Can GIS save the world? ... & other moral juggernauts

Daniel Charles asks in the latest Technology Review (very interesting new articles, by the way): 'do maps have morals?' He uses this question as a way to organize a review of four recent books on history & GIS...and the history of GIS. Technology, as the old saying goes, is a double-edged sword, but that hasn't stopped some from putting lots of stock in the idea that visualising our world in better-organized layers will (possibly) save it. A parallel theme in this article is that of the breeding of this visual literacy. Do some academic upbringings -landscape architecture for instance- breed a culture of innovation around that sword? [ MITs Technology Review ]