Software and Space

I have been co-organising sessions on the spatialities of software for the next AAG meeting in April 2007 with Matt Zook and Rob Kitchin. We have put together a good set of papers on I think.

Title: Software and Space I

Description: Unpacking the automatic production of spaces: Over the past thirty years, the practices of everyday life have become increasingly infused with and mediated by software. Whatever the task - domestic living, working, consuming, travelling or communicating - software increasingly makes a difference to how everyday life takes place. Software is embedded into objects and systems as a means to enhance and manage usage and is pivotal in linking together disparate and distributed infrastructures. It also enables new and refined processes through the generation, storage, profiling, screening and communication of data about individuals, objects, and transactions. Importantly, software has profound spatial effects, both through the automatic production of space that generates new spatialities (Thrift and French, 2002; Dodge and Kitchin, 2005a) and the creation of software-sorted (Graham, 2005) or machine readable (Dodge and Kitchin, 2005b) geographies that alter the nature of access and governmentality. Given that the AAG meeting in 2007 will take place in the San Francisco Bay the central node in the design and promulgation of software it seems an apposite place to initiate a wider ranging discussion on the role of software in the production of space.

Anticipated Attendance: 45

Organizers: Martin Dodge, Matthew Zook

Chairs: Robert Kitchin

Participants:

Presenter: Warren Sack, The Spaces of Open Source Software Design

Presenter: Robert Kitchin, Software, blogjects and automagical spaces

Presenter: Greg Elmer, Disaggregating the Web: The Space of Tags

Presenter: Mimi Sheller, Re-thinking Smart Mobilities: Agency and Creativity in the Appropriation of Space

Presenter: Barney L. Warf, Warped Dioramas: The Rhizomatic Spatialities of Videogames,
Co-Presenter: Ian Shaw

Title: Software and Space II

Participants:

Presenter: Andrew Leyshon, The software slump: code and the crisis of the recording studio sector

Presenter: Simon Parker, Class places and place classes: the spatialisation of class and the automatic production of space

Presenter: Paul C. Adams, Ground-Truthing Code

Discussant: Nigel J. Thrift

Sponsorships: Communication Geography Specialty Group