GEOGRAPHICAL COMPREHENSIVE STUDYIN KNOWLEDGE BASED ECONOMY AGE
知识经济时代的地理综合研究

Knowledge based economy raises serious issues for geographer: What are tasks of new comprehensive study? What are new methods and techniques used in solving more complicated problems? In an attempt to answer these questions, we indicate that it is important to identify the effects caused by knowledge based economy on socioeconomic and natural environmental systems. The agricultural age was based on plows and animals that pulled them; the industrial age, on engines and the fuels that fed them. The knowledge based economy age we are now creating will be based on knowledge and men that master and apply it. Compared with capital, resource and labor, knowledge and scientific technology will play a more important role in economic growth and social development in knowledge based economy age. As a result, the shift of the object, scope and methods of geographical comprehensive study is inevitable. In this paper, we offer straightforward explanation of knowledge based economy and provide insight into its effects on geography. To fashion the present geographical comprehensive study into knowledge based economy, we recommend such modifications as integrating socio economic and environmental system, establishing virtual geographical space and internalizing external factors. Knowledge based economy is opening up new realms for geographer. By fusing traditional methods and technologies, geographer can create new comprehensive field that will profoundly reshape geography.