The cost of hardware has decreased almost exponentially in the last two decades, and the money that's saved and more is being used to keepup with the cost of software. Specialised software in the image processing domain which is usually bundled with the GIS suite costs the sky (even for a 10 seat lab kit). This has been the genuine impediment in our science reaching the mass of students in a large number of countries. Geospatial cannot be taught by chalk & talk alone. It requires a substantial component of hands-on data handling, computing and analysis time on computers. Many of us owe our expertise to the freeware graciously made available by g-evangelists. Today, with usable hardware available for less than $500 and software being made available for half of that, we should soon have geospatial - for the people - by the people - of the people...

Convergence of AEC (Architecture/ Engineering/ Construction) and geospatial is one of the well researched topics and is now a substantially developed technology in itself...