Geographies of Cyberspace: Putting It Together

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Geographies of Cyberspace Putting It Together
3011 Geographies of Cyberspace

• Martin Dodge
• Lecture 10, Monday 13th December 2004
• http//www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/cyberspace

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Todays lecture

• 1. what have we covered in the course
• 2. questioning cyberspace
• 3. geographies of cyberspace exemplar
• cyberspace and the need to travel
• 4. coursework report

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1. Course overview Lectures

• geographies of cyberspace theories
• three conceptions of technology and society
• one way (deterministic. utopians or luddites)
• two way (social shaping of technology)
• networks (actor-networks bring technologies to
  life)
• geography of Internet digital divides
• maps of cyberspace
• surveillance and cyberspace
• virtual reality and city design and planning
• cyberspace fiction
• Internet governance and geopolitics
• virtual communities

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• much else we could cover
• example of popular themes in cyberculture
• community networks protests
• cyberspace and democracy
• cyberspace and the body. nature technology
• cyberspace and identity politics (gender, race)
• education and technology
• crime and deviance. law and jurisdictions
• rise of the new economy Peter Woods course
• dont rely on just the lecture slides. you must
  do the reading. materials on the course website -
  www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/cyberspace
• Castellss The Internet Galaxy

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Cyberspace cant be ignored

• some implications will be felt regardless of
  individual wishes and needs
• Castells concludes The Internet Galaxy thus,
• Why dont you leave me alone?! I want no part
  of your Internet, of your technological
  civilization, of your network society! I just
  want to live my life! Well, if this is your
  position, I have bad news for you. If you do not
  care about the networks, the networks will care
  about you anyway. For as long as you want to live
  in society, at this time and in this place, you
  will have to deal with the network society.
  (page 282)

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Cyberspace is not separate, but part of the whole

• tried to highlight and then understand the
  complex roles of cyberspace in everyday life
• in the lectures and practicals and visits
• get a sense of what cyberspace is a
  social-technical assemblage (not just hardware).
  we all make it!
• get a sense of what it looks like, its
  physicality the metaphors and representations
  role of maps
• looking at cyberspace embedded into the local
  streets
• think about how cyberspace entwined into your
  daily activities
• cyberspace, part of much larger technologies in
  everyday life of course

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• at the heart of the course I hope youve seen a
  concern for the implications of ICTs on people
  and their social-spatial relationships
• not simply a concern for describing the impacts
  of the Internet on geographical locations and
  patterns. Not simple utopian/dystopian binary
• socially informed analysis of cyberspace through
  the geographers perspective of space and place.
  analysis in which spatial differentiation is a
  significant explanatory variable in processes
  and networks that bring cyberspace into being
• spatial context has often been overlooked, in the
  rush to declare the death of distance

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2. Questioning cyberspacedrawing on a paper by
Steve Woolgar, (2002), "Five rules of
virtuality", in Woolgar S. (ed.) Virtual Society?
Technology, Cyberbole, Reality, Oxford University
Press.
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Critical social science research

• All aspects of social, cultural, economic, and
  political life thus stand to be affected by the
  continued massive growth in electronic
  technologies. these new technologies require
  us to rethink the very basis of the ways in which
  we relate to one another. (Woolgar, p.1)
• example of a pervasive common-sense type of
  rationale for considering technologies
• Woolgar goes onto question some fundamental
  tenants of this type statement
• the importance of critical reflection. you need
  to approach this as the virtual society? (with
  a big question mark)

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• cyberspace is undoubtedly changing things
• the how and why of changes are hard to
  understand
• is this a period of wholesale societal change?
  are we entering or already in the network
  society, an information age?
• must question just how fundamental are the shifts
  really in the ways people behave, organise
  activities and interact? and how much are changes
  due to cyberspatial technologies?
• technology needs to be studied by social
  scientists and patterns of use analysed by
  geographers to unpick place-effects

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Current analytical failings

• metaphors and discourses often imply that things
  are new, different and (usually) better
• three type of failings Woolgar flags
• predictability
• universality
• clumping

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• technological implications are never predictable
• never universal across difference places or at
  different times or for different social groups
• large-scale technology trends assumed to have
  some outcomes for individual experience. top-down
  synoptic causation. ecological fallacy
• attention at the macro-level gives rather
  little clue as to how these technologies are
  actually used and experienced in every day
  practice. (Woolgar 2002, page 6)
• always resist making sweeping generalisation.
  problem with much large-scale, empirically
  driven, analysis of impacts, particularly at
  national and international trends
• clumping together of technologies to provide
  simple narratives of impact

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Plethora of technologies

• range of cyberspatial technologies, diversity of
  ICTs. resist clumping them together
• the Web is not the Internet
• email is very different from instant messaging
• cyberspace is not the Internet
• things weve seen in the course
• rooms of servers and networking hardware
• banks of television monitors and dome camera
• out in the street
• technologies are not just the hardware you can
  touch. the invisible protocols and applications.
  social practices (e.g. cctv operators)

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The importance of context

• a key part of the unique contribution of social
  scientists in analysing cyberspace is their
  concern for context
• local is important
• everything is contingent. Socially embedded
• hype almost always posits universalist notions
• in a supposedly globalising world, technologies
  still have different uses, meanings and are
  experienced differently, from place to place
• time contingent. the Internet today is very
  different from say 5, 10 years ago

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Woolgars 5 rules of virtuality

• 1. the uptake and use of any new technology
  depend crucially on local social context
• e.g. extensive non and former use of the Internet
• answer for failure is usually non-technical
• 2. the fears and risks associated with new
  technologies are unevenly socially distributed
  (winners and losers)
• 3. virtual technologies supplement rather than
  substitute for real activities
• the indications are that virtual social life
  provides a further dimension to a persons real
  social life, not a substitution for it.

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• 4. the more virtual the more real
• myth of paperless office
• email created more f2f meetings
• peer music piracy will actually increase record
  sales?
• 5. the more global the more local
• can only be understood through local context
• some may seem to be counter intuitive. but then
  you must ask who defines the conventional
  expectations of technology? In who interests do
  the assumed narratives on impacts work for?

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3. Cyberspace and the need to traveldrawing on
a paper by Andy Gillespie and Ronald Richardson,
"Teleworking and the city Myths of workplace
transcendence and travel reduction", in Wheeler
J., Aoyama Y. and Warf B. (eds), Cities in the
Telecommunications Age The Fracturing of
Geographies
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End of geography?

• cyberspatial technologies commonly assumed that
  enabling communication and organisation through
  computers will (logically) replace face-to-face
  interaction
• physical movement is a burden to be overcome and
  (hopefully) eliminated
• the death of distance where the ...social and
  psychological interaction, economic transactions
  and political relations may proceed unimpeded by
  the need for physical proximity. (Woolgar 2002,
  page 2)
• In fact, the Internet is creating new
  geographies, new activity patterns of its own

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• following Gillespie and Richardson (2000)
• debunk three interrelated spatial myths of
  disappearance through redundancy
• 1. the unnecessary workplace
• 2. the unnecessary city
• 3. reduced need to travel
• spatial glue that binds the city together is
  dissovlving. the city is an anachronism of the
  industrial age
• workplaces replaced by virtual teams in online
  workspaces and mobile offices
• The problem with both visions lies in their
  impoverished understanding of the rationale for,
  and benefits of, physical presence. (Gillespie
  Richardson, p. 230)

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1. The strength of workplaces

• workplaces are going strong, e.g. thousands
  commutting daily into central london this
  morning!
• teleworking has stubbornly remained very low
  level
• work firmly embedded in its social and material
  context of particular places
• loss of F2F is much more significant than often
  thought. people are sociable more than rational
• much work is social, networking contacts
• management problem of control and motivation.
  much is informal level, e.g. reproduction of
  organisations culture/ethos and sharing tacit
  knowledge

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• Even low level teleservice type jobs also still
  grouped physically into call centres
• misreading the workplace as just an inert
  physical container in space-time
• What these approaches fail to recognize is that
  the workplace is a highly functional device for
  facilitating activities of collaborative work
  groups, which is how nearly all work is
  accomplished. (Gillespie and Richardson, p. 232)

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2. Death of the city - not likely!

• empirical evidence is that cities are not
  disappearing. percentage of urbanised population
  is increasing rapidly
• far from dissolving cities, cyberspatial
  technologies are actually strengthening role of
  certain major urban centres
• morphology of cities is changing - rise of
  megacities and edge cities
• mutually reinforcing demand for and ability to
  supply advanced telecommunications facilities and
  services are concentrated points

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• Castells (2001) argues the Internet is in fact
  the technological medium that allows metropolitan
  concentration and global networking to proceed
  simultaneously. The networked economy, tooled by
  the Internet, is an economy made up of very
  large, interconnected metropolitan regions.
  (page 225)
• territorial complexes of innovation.
  concentration of talent, ideas and power
• webs of power depend on F2F, social networks of
  decision-makers in cities
• economy of presence is an urban phenomena

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• pattern of investment and supply- hot spots,
  surrounded by warm haloes and then cold
  shadows. differentiated geography of cyberspace
  favours the centre not the periphery
• where does innovation occur? cool things still
  happen first at the centre of large cities
• creative class are predominately urbanites
• compulsion for proximity is enhanced in a
  speeded up economy. easy F2F is vital to make
  sense of risky, unstable and fluid situations.
• cyberspace increases risk and thus increases need
  for place-based social networks to handle this

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3. The need to travel

• concern for cyberspace and changing spatial
  structure of the city. technology means people
  dont have to move so much or so often?
• 4 possible interactions between travel and ICTs
• substitution (ICTs decreases travel)
• enhancement (ICTs generate new travel)
• operational efficiency (intelligent
  transportation)
• indirect, long-term impacts (land use and
  business location decisions)
• not simple substitution. complex and
  contradictory implications

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• even for classic teleworking scenarios it is
  likely not to reduce the need for travel
• cyberspatial technologies tend to expand
  activity spaces in which work takes place and
  leading to longer distances
• hot-desking, mobile nomadic workers. fragmented
  lives
• new ways of working get more diffuse and less
  nodal - more complex journeys (often can not be
  done on mass public transport, like the 2-way
  daily commute)
• not reduced mobility, but the rise of
  hypermobility
• Far from contributing to more sustainable urban
  ways of life and travel behavior, therefore,
  teleworking and teleservices seem to be
  developing hand in hand with lower-density, less
  nodal urban forms and with travel behavior that
  is more car-dependent than before. (Gillespie
  Richardson, 2000, pages 242-243)

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Reading for this lecture

• Two key articles
• Andy Gillespie and Ronald Richardson (2000)
  "Teleworking and the city Myths of workplace
  transcendence and travel reduction. In Wheeler
  J., Aoyama Y. and Warf B. (eds.), Cities in the
  Telecommunications Age The Fracturing of
  Geographies, pages 228-248.
• Steve Woolgar (2002) Five rules of virtuality. In
  Woolgar S. Virtual Society? Technology,
  Cyberbole, Reality (3011 box file).

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Coursework Assessment

• 50 exam
• 50 group project
• 20 taking part ?
• 40 website and presentation ?
• 40 individual report
• individual project report is due Wednesday 12th
  January 2005

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Individual project report

• you need to write 1,500 word report on the group
  project.
• include a hardcopy printout of the full website
  and powerpoint slides used in presentations
• things you might want to discuss in the report
• results - your study area and what you found
• advantages and disadvantage to this type of
  research methodology. limits in the data
  collection. ethical issues?
• your contributions to the project. how well the
  team worked. auto-critique
• maps effectiveness. content of the website, the
  design aims. Its strengths and weaknesses.
  possible improvements
• written report - so dont overlook presentation,
  spelling, writing style, etc. But most of all I
  am looking for your opinions, ideas and
  interpretations