Emerging technologies and the changing nature of work in GIS

New technologies will alter the way in which GIS workers and researchers interact with computers and will lead to shifts in work practices. These shifts will be caused by forces pushing from different directions. Immersive visualization, for example, will continue to require substantial amounts of computational power and the use of highly specialized (and relatively expensive) equipment. Other, longer term, trends will lead to ubiquity of computational resources and the initiation of "calm" technologies that are designed to operate in ways that do not necessarily directly intrude on our consciousness during work. In some ways ubiquitous computing represents a kind of computational dialectic that runs counter to most trends in computing that demand attention and assert their way into the accomplishment of work tasks.