Geographical information systems : Methodological progress and theoretical decline ?

It is one o clock in the morning of December 20. Buffalo is cold, five degrees below zero Fahrenheit with a wind chill of minus twenty five degrees. The Niagara River is frozen solid except at the Falls. Sounds travel far on these cold nights. I hear a loud crash as if the ice is beginning to crack. I fantasize about the spring and the ice breaking up into thousands of small icebergs that float down the river. Icebergs bring to mind GIS software. Like icebergs, GIS software is frequently attractive and even starkly beautiful. Yet GIS systems are sometimes foreign and can be very inhospitable. As in the case of those frozen fantasies, GIS software may look better from a distance than close up. (Zubrow 1990b, 184)