Geosensing and social sensing as two digitalization mainstreams in big data era are increas-ingly converging toward an integrated system for the creation of semantically enriched digital Earth.Along with the rapid developments of Al technologies,this convergence has inevitably brought about a number of transformations.On the one hand,value-adding chains from raw data to products and services are becoming value-adding loops composed of four successive stages - Informing,Enabling,Engaging and Empowering (IEEE).Each stage is a dynamic loop for itself.On the other hand,the “human versus technology” relationship is upgraded toward a game-changing “human and technology” collaboration.The information loop is essentially shaped by the omnipresent reciprocity between humans and technologies as equal partners,co-learners and co-creators of new values.The paper gives an analytical review on the mutually changing roles and responsibilities of humans and technologies in the individual stages of the IEEE loop,with the aim to promote a holistic understanding of the state of the art of geospatial information science.Meanwhile,the author elicits a number of challenges facing the interwoven human-technology collaboration.The transformation to a growth mind-set may take time to realize and consolidate.Research works on large-scale semantic data integration are just in the beginning.User experiences of geovisual analytic approaches are far from being systematically studied.Finally,the ethical concerns for the handling of semantically enriched digital Earth cover not only the sensitive issues related to privacy violation,copyright infringement,abuse,etc.but also the questions of howto make technologies as controllable and understandable as possible for humans and how to keep the technological ethos within its constructive sphere of societal influence.