The view from nowhere?
Spatial politics and cultural meanings of satellite imagery

I am editing a theme issue in the journal Geoforum examining the socio-technical nature of high-resolution satellite imagery in an era of changing access through Internet portals such as Google Earth/MS Virtual Earth. The theme isssue is in collaboration with my colleague Chris Perkins and follows on from successful conference sessions at the recent AAG meeting in San Francisco. (More details are in the proposal document we submitted to the journal.)

We have seven papers promised, along with several shorter artistic observation pieces. The line-up is as follows:

1. Seeing nothing from nowhere – Google Earth and the illusion of information
Robert Barr Geography, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester


2. NGOs as intelligence agencies: The empowerment of civil society by commercial high-resolution satellite imagery
Steven Livingston and Sean Aday School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University

3. Beyond Apollo and Adorno: Dionysus and Walter Benjamin on Google Earth
Paul Kingsbury Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University John Paul Jones Department of Geography and Regional Development, University of Arizona

4. Placemarks and waterlines: How is the racialized landscapes of post-Katrina New Orleans revealed in Google Earth
Michael Crutcher and Matthew Zook Department of Geography, University of Kentucky

5. Nowhere is everywhere? Towards post-modernist ubiquitous computing-based geographic communication
Francis Harvey, Department of Geography, Leicester University

6. Secret sites and satellite imagery: A possible reversal of the Panopticon?
Martin Dodge and Chris Perkins, Geography, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester

7. Digging into Google Earth: Interfacing history
Lisa Parks, Department of Film and Media Studies, University of California-Santa Barbara.

Artistic observations

• Kathryn Yusoff, researcher/artist, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University
• Nikolas R. Schiller, independent geospatial artist, Washington D.C., www.nikolasschiller.com
• Laura Kurgan, architect/design theorist, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University