Introducing the Geographies of

Cyberspace

Martin Dodge(m.dodge@ucl.ac.uk)

Lecture 1, Monday 4th October 2004

http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/cyberspace

3011: Geographies of Cyberspace

Today’s lecture• defining ‘cyberspace’ and outline the

‘end of geography’ theory

• why geography still matters

• course outline, practical stuff

What do you think cyberspace is?

Everyday reality of cyberspace

Definitional confusion

• so what is cyberspace? (famous 7 blind-folded people describing an elephant)

• confused with a wealth of competing terms• the net, the matrix, ‘virtual this’, ‘e-that’• virtual worlds, virtual reality, the Internet, the

web, digital space, information society, network age, noosphere, ….

• academic terms:– ICTs (information and communication technologies)

– CMC (computer mediated communications)

• term cyberspace literally means ‘navigable space’ • derived from the Greek word Kyber (to navigate)

Definitions • William Gibson coined the term in his

cyberpunk novel Neuromancer (1984)

"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts…A graphical representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding..."

Definitions • cyberspace "...the ether that lies inside and occupies the in-betweens of

all the computers." Sardar and Ravetz, 1995

• John Perry Barlow ".. cyberspace is the homeland of the Information Age - the place where the citizens of the future are destined to dwell."

• "Cyberspace is where your money is”

• Ken Hillis,“…cyberspace is a metaphor for the non-geographic place in which digital interactions happen between people, and between people and machines”

My definition• cyberspace

– the conceptual spaces of information and communications flows created from the combination of digital computing hardware, software code, telecommunications networks and human minds

– it is not the technology or infrastructure itself, but the virtual spaces that this enables

• it is a complex convergence of computing, communications and people

• it is heterogeneous and fast changing• it is contingent in time and place (e.g.role of the mobile

telephone)

• cyberspace itself is not really tangible or visible, but can be made so (e.g. devices like a phone or by interfaces like Windows & Internet Explorer)

• cyberspace may be virtual space but has tangible material consequences (e.g. money being stolen from your bank account)

• cyberspace is not a parallel universe. It is interwoven with material space and place

• cyberspace is an embodied space • the power of cyberspace is in connecting people who use it. we

are all still in embedded in geographic space. email maybe virtual but it is sent between 2 people who have place-based lives

• cyberspace is built on vast array of material infrastructure, although this is largely hidden

• cyberspace is also reliant on large amounts of capital and labour. It is certainly not virtual

• much of production of cyberspace is hidden from daily life of affluent consumers (e.g. hardware manufacture in China)

• cyberspace is much more than just the Internet and the Web

• this course is focused on the Internet, as the best example of a socio-technical system in the production cyberspace

• [note, the Web is different from the Internet]

When did cyberspace begin?• its not new. evolutionary development on many decades

of R&D, infrastructure investment, and development of social practices

• history of telecommunications goes back to telegraph in the 1840s

• modern computing goes back to the 2nd WW, developments of digital electronics. the work Alan Turing and von Neumann

• Norbert Wiener coined the term cybernetics in 1948 to describe control system using computers

• the Internet itself goes back to the cold war research projects in the U.S. in the 1960s (more in next lecture)

Is there a geography of cyberspace?

anything, anytime, anywhere

friction-free economy

Cyberspaceis everywhereand nowhere

End of Geography Weightless

World

Bits, not atoms

30th September 1995

Spaceless space

Cities dissolve

Borderlessworld

Frances Cairncross, ‘death of distance’ theory

• distance will no longer determine the costs of communicating electronically

• ‘the fate of location’, no longer will location be key to most business decisions. Companies will locate any screen-based activity anywhere on earth, wherever they can find the best bargain of skills and productivity

• ‘global peace’, people will communicate more freely … the effect will be to increase understanding, foster tolerance...

Nicholas Negroponte

“The digital planet will look and feel like the head of a pin. As we interconnect ourselves, many of the values of a nation-state will give way to those of both larger and small electronic communities. We will socialize in digital neighbourhoods in which physical space will be irrelevant and time will play a different role” (Being Digital, 1995)

Why geography still matters

• by asking question there is an implicit assumption that geography has been overlooked

• counter the naive and simplistic reporting and analysis that ignores geographical dimensions of cyberspace

• cyberspace is changing space-time relationships• theorised as ‘convergence’, ‘compression’, ‘shrivelling’• Michael Goodchild argues, “distance is not disappearing as a

basis for human organization, but the parameters that define its importance are changing, and new scales of organisation are emerging as a consequence” [source: Goodchild M, 2004, “Scales of cybergeography” in Sheppard E, McMaster RB (eds), Scale and Geographic Enquiry.]

• need to understand the spatial forms of changes occurring and likely socio-economic impacts

• Kevin Morgan argues• notion that ‘geography is dead’ rests on overly

simplistic reading of the impacts of digitalisation of transaction and the globalisation of commodities

• 3 key problems are – conflate spatial reach with social depth (strength of

face-to-face social interaction)– forget that rapid diffusion of information and codified

knowledge does not mean that tacit knowledge and understanding are so easily distributed

– treat geography are a inert physical container. place needs to be conceived as a set of relations

[Source: Morgan K, 2001, “The exaggerated death of geography:localised learning, innovation and uneven development”. Copy available at http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/cyberspace/morgan.pdf ]

• cyberspace has a material geography of supporting infrastructure which is vital to understand (more on this in next lecture and second practical)

• cyberspace is not universally accessible socially or evenly distributed across space

• all aspects of cyberspace production and consumption are organised unevenly across space, and work to further this unevenness. cyberspace is highly concentrated and has a tendency to increase concentration. digital inequality

• cyberspace changes socio-spatial relationships but does not dissolve them

• cyberspace is an embodied space.

• law, language and the market

11th August 2001

Power is still territorially structured

[ http://www.rsf.org/ ]

Cyberspace and geographers

• Communications, telecommunications and cybergeographies relatively under studied field for human geographers (especially compared to other social sciences)

• human geographers should seek to empirically study cyberspace (‘measure and map it’)

• geography as an ‘explanatory variable’ should be more seriously considered in wider academic analysis and also in popular reporting of cyberspace

• it is a challenging area of research, and scope for empirical and theoretical innovation

Reading for this lecture• Steve Graham “The end of geography or the

explosion of place? Conceptualizing space, place and information technology”, Progress in Human Geography

• think about the theoretical positions he outlines to explain the relationships between technology and society– ‘substitution and transcendence’ (techno-

determinism, utopianism)– ‘co-evolution’ (political economy, dystopianism)– ‘recombination’ (actor-networks)

The next 10 weeks• I’m based in the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis

(CASA), 1-19 Torrington Place, rm. B05; best to email me at m.dodge@ucl.ac.uk

• going to explore key aspects geographies of cyberspace in lectures

• you will need to do some reading of course• in the practicals you will get your ‘hands dirty’

– computer labs– 2 site visits– group mapping project (Digital City Audit)

• practicals are in Chandler House cluster room, Friday 12-1pm; help from Aidan Slingsbury

Course schedule• 4th Oct. : Course introduction• 8th Oct.: Making your first web page

• 11th Oct. : Geography of Internet and digital divides• 15th Oct.: Exploration of Internet’s structure

• 18th Oct. : Mapping cyberspace• 22nd Oct.: Visit 1, Internet infrastructure

• 25th Oct. :Cyberspace and Surveillance• 29th Oct.: Intro to Digital City Audit project

• 1st Nov.: Virtual reality and cyber cities • 5th Nov.: Digital city fieldwork

• 8th Nov. : Reading Week

• 15th Nov.: * No lecture *• 19th Nov.: Mapping digital city data

• 22nd Nov.: Cyberfiction and geography• 26th Nov.: Visit 2, CCTV control centre

• 29th Nov.: Internet geopolitics• 3rd Dec.: Mapping digital city data

• 6th Dec.: Virtual communities• 10th Dec.: Digital city audit group presentations

• 13th Dec.: Geographies of cyberspace conclusions

• 17th Dec.: End of Course, End of Term...

Check out schedule page at:www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/cyberspace

Course assessment• assessed by

– project work (50%)– examination (50%)

• deadline for submission of individual project is Wednesday 12th January 2005

Course readingManuel Castells, The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business and Society (Oxford University Press, 2001)

Check out references on the Readings page and on the course schedule at

www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/cyberspace

• Aharon Kellerman, 2002, Internet on Earth: A Geography of Information

• Rob Kitchin, 1998, Cyberspace: The World in Wires

• Mike Crang, Phil Crang, Jon May, 1999, Virtual Geographies: Bodies, Space and Relations

• Steve Graham and Simon Marvin, 1996, Telecommunications and City: Electronic Spaces, Urban Places

Next steps• Friday's practical, making your place in

cyberspace – background on the web– introduction to making your own web page– bring along your cv as a word document

• Monday’s lecture will look at theories of cyberspace; and geography of the Internet and digital divides