Goodyear and Wachovia, not including the aforementioned ESRI client base. Its leaders have been key advisors to the Federal Government in such capacities as a member of the Energy and Transportation Task Force of the President’s Council on Sustainability in 1996, as an expert witness on renewable energy for the House Committee on Science, as an advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney’s Task Force on energy, and as a Campaign Director and Chief of Staff for a U.S. Congressman. These leaders have intersecting personal and professional relationships with legislators by nature of their past job appointments. Almost every member of the GridWise Alliance’s executive leadership team has worked directly in lobbying the federal government for energy resources, and each of their current companies are heavily vested in the GridWise Alliance. Notably, in December 2007, ESRI joined the GridWise Alliance and as was reported on the web, it was “to support developing technologies for the nation’s energy system” (Geoplace.com, 2007). ESRI is not only poised to be the key GIS service provider to winning grantees in the SmartGrid funding from the Stimulus Bill, but it also stands to gain as the vendor of choice in GIS mapping projects that will be funded by the $7.2 billion broadband portion of the Stimulus Bill. In August, 2007, ESRI debuted a Telecom Mapping and Analysis Package (TMAP) that is positioned to be the market leader for municipalities and state governments looking for mapping solutions that can help analyze gaps in broadband access (GPSWorld, 2009). As ESRI continues to become the ubiquitous GIS software provider, it has also entered into a series of new global partnerships with a cast of dominant industry players, including Microsoft (ESRI Partners, 2009), IBM (DirectionsMag, 2009), AT&T, BAE Systems, National Geographic, NAVTEQ, Novell, Oracle, SAP and SAS, to name a few. According to the ESRI Corporate Alliance information (ESRI Partners, 2009), ESRI’s partnerships with other technology leaders are to provide business intelligence in a variety of forms. The business of information in today’s GIS software industry is the business of intelligence. This intelligence is designed to bring together discrete and 100 often disparate bits of information into reporting and measurement tools that companies use for a variety of purposes. The buying and selling of information is a business unto itself, which is being fueled by the GIS software industry. According to an October 2003 story in Directions Magazine, “The demand for these systems is expected to increase as the marketplace grows to more than $60 billion by 2005, quadrupling the current opportunity. IBM and ESRI will take advantage of this growth as both companies jointly market the industry’s first enterprise-wide GIS solution. Initial target industries include government and telecommunications” (DirectionsMag, 2009). In ESRI’s partnership with IBM, a focus on enterprisesolutions with the IBM’s hardware and consulting services further entrenches ESRI as the provider-ofchoice among the Federal government and Fortune 500 companies that use IBM products. There is the GIS technology business, and there is also the business of the technology. The GIS industry leaders have been able to create interoperability and consistent standards in the technology, which is part of their “co-opetition.” Many industries reach a point of maturity where standards are implemented and regulated as a way of ensuring that technologies can both stabilize and proliferate. Larger companies have been accused of undermining open source projects by promoting these software applications as unstable or unsustainable (Gaudeul, 2007) or reward open source producers that utilize their platforms and standards (Mustonen, 2005, 2003). By contrast, smaller opensource mapping companies like uDig, Quantum GIS, and GRASS GIS have been surfacing as projects created by research labs and government projects. The open source software developers producing GIS software find their commercial viability in consulting (in the form of technical support) and licensing and are attempting to contribute to GIS software systems that are free or nearly free. Like other computer programming areas, standardization of languages and technologies is determined by the larger industry players. Open-source GIS software developers are contributing open source GIS code so that anyone can use GIS technology without having to buy proprietary software like ESRI or Autodesk. But these companies do not have the kind of financial Human Geography Safiya Umoja Noble resources to proliferate their technologies among large corporations, governments and educational institutions and still have to make their software compatible with the industry software languages. The lack of capital makes it near impossible for them to compete with or displace the GIS industry leaders in the commercial or consumer arena. GIS Friends and Enemies Any one of the industry leaders could be examined more closely to illustrate the political economic dynamics of GIS software industry. Consolidated partnerships allow one team of companies to beat another – yet all of them edge out any competition or possibilities for participation by newcomers and small, open-source players. There are no polar opposites, but rather a network of “frenemies” (a partnership of friends and enemies and who can be both a partner and a competitor at the same time). This dynamic can also be described as “co-opetition,” a new term that describes how companies that are typically competitors divide opportunities among themselves and cooperate to consolidate or share resources where it will be advantageous to both, while still competing with each other in other aspects of business. Businesses like IBM promote this “cooperative competition” idea as a necessary element of the networked economy. Julie Bowser, IBM executive, writes: In the past, people saw business as a “winner takes all” or “zero-sum” game. The networked economy moves away from these purely competitive plays to recognise co-operative relationships that leverage value created by those in the network. Competition -- the other aspect of co-opetition -- occurs after businesses have created value in the market and seek to allocate market share, price, cost and other finite benefits (Bowser, 2009). Previously mentioned is the powerful ESRIIBM partnership that positions ESRI to maintain its dominance as the commercial enterprise-wide GIS software technology. The number two and three players in the GIS industry are Bentley and Autodesk. In the May 2009 Annual Report from Bentley, the company announced its “groundbreaking agreement” to create interoperability between the two companies’ (Bently and Autodesk) software libraries. By doing this, it is their hope that in the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry users of either Bentley or Autodesk software will be able to use software in a variety of configurations that will be compatible with each other. This is another move toward consolidation of technology solutions in the GIS industry. Bentley’s Annual Report says that over $16 billion dollars are wasted “due to inadequate AEC software interoperability.” Further consolidation of geospatial software solutions among the industry giants is an expression of how resources are being accumulated and used to dominate system requirements and solutions. GE Energy’s Geospatial group entered a partnership with Oracle in 2007 in an effort to expand business intelligence solutions. Oracle is a leading systems integration company. Oracle’s current spatial technology will move to the forefront in this partnership, and GE will begin to migrate away from its current Smallworld software. This vertical integration of services is a critical point to note in the development of market position for the infrastructure, hardware and software that support its GIS business. One industry reporter captured it this way: “GE Energy is in a unique position with utility customers. The company not only supplies the geospatial software, but other hardware and systems as well, including electrical transformers, billing and metering. GE Energy controls a hardware and consulting relationship with customers that might be characterized as monopolistic as well as opportunistic. Supply customers with transformers and throw in the network management piece as well. GE Energy’s area of expertise is electrical distribution and the company can develop end- Volume 4, Number 3, 2011 101 GIS: Commercialization of Public Information to-end solutions that would make it impossible for others to compete in that space” (Francica, 2007)1.” What is most important in this new alliance is that GE Energy and Oracle stand to displace “middlemen” like ESRI and Intergraph, who are software solution providers. With Oracle as a leading IT infrastructure solution, GE Energy can dominate in a number of utility, energy, transportation and AEC industries that already use Oracle. GE also has significant reach and partnerships with global corporations, which Oracle intends to use to further compete with Microsoft as the IT platform of choice. Continued attention on these industry shifts, particularly the market leader, ESRI, will be important in future research about how these GIS multinationals are using of public information resources as sites of increasing profit. Conclusion The GIS industry was spawned by government and military projects and the political and economic interests that are being cultivated through contracts and lobbying organizations. The industry has also consolidated itself around 5-10 key players with annual revenues in GIS software at $100 million dollars or more. This consolidation is generating unprecedented commercial growth. In this article, I have argued three main points. First, GIS technologies are being positioned as both a resource and a commodity. These resources are increasingly enclosing the public domain of information resource and moving into the hands of a few companies who buy and sell GIS data for significant private profit. Second, the public is contributing resources and labor to the accumulation strategies of the largest GIS companies by allowing the move of public assets to private companies. This is also happening through the utilization of free and nearlyfree mapping tools that allow large companies to data mine and sell intelligence about web-based activities, often without the knowledge of users. Future research can include a closer examination of how GIS software companies are using consumer labor to populate their databases and provide more market intelligence that can be packaged and sold to advertisers, governments and a host of clients. This distinction between 102 labor and leisure in online behavior, and for whose commercial benefit, is an interesting question. Research questions can also include a look at the types of hardware and devices that are being used in the GIS industry and how GIS software companies are entering strategic vertical alliances with hardware and telecommunications companies. More importantly, the tensions between GIS information as a resource for the public and GIS information commodification needs further exploration. 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