Narrow, closed, resistant, intransigent.

If I said “I’m somewhat narrow minded, and change my thinking as fast as a super tanker can turn”. What would you think about me, and is that positive or negative?

I can guess don’t worry (I’m not if you wondered .. at least I very much hope not).

Entrenched thinkers have many of these ‘closed’ characteristics. Caused one suspects in part by personality and in part by the aging process. But whatever the cause, entrenched thinking is a huge barrier to change. And GIS is in the midst of dramatic changes.

Is Entrenched Thinking the Biggest Challenge to GIS?

Let’s look in more detail at what we mean by entrenched thinking. I remember in early 2000’s talking to a large company about this new thing called the World Wide Web. Their thoughts “We really cannot justify financially developing a company Web site”. I nearly fell out of my chair.

Top trends that we can expect to see dominating the geospatial landscape in 2016 are trends driven in large part by world events and climate change. Technologies play a large part in how well we will be able to manage climate change and attendant disasters, world events that include terrorism, and disease.