Abstract. With the advances in information and communication technologies, and especially the development of geospatial data infrastructures and technologies, various location-based services are in popular use now. They are expected to assist the user in wayfinding and navigation, but empirical research suggests that satellite navigation tools fall short of our expectations and do not necessarily serve as an effective “navigator” or a “facilitator” of our spatial awareness. In such a spatially enabled society, the issue of wayfinding and spatial orientation has attracted attention from many people, and stimulated various discussions about possible effects, potentially negative, of the use of satellite navigation on spatial thinking. In this talk, I will look at some of these discussions from the perspective of interaction between people, space, and information, and think about spatial awareness in the age of geospatial information and technology.

 

Bio. Toru Ishikawa is a professor in the Department of Information Networking for Innovation and Design (INIAD) at Toyo University. He specializes in cognitive-behavioral geography and geographic information science. His research interests include human spatial cognition and behavior, wayfinding and navigation, and spatial thinking in geography and geoscience. He is particularly interested in individual differences in the structures and processes of cognitive maps and the issue of spatial awareness in the age of digital geospatial information.