This paper summarizes and weights some trends and developments in Geographic Information Science – in short: GIScience – while excluding tendencies which are obvious to a ‘GIS-literature’ audience already such as the ‘Google Earth hype’. The authors treat GIS and GIScience rather synergistically since the respective underlying constructs are essential for a spatially aware society, at least for a “geo-literate” society. The trends are liberally and not exhaustively organized in 10 themes which dramaturgically span from 1) spatial data abundance and 2) spatial thinking to 3) non-boolean searches and ‘spatializing’ non-spatial data. 4) Spatial computing is expected to form the baseline for 5) ubiquitous computing. Major challenges rise for future information handling 6) beyond Cartesian metrics and 7) advanced spatial theory on the sphere. An additional topic is 8) user generated (volunteered) Geographic Information. All these - and other - trends may lead to 9) an ‘un-GISing’ of GIS and GIScience, and may lend themselves as stepping stones towards 10) Geo-literacy and empowerment. Finally, the paper ends with an outlook on “what’s next”.

Schlüsselwörter: GIScience, spatial thinking, spatial computing, spatial theory, Geo-literacy, Geo-society