Looking down from the new World Trade Centre today, Michel de Certeau would ... sense of the bustle down in the street from above because it, so de Certeau, ...
BEATRICE BARKHOLZ
Walking in the City with Google Maps ID 153994611 (2016) 1VIS7A7.2 InterpreOng Space
Introduc)on Looking down from the new World Trade Centre today, Michel de Certeau would probably see the same crowd — but staring at their mobile phones. Although you sOll can’t make sense of the bustle down in the street from above because it, so de Certeau, lays “below the threshold at which visibility begins” 1, it is a new form of visibility that has changed the way we navigate the city today. Geoweb services have lead to an increased awareness and use of geographic informaOon in the general public. Freely available and easy to use geographic informaOon is now accessible for amateurs as Hudson-Smith and Crooke point out in The Renaissance of Geographic Informa3on.2 Like other digital media Geoweb applicaOons invite users to parOcipate in its creaOon while consuming the provided informaOon. This development towards an amateur, parOcipatory geography that eludes any claims of scienOfic correctness is defined as Neogeography.3 Not only can consumers look up their current locaOon or direcOons to any other place they can also create their own customised maps, save places to My Maps on Google and map their enOre life via Geoweb social media apps, so-called “Mash-ups”, 4 for example by curaOng favourite restaurants on Foursquare, geotagging pictures on Instagram and searching for potenOal dates around the current locaOon on Tinder (Fig. 1-2). Considering these social implicaOons, I am interested in how the everyday use of digital geography changes the way we move in the city and thereby the
1
Michel de Certeau The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), p.93. 2
See Andrew Hudson-Smith and Andrew Crooks, “The Renaissance of Geographic Information: Neogeography, Gaming and Second Life”, in H. Lin and M. Batty (eds.), Virtual Geographic Environments (Beijing, PRC: Science Press, 2009), pp 25-36. 3
See Di-Ann Eisnor, What is neogeography anyway?, in , accessed on 26.03.2016. 4
Hudson-Smith and Crooke refer hereby to Robert D. Hof, “Mix, Match, and Mutate: ‘Mash-ups’ – Homespun Combinations of Mainstream Services – Are Altering the Net”, in Bloomberg Businessweek (New York: Bloomberg L.P., 2005). < http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ 2005-07-24/mix-match-and-mutate> accessed 28.03.2016.
2
changing relaOonship between representaOonal space (the city), representaOons of space (maps) and spaOal pracOce (walking). 5 Therefore, I will first look at Doreen Massey’s theorisaOon of maps in For Space and compare her noOon of tradiOonal Western maps with digital maps in a Neogeographical context. Second, I will refer to Michel de Certeau’s Walking in the City to see how his concept of spaOal pracOce in the urban space applies to contemporary city dwellers who increasingly rely on digital maps to find their way around.
Fig. 1: Lunch Nearby and Lists on Foursquare
Fig. 2: Location Finder on Tinder
Digital Maps While space for Massey is always dynamic, open and unfinished, maps in their tradiOonal Western form on the contrary are staOc, complete, enclosed and coherently interconnected. Maps intend to wrap this otherwise intangible thing that is space in a portable package that helps us locate ourselves and “tell us an order of things”.6 The emphasis here is on ‘an’ order. For maps are only one possible representaOon of space, a selecOon of a parOcular structure
5
This conceptual trichotomy of space was constituted by Lefebvre. See Henri Lefebvre, The production of space (Oxford, OX, UK: Blackwell, 1991), p. 33. 6
Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005), p. 106.
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with a specific purpose. They are in no way an idenOcal reflecOon of the world or an innocent image of reality — at best an iconic one. Maps always have an agenda. Therefore, Massey points out, maps are also always “technologies of power.”7 In a tradiOonal sense maps are created by professional cartographers and only used by those who were able to read them, mainly professionals. Of course, as mobility increased maps gradually made their way into the everyday lives of ordinary people to help them navigate their cars through the devoured road network. Nevertheless, those consumer maps sOll consOtuted a sense of authority by those who created and distributed them, and were highly standardised — one size fits all type. As indicated iniOally, this has dramaOcally changed with the emergence of digital maps, now widely available in any shape or form, open for anybody’s manipulaOon and customisaOon. However, this shall not mislead us over the exisOng power relaOons in contemporary capitalism, as Craig Dalton points out rightly.8 Not only do most producers of digital maps rely on the sofware owned by Google that dictates the limits and opportuniOes of most Geoweb services but furthermore underlie profit-seeking strategies. Referring to Cosgrove 9 and Berger10 he says: “[T]hese technologically mediated visual knowledges focus a subject’s geographic view in terms of commodified things, facilitaOng capitalist social relaOons through geography.”11 Geoweb applicaOons create real, lived spaces around commercial places, constantly reminding us what we can consume “nearby”,
7
ibid.
8
Craig M. Dalton, “For fun and profit: the limits and possibilities of Google-Maps-based geoweb applications” in Environment and Planning A (London: Sage Publication, 2015) Vol. 47 (May), pp. 1029-1046. 9
See Denis E. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998) 2nd Ed. 10
See John Berger, Ways of Seeing (Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin Books, 1972).
11
Craig M. Dalton, “For fun and profit: the limits and possibilities of Google-Maps-based geoweb applications” in Environment and Planning A (London: Sage Publication, 2015) Vol. 47 (May), pp. 1033.
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making sure we can find what we are looking for and increase our efficiency by showing us the fastest way to get there. What is true for all digital media, the parOcipatory culture of Neogeography suggests a sense of democraOsaOon but at the same Ome entails a certain degree of self-administraOon, transferring labour and responsibility to the consumer, and the inevitable disclosure of personal data — someOmes voluntary but ofen even unconscious. I would reason that Geoweb services in our contemporary consumer culture are therefore instruments of capitalist power relaOons. They are in large part representaOons of commercial space.
Fig. 3-6 (clockwise): Saatchi Gallery on Google Earth (with surrounding businesses), Google Earth View, Google Street View and Google Indoor Maps.
For Massey this ‘view from above’ and thereby the execuOon of power relaOons by maps aren’t the most problemaOc aspect. She is rather concerned with the noOon of space as a surface as suggested by tradiOonal Western maps. An appropriate representaOon of space for her then must show the “heterogeneity of pracOces and processes” in space.12 In this sense, digital maps could represent a significant progress of spaOal representaOon. Google 12
Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005), p. 107. (emphasis in the original)
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Maps, for example, offers various funcOons that move geography into the third dimension (Fig. 3-6).13 Not only can we zoom in and out of any place, move between different layers of space from street level to outer space but also (virtually) walk the streets on Google Street View and peek inside parOcular sights and venues on Google Indoor Maps. The threedimensional funcOonality as well as the flexible structure of digital maps is a step towards a more fluid, open-ended and unfinished representaOon of space that Massey envisions. With the potenOal and limitaOons of digital maps in mind I would like to see now how their daily use influences the way we move in the city.
Spa)al Prac)ce with digital maps In order to analyse everyday spaOal pracOce as a form of resistance towards an established city structure, as de Certeau defines it, one must first look at his fundamental differenOaOon between ‘strategy’ and ‘tacOcs’. For him ‘strategy’ is
“the calculus of force-relaOonships which becomes possible when a subject of will and
power (a proprietor, an enterprise, a city, a scienOfic insOtuOon) can be isolated from an
environment [and] serve as the basis for generaOng relaOons with an exterior disOnct from it
(compeOtors, adversaries, ‘clientèles’, ‘targets’, or ‘objects’ of research)”, which includes all
“poliOcal, economical and scienOfic raOonaliOes."
Hence, the city itself (architecture and administraOon) as well as maps in the tradiOonal sense fall under the strategic model as they are subjects of power and disOnct from their target, the city dwellers. Unlike ‘strategy’, he conOnues, ‘tacOc’ is “a calculus which cannot count on a ‘proper’ (a spaOal or insOtuOonal localizaOon), nor thus on a borderline
13
See Andrew Hudson-Smith and Andrew Crooks, “The Renaissance of Geographic Information: Neogeography, Gaming and Second Life”, in H. Lin and M. Batty (eds.), Virtual Geographic Environments (Beijing, PRC: Science Press, 2009), pp 25-36.
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disOnguishing the other as a visible totality.” 14 The ‘other’ can hereby be understood as the non-insOtuOonalised, the anO-authority, i.e. the crowd. Despite comprehensible criOcism on the simplicity of such dichotomy,15 for my purposes here this general concepOon of space shall be a useful starOng point, with an established spaOal structure (city planning, mapping) on the one hand and an resisOng spaOal pracOce on the other that challenges this very structure of authority. For, as de Certeau wrote, [i]n the present conjuncture, which is marked by a contradicOon between the collecOve mode of administraOon and an individual mode of reappropriaOon, this quesOon is no less important, if one admits that spaOal pracOces in fact secretly structure the determining condiOons of social life. 16
From an elevated point-of-view at the former World Trade Centre in New York, de Certeau describes the crowd as the author of the city, that writes the urban text by construcOng opaque networks of different trajectories and stories by an “anonymous law” without itself being able to read it.17 This suggests that the privileged viewpoint from above, here from the top of a skyscraper, allows one to grasp the totality of the city as a concept but denies one the insight to this mysterious mobility, this ‘other spaOality’, that the bustling city creates.18 This divide between the overlooking ‘Icarus’ on top of the building, to sOck to de Certeau’s image, and the blind ‘fallen Icarus’ down in the street seems to blur within the contemporary context of Neogeography. With a digital map always at hand we are able to take this elevated viewpoint and see the structure, the concept of the city. Geoweb applicaOons in any form provide us with informaOon that used to be inaccessible: at an 14
Michel de Certeau, “General Introduction to ‘The Practice of Everyday Life’” [1980] in Ben Highmore (ed.), The Everyday Life Reader (London/NewYork: Routledge, 2001), pp. 63-73. 15
See for example Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005), pp. 45-48.
16
Michel de Certeau The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), p.96. 17
Ibid., p. 92.
18
See Ibid., p. 93.
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instant we can see all available transport opOons, shops and landmarks, friends and other persons of interest in our immediate surrounding. Social connecOons as a part of this once opaque text that the crowd writes, is what Geoweb services make visible now, yet only to a certain extend. Although nobody on an observaOon deck would be able to recognise the social connecOons within my personal space down in the street, which I can see and coordinate with a swipe of a finger, doesn’t mean that I am in total control over this social space. In fact, the Geoweb ‘Icarus’ might show me the fragmented space of my geo-tagged personal network but at the same Ome provides the map operators with an omniscient viewpoint over the combined connecOons of all people using it. The new ‘Icarus’ thus is virtually up in the ‘clouds’, namely on the servers of Google and Co. The footsteps, which de Certeau describes as an unlocalisable myriad that doesn’t compose a series and shapes spaces in weaving places together, can now indeed be localised by Geoweb data, easily arranged and analysed. Of course, to a certain extend tradiOonal maps would let you trace back trajectories, too, but the implied relaOons and agendas, the “spaOal acOng-out of the place,”19 remains invisible and is only now being revealed digitally. The quesOon now is how this newly acquired ‘sight’ relates to how we move within the city. If, so de Certeau,
it is true that a spaOal order organizes an ensemble of possibiliOes (e.g., by a place in which
one can move) and interdicOons (e.g., by a wall that prevents one from going further), then
the walker actualizes some of the possibiliOes. In that way, he makes them exist as well as
emerge. But he also moves them about and he invents others, since the crossing, drifing
away, or improvisaOon of walking privelege, transform or abandon spaOal elements […] the
walker transforms each spaOal element into something else […] he [also] makes a selecOon
[of the possibiliOes offered]. 20
19
Ibid., p. 98.
20
Ibid.
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Besides occasional delicts of jaywalking, how deliberate and rebellious can the act of walking in the city be, especially when following the route advised by Google Maps? My argument here would be that while one might act-out the boundaries of formal city administraOon one submits to an order dictated from a superior — an algorithm and ofen also a capitalist authority — which doesn’t appear as obvious as, say, a street sign. As elaborated above, maps always have an agenda. The more one relies on their guidance the more one subdues oneself to an authority of commercial space represented by Geoweb applicaOons (Fig. 7-9) that restricts the potenOal of actual resistance.
Fig. 7-9: Google Maps “Explore Around You” and Directions
Another interesOng aspect of de Certeau’s argument is the construcOon of stories and legends by spaOal pracOce. For him maps represent the “absence of what has passed by [and] the act itself of passing by.”21 Google Street View, for instance, as menOoned above does visualise this act of passing by, letng one virtually walk the streets of any given city, near and far. As real as these images might appear, we must bear in mind that they were
21
Ibid, p. 97.
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taken in the very moment that the Google Street View car was driving by and that thus they pose a temporal shif in spaOal representaOon.
Fig. 10-12 from left: Whitney Museum on Instagram, Ergon Restaurant and user-generated photos on Foursquare
According to de Certeau, walkers appropriate public places and their formal signifiers by giving them a personal meaning and thereby consOtute “local authoriOes” or “a crack in the system.”22 For him, these personal stories were moving more and more from the streets into the homes of people, whereas I would argue that in contemporary Neogeography they reemerge into the public sphere through digital media. Personal stories avached to places were not public but hidden in the opaque urban text that de Certeau describes. Today we can geo-tag pictures and memories on Instagram for everybody to see (Fig. 10-12). We can also look up user images and reviews of restaurants that we are planning to visit and relive other people’s experience in this place before we even went. Geoweb applicaOons visualise the displaced and “invisible idenOOes of the visible” that, according to de Certeau, used to consOtute memory in the city as an “anO-museum” due to the very fact that they were
22
Ibid., p. 106.
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unlocalisable. 23 In this sense, Neogeography changes urban memory by localising and visualising it.
Conclusion Understanding the nature of maps and their influence on spaOal pracOce in the context of Neogeography must be so in the wider context of digital culture of the network society.24 Without a doubt, Geoweb applicaOons provide us with a virtual observaOon deck and let us travel through the layers of three-dimensional space, something that ordinary maps haven’t been able to do. While this omniscient viewpoint used to be reserved for scienOfic and poliOcal authoriOes it is now available for the crowd and adds thereby to the democraOsing trend of digital culture. The individual data provided feeds into a network that provides socio-geographical informaOon to a mass audience. As with all data disclosed on the internet, however, they dispose personal informaOon to a public network that is not public itself but owned by corporaOons. It is only them with the truly omniscient viewpoint. This opaque mass of invisible connecOons is documented and analysed, made visible in totality only to the proprietors of the network. Although GPS services help us navigate through the streets of the city (and our social network) easier and faster, they also dictate and thus limit the way we move within it. It is the agency and potenOal of resistance which de Certeau grants the crowd walking in the city that is at stake when corporaOons increasingly appropriate that space. For as I said iniOally, maps are never innocent or realisOc 23
Ibid., p. 108.
24
For more information about Geographical Information Science in the Information Age and Network Society please see Wen Lin “Situating Performative Neogeography: Tracing, Mapping, and Performing ‘Everyone's East Lake’” in Environment and Planning A (London: Sage, 2013) Vol. 45, pp. 37-54; Daniel Z. Sui and Michael Frank Goodchild, “A tetradic analysis of GIS and society using McLuhan's law of the media” in The Canadian Geographer (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley) Vol. 47, 5–17; Barry Wellman, Bernie Hogan, “The immanent Internet”, in J. McKay (ed.), Netting Citizens: Exploring Citizenship in the Internet Age(St. Andrews: University of St. Andrews Press, 2004) pp 54–80.
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representaOons of space. Although Neogeography adds complexity, depth and fluidity to the maps they remain only fragmented representaOons of space, that is for the most part a commercialised one.
12
References Andrew Hudson-Smith and Andrew Crooks, “The Renaissance of Geographic InformaOon: Neogeography, Gaming and Second Life”, in H. Lin and M. Bavy (eds.), Virtual Geographic Environments (Beijing, PRC: Science Press, 2009), pp 25-36. Barry Wellman, Bernie Hogan, “The immanent Internet”, in J. McKay (ed.), NeHng Ci3zens: Exploring Ci3zenship in the Internet Age(St. Andrews: University of St. Andrews Press, 2004) pp 54–80. Craig M. Dalton, “For fun and profit: the limits and possibiliOes of Google-Maps-based geoweb applicaOons” in Environment and Planning A (London: Sage PublicaOon, 2015) Vol. 47 (May), pp. 1029-1046. Daniel Z. Sui and Michael Frank Goodchild, “A tetradic analysis of GIS and society using McLuhan's law of the media” in The Canadian Geographer (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley) Vol. 47, 5 – 17. Denis E. Cosgrove, Social Forma3on and Symbolic Landscape (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998) 2nd Ed. Di-Ann Eisnor, What is neogeography anyway?, in , accessed on 26.03.2016. Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005). Henri Lefebvre, The produc3on of space (Oxford, OX, UK: Blackwell, 1991). John Berger, Ways of Seeing (Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin Books, 1972). Michel de Certeau, “General IntroducOon to ‘The PracOce of Everyday Life’” in Ben Highmore (ed.), The Everyday Life Reader (London/NewYork: Routledge, 2001), pp. 63-73. Michel de Certeau, The Prac3ce of Everyday Life (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1984). Robert D. Hof, “Mix, Match, and Mutate: ‘Mash-ups’ – Homespun CombinaOons of Mainstream Services – Are Altering the Net”, in Bloomberg Businessweek (New York: Bloomberg L.P., 2005). < hvp://www.bloomberg.com/news/arOcles/2005-07-24/mix-matchand-mutate> accessed 28.03.2016. Wen Lin “SituaOng PerformaOve Neogeography: Tracing, Mapping, and Performing ‘Everyone's East Lake’” in Environment and Planning A (London: Sage, 2013) Vol. 45, pp. 37-54.
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Figures Fig. 1 and 3-12: personal screenshots, 28.03.2016. Fig.2 : Zachary M. Seward "DaOng app Tinder briefly exposed the physical locaOon of its users” in Quartz (2013), accessed on 28.03.2016.
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