Airports

  

Potential

     I found ArcGIS to have a lot of applicability in the expanding global, and ever-changing world.  Its most useful feature has to be its ability to both analyze and combine data as well as visualize that data.  In the past doing the two of those would have taken considerable time, yet with this program it takes only minutes to enter the data and turn it into a map.  in an age when everything is connected and affecting many other facets of people's lives on both a local and global scale it is important for information to be transmitted as quickly and efficiently as possible.  This also means that is would be useful for any number of fields as well, branching out of simply governmental functions but into the private sphere as well, allowing anyone with the time to learn how to use the program to be able to analyze any number of different processes.

     The program does have a steep learning curve, and would be difficult outside of a setting such as this to learn, however, that just makes it more interactive and adds depth that other programs may not have.  it can do any number of things, each as in depth as you want to go.  It is not confined to any one thing.  The broad range of applications available mean that it is not necessarily useful for only large projects or calculations, but can be used for as trivial of a task as one would desire.  It is also very interactive, allowing one to manipulate the data, graphs, and maps to fit the need.  I enjoyed being able to add a road to a map rather easily, giving me both a sense of control but also the manipulative abilities of the entire program. 

Pitfalls

    That being said, the learning curve for the program is rather steep.  Even after having done the tutorial multiple times I would still by no means say that I understood all the ins and outs of the program.  On top of that, I feel that the tutorial only really scratches the surface and allows you to only do rather simple projections compared to the potential of the entire thing.  It will still take some time to feel even proficient in using the program on my own.  This means that for this program to have much applicability to to the general public it would have to become more simplistic, as I do not see this being a wide spread tool as is outside a setting such as this.  A course is really necessary to ever be able to effectively use this software.

     That means that this program will really be relegated to government agencies and rather large corporations who have a need for this information.  It is a desirable function, but as is I feel those without the money or training to run this program will choose to instead use other neogeography applications such as Google Maps which are free and more user friendly.  This will be especially true as they become more available and even easier to use, as well as having more and more functions.