3011: Geographies of Cyberspace
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
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
• term cyberspace literally means ‘navigable space’
• derived from the Greek word Kyber (to navigate)
• 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)
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 inbetweens 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 nongeographic 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?
Bits, not atoms
Cyberspace
is everywhere
and nowhere
Spaceless space
anything,
anytime,
anywhere
Borderless
world
friction-free
economy
Cities dissolve
End of
Geography
Weightless
World
30th September 1995
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.
Power is still territorially structured
• law, language and the market
11th August 2001
[ 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’ (technodeterminism, 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 reading
Manuel 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