Google Earth as the 'view from nowhere': The spatial politics of
high resolution satellite imagery

I have also co-organised with Chris Perkins another double session at AAG 2007. I think we have an excellent set of paper and two interesting discussants.

Description: Google Earth, and various internet portals, offer ubiquitous high-resolution satellite imagery at unprecedented detail to a global audience through simple interfaces. The capabilities and technical beauty of Google Earth, in particular, has garnered wide spread praise and a rapidly growing fan-base. Given this impact, now is an apposite time for considered reflection on exactly what can been seen with satellite imagery and thinking through the spatial politics of newly accessible images of the world.

Session I:

1. John Cloud, Google Earth through a Keyhole

2. Steven Livingston, NGOs as intelligence agencies: The empowerment of civil society by commercial remote sensing

3. Robert Barr, Seeing nothing from nowhere - Google Earth and the
illusion of information

4. Matthew Zook & Mark Graham, The creative reconstruction of the Internet: Google and the privatization of cyberspace and DigiPlace

5. Discussant: Daniel Z. Sui


Session II:

1. John Paul Jones & Paul Kingsbury, III, Beyond Apollo and Adorno: Dionysus and Walter Benjamin on Google Earth

2. Stephane Roche & C Caron, Deconstructing Google Earth's images with the Spatiograph

3. Anders Wästfelt, Continuous landscapes in finite space-analysis of remote sensed images as a source in social science

4. Francis Harvey, Nowhere is everywhere? Towards post-modernist ubiquitous computing-based geographic communication

5. Discussant: Jeremy Crampton

Sponsorships: Communication Geography Specialty Group