Martin Dodge

Code and the Transduction of Space

Abstract The effects of software (code) on the spatial formation of everyday life are best understood through a theoretical framework that utilizes the concepts of technicity (the productive power of technology to make things happen) and transduction (the constant making anew of a domain in reiterative and transformative practices). Examples from the lives of three Londoners illustrate that code makes a difference to everyday life because its technicity alternatively modulates space through processes of transduction. Space needs to be theorized as ontogenetic, that is, understood as continually being brought into existence through transductive practices (practices that change the conditions under which space is (re)made). The nature of space transduced by code is detailed and illustrated with respect to domestic living, work, communication, transport, and consumption.

‘Outlines of a world coming into existence’: pervasive computing and the ethics of forgetting

In this paper we examine the potential of pervasive computing to create widespread sousveillance, which will complement surveillance, through the development of life-logs—sociospatial archives that document every action, every event, every conversation, and every material expression of an individuals life. Reflecting on emerging technologies, life-log projects, and artistic critiques of sousveillance, we explore the potential social, political, and ethical implications of machines that never forget. We suggest, given that life-logs have the potential to convert exterior generated oligopticons to an interior panopticon, that an ethics of forgetting needs to be developed and built into the development of life-logging technologies. Rather than seeing forgetting as a weakness or a fallibility, we argue that it is an emancipatory process that will free pervasive computing from burdensome and pernicious disciplinary effects.

The potential of Web-based mapping and virtual reality technologies for modelling urban environments

Abstract The paper will consider the potential of interactive mapping and virtual reality technologies being developed on the World Wide Web (WWW) for the visualisation, modelling and analysis of urban environments. A range of innovative technologies are being developed that offer different ways of modelling and representing built-form and associated urban information with real-time interaction over the Internet. We shall present a review of the capabilities of the technologies and how they can be applied in the field of planning and design of urban environments. The WWW offers both an interface to, and a delivery channel for, the built environment information as well as being a medium for linking distributed users. We are interested in affordable “off-the-shelf” software that is relatively easy to set-up and use and which requires standard PC-computing power preferable to a home user with a modem link (i.e., not high-end graphics workstations). The advantages and disadvantages which these technologies offer will be considered in terms of the level of realism and interactivity available to the end user. Working examples of these technologies which are being developed by the authors will be demonstrated and discussed throughout so as to qualify this review. The paper will also consider the applications of these technologies in a range of contexts, such as in local planning, urban design, development control, community participation, education and training. The implications for a wide range of potential users including planners, infrastructure managers, built environment students, community groups and interested members of the general public will also be discussed.

Codes of Life: Identification Codes and the Machine-Readable World

In this paper we present a detailed examination of identification codes, their embeddedness in everyday life, and how recent trends are qualitatively altering their nature and power. Developing a Foucaultian analysis we argue that identification codes are key components of governmentality and capitalism. They provide a means of representing, collating, sorting, categorising, matching, profiling, regulating, of generating information, knowledge, and control through processes of abstraction, computation, modeling, and classification. Identification codes now provide a means of uniquely addressing all the entities and processes that make up everyday life—people, material objects, information, transactions, and territories. Moreover, they provide a means of linking these entities and processes together in complex ways to form dense rhizomic assemblages of power/knowledge. At present, however, the information that identification codes provide access to are, at best, oligopticon in nature—that is, they afford only partial and selective views. In the latter part of the paper we outline four trends—wide-scale trawling for data, increased granularity, forever storage, and enhanced processing and analysis—that seek to convert these partial oligopticons into more panoptic arrangements. In turn, we contend that these trends are part of a larger metatrend—the creation of a machine-readable world in which identification codes can be systematically and automatically ‘read’ and acted on by software independent of human control. This metatrend is supported by interlocking discourses such as safety, security, efficiency, antifraud, citizenship and consumer empowerment, productivity, reliability, flexibility, economic rationality, and competitive advantage to construct powerful, supportive discursive regimes.

Crowdsourced cartography: mapping experience and knowledge

This paper considers the emerging phenomenon of crowdsourced cartography in relation to ideas about the organisation of contemporary knowledge production in capitalist societies. Taking a philosophical perspective that views mapping as a processual, creative, productive act, constructed through citational, embodied, and contextual experiences, we examine how we might profitably analyse collaborative crowdsourced projects like OpenStreetMap to better understand geographic knowledge production in a shifting political economy and sociotechnical landscape. We begin by characterising crowdsourcing practices in the wider context of Web 2.0, which some commentators assert is rapidly becoming a new, dominant mode of knowledge production. We then contextualise Web 2.0 knowledge production, drawing upon the ideas of sociologist George Ritzer, and his notion of ‘prosumption’, geographer Michael Goodchilds idea of volunteerist ‘citizen scientists’, and economic commentator Nicholas Carrs critique of the ‘ignorance of crowds’. We then go on to discuss the changing nature of cartography in the Web 2.0 era with respect to authorship, ontology, representation, and temporality.

NEW DIGITAL GEOGRAPHIES: INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION, AND PLACE

This chapter provides an overview of contemporary trends relevant to the development of geographies based on new digital technologies such as the Internet and mobile phones. Visions of utopian and ubiquitous information superhighways and placeless commerce are clearly passe, yet privileged individuals and places are ever more embedded in these new digital geographies while private and state entities are increasingly embedding these digital geographies in all of us. First is a discussion of the centrality of geographical metaphors to the way in which we imagine and visualize the new digital geographies. Then the example of the commercial Internet (e-commerce) is used to demonstrate the continued central role of place in new digital geography both in terms of where activities cluster and how they vary over space. The transformation of digital connections from fixed (i.e., wired) to untethered (i.e., wireless) connections is explored as to its significance in the way we interact with information and the built environment. Finally is an examination of the troubling issue of the long data shadows cast by all individuals as they negotiate their own digital geographies vis-a-vis larger state and private entities.

Mapping the 'Worlds' of the World-Wide Web: (Re)Structuring Global Commerce Through Hyperlinks

The World Wide Web is barely 10 years old and already spans the globe, comprising more than a billion public pages and 3 million servers. It is a decentralized information space, created and controlled by many different authors, and has much lower barriers to entry than conventional information media. The authors analyze the connections between 180 different Internet “nations” using data on the number of Web pages and hyperlinks gathered from a commercial search engine in 1998. They also analyze and describe the geography of the hyperlinks, revealing the most and least connected regions and countries, with a particular focus on African and Central Asian countries. A metric is created, the Hyperlink Index, which is similar to the Export-Import Index common in economics and used to measure the flows of physical goods.

Software, Objects, and Home Space

Through a series of interrelated developments, software is imbuing everyday objects with capacities that allow them to do additional and new types of work. On the one hand, objects are remade and recast through interconnecting circuits of software that make them machine readable. On the other, objects are gaining calculative capacities and awareness of their environment that allow them to conduct their own work, with only intermittent human oversight, as part of diverse actant networks. In the first part of the paper we examine the relationship between objects and software in detail, constructing a taxonomy of new types of coded objects. In the second part we explore how the technicity of different kinds of coded objects is mobilised to transduce space by considering the various ways in which coded objects are reshaping home life in different domestic spaces.

Geographical Information Systems and Urban Design

Urban design has been defined as “the process of giving physical design direction to urban growth, onservation and change” (Barnett 1982, p. 12). It sits at the interface between architecture and planning, and its emphasis on physical attributes usually restricts its scale of operation to arrangements of streets, buildings, and landscapes. In one sense, urban design represents the heartland of city planning from whence the activity sprung in the late nineteenth century as civic or town design in a social context, but since the 1950s, planning has dramatically broadened its embrace to include many socio-economic facets of the city. Consequently urban design has become a much smaller activity in the portfolio of urban planning activities, many of which are no longer exclusively concerned with the physical environment. However, traditional definitions of urban design still hold. In terms of residential design, Gibberd (1953) says: “The term ‘design’ ...... means the arrangement of the various parts — the houses, roads, paths and so on — in such a way that they function properly, can be built economically, and give pleasure to look at.” (p. 20). This implies that urban design includes technical questions of urban functioning, economic issues of cost and benefit, aesthetic issues of appearance, as well as social issues involving allocation and provision. As in mainstream urban planning, urban design represents a synthesis of diverse activities involving social science and architecture. Indeed, there is a trend to interpreting urban design as being part of a much broader context which is almost, but not quite, synonymous with urban planning itself (Punter and Carmona 1997).

Internet-Based Measurement

Internet-based measurement is a set of methods applied to quantitatively describe the structure, workload, and use of the Internet. They provide a practical means of doing a kind of virtual ‘fieldwork’ on the Internet using online tools and network monitoring techniques to gather fine-scale primary data. Internet-based measurement as a methodology for human geography is important because it (1) provides insight to the underlying structural processes of the Internet and Internet-based activities; (2) allows users to explore and analyze the Internet for themselves; and (3) allows researchers to aggregate data spread across multiple websites to analyze offline phenomenon. After outlining the five distinct kinds of geographical locations associated with an Internet-based resource (lexical, hardware, production, ownership, and use), this article outlines a range of tools and techniques for exploring these geographies. These include IP address geo-coding, domain name whois lookups, website rankings, ping, and traceroute. These tools can provide an understanding of the topological structures and geographies of the Internet, and allows users to construct information firsthand and critically question network operations directly.