Cyber Badger Research Blog

2012-01-21T11:27:00.000-08:00

Infra_MANC exhibition

I have been planning a new exhibition, with an architect colleague Richard Brook from MMU, for the last few months and doing some low-level archival research to find key material to display. The exhibition is called Infra_MANC - for 'Infrastructure Manchester' - and it will examine four key infrastructural projects from the post-war period. There is the iconic Mancunian Way elevated motorway and the 'secret' Guardian underground telephone exchange. We will also present plans, maps and artefacts relating to two other unrealised infrastructural projects in Manchester: schemes in the 1950s for a city centre heliport and then the underground railway route from Piccadilly station to Victoria (the 'Picc-Vic tunnel') which was planned and nearly built in the early 1970s.

We are just in the final push to complete the text for the large exhibition catalogue. Then there will be the panic in a few weeks to get the exhibition material itself installed and ready for the public opening on the 27th February.

Infra_MANC // Post-war infrastructure of Manchester will be on display in the RIBA hub on Portland Street, Manchester, from 27th February to 23rd March. The exhibition flyer gives a bit more detail. (The great design on the exhibition logo and flyer was done by my co-curator Richard Brook.)

2012-01-13T02:31:00.000-08:00

Hiking by James Walker Tucker, 1936.

I recently came across this lovely 1930s painting called Hiking while reading Rachel Hewitt's history of the Ordnance Survey, Map of a Nation. I thought this painting would have made for a cracking cover image for our edited The Map Reader volume. It really captures the essence of using maps that we wanted to convey in the cover design. The question of the gendered nature of cartography is also raised, a point that is made problematic by our actual cover photograph showing the apparently active male role, holding map and pointing, and the more passive female.
We are getting some good feedback on The Map Reader, although its only sold about 400 copies so far. The electronic version is also very well indexed by Google Scholar, so if you search for many of the key articles the first source listed is The Map Reader version on the Wiley onlinelibrary website. Hopefully some reviews in journals should start appearing soon.

2011-12-15T13:30:00.000-08:00

The first proper academic reviews of our MIT Press book Code/Space are beginning to appear in journals. There is comprehensive review by Mike Batty in new journal Computational Culture, where he concludes that "Code/space presents an ambitious road map for the way we should begin to understand spatialities – spaces which are being continually transformed by functions based on software processing information. This is one of the first statements of a new approach to understanding space in terms of a world where information is accessible anywhere, any time, and Kitchin and Dodge provide critical structures for understanding how such space can be as differentiated and variegated as the spaces of the past."

Next is an insightful review by Taylor Shelton in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, in which he says:

"As the first book-length treatment of these issues, Code/Space is an important contribution not only to human geography but also to software studies and the social study of technology more broadly. In reorienting the geographic study of technology away from the potentially deterministic ascriptions of agency to technology and toward the various elements and processes that are constitutive of the technologies under scrutiny, Code/Space opens up new avenues for investigating the contingency of the relationship among society, space, and technology."

However, Shelton is rather more critical about our often 'negative' reading of the power of software and also out tendency to (re)invent terminology that confuses rather than clarifies the arguments.

I've also heard from the editorial staff at MIT Press that the first printing of the book is selling out and they want to order a reprint.

Lastly, I noticed that Code/Space gets a mention in the (newish?) Wikipedia entry on 'Software Studies'.

2011-11-30T13:16:00.000-08:00

Hello, here is a draft of newish book chapter that I've been working on for a while. It is related, in part, to the ongoing code/space research activity, with Rob Kitchin.

Towards touch-free spaces: sensors, software and the automatic production of shared public toilets

Abstract: New software-enabled technologies are changing the social and material production of everyday landscapes, and re-figuring the embodied relationships between people and the environment through touch. Touching with hands is integral to so much technologic activity and control - the pressing of buttons, pulling of handles, flicking switches, twisting selector dials, and so on. And yet touch is an overlooked spatial sense and practice in human geography. It perhaps then somewhat ironic that in this paper we are concerned with the reverse situation, as we interrogate the nature of mundane technologies that are designed to work without direct human touch. As such, we consider how tools and appliances are being designed and engineered to interact and respond appropriately to people by remotely sensing the presence of human bodies, and offering modes of control that are proximate rather than using physical touch. We focus on electronic/digital technologies, being applied in everyday contexts, that use sensors and software to automatically produce spaces that can react to people (or at a minimum bodily shaped objects) in meaningful ways without direct contact. To begin to explain the nature of this automatic production of touch-free spatiality we concentrate our analysis on shared public toilets, vital but somewhat disregarded spaces of modern life.

Keywords: toilets, automation, software, sensors, code/space

I've made this draft is available as a working paper on the Social Science Research Network, SSRN-id1966248. Another version of the chapter is due to come out in a new book I've been co-editing, Touching Space, Placing Touch (to be published by Ashgate at some point in 2012).

2011-11-27T09:22:00.000-08:00

Just noticed that two of my articles have recently passed the 100 citation 'milestone' according to Google Scholar. It is also pleasing that my co-authored book, Mapping Cyberspace, from 2000, is still picking up cites and now has surpassed the 500 mark.

"The potential of web-based mapping and virtual reality technologies for modelling urban environments", Computers, Environment and Urban Systems (1998) has 108 citations.
"Flying through code/space: the real virtuality of air travel", Environment and Planning A (2004) has some 105 citations.

Obviously you have to take Google Scholar's citation counts with a serious pinch of salt as they are often significantly inflated with double-counting, self-citations and random cites from draft documents and working papers. The much stricter (and more narrowly measured) citations from the ISI Web of Science database gives "Flying through code/space" a less impressive 59 citations (as 'mapped' below) and only a measly 140 odd cites for Mapping Cyberspace.

2011-10-06T12:09:00.000-07:00

As part of research for Mapping Manchester and our future book I was looking for a copy of a most striking panoramic view of the docks from the Illustrated London News that I had seen reproduced in Douglas Farnie's book on the ship canal. Over the summer I managed to track down an original copy in the collection of Chetham's Library (many thanks to Michael Powell for his help in this matter). I managed to arrange for the panorama to be digitised and am happy to share a version in pdf format.

"How the sea has been brought to Manchester: A panorama of theManchester ship canal - A great engineering feat that cost £15,000,000 and connected the city directly with the Atlantic."
Illustrated London News, 2nd May 1925. (Courtesy of Chetham's Library.)

We also plan to feature H.W. Brewer's lovely bird's-eye view of Manchester in our forthcoming Mapping Manchester book. The original was published in The Graphic newspaper in 1889 and is now quite a collector's piece, selling for hundreds of pounds.

2011-09-12T08:09:00.000-07:00

I recently got a copy of Manuel Lima's handsome new hardback volume, Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information. Its packed with lovely examples of information visualisation and network graphing, along with some insightful discussion. It provides a valuable complement to Lima's excellent Visual Complexity web catalogue.

The content of Lima's new book has some clear parallels to Atlas of Cyberspace, a book I co-wrote over a decade ago. (The Atlas is out of print now, but the full book is available as a free downloadable pdf and there are lots of secondhand copies around.)

The overall production design of Visual Complexity is also nicely done by Princeton Architectural Press. My only quibble really is with the cover design - a bit uninspiring I thought. Below is a sample page spread. I recommend purchase if you're interested in the varied and surprising ways to spatially represent information.

2011-09-10T08:30:00.000-07:00

I have posted a draft of a new cartography paper on the Social Science Research Network as an experiment in early distribution of my research. The paper is titled Mapping Experience: Crowdsourced Cartography and is jointly authored with Rob Kitchin. It is currently under review with the journal Environment and Planning A for a theme issue on neography. It will be interesting to see what response we get from the reviewers.

The abstract of the paper is as follows:

This paper considers the emerging phenomena of crowdsourced cartography in relation to ideas about the organisation of contemporary knowledge production in capitalist societies. Taking a philosophical perspective that views mapping as a processual, creative, productive act, constructed through citational, embodied and contextual experiences, we examine how we might profitably analyse collaborative crowdsourced projects like OpenStreetMap to better understand geographic knowledge production in a shifting political economy and socio-technical landscape. We begin by characterising crowdsourcing practices in the wider context of Web 2.0, which some commentators assert is rapidly becoming a new, dominant mode of knowledge production. We then contextualise Web 2.0 knowledge production, drawing upon the ideas of sociologist George Ritzer, and his notion of ‘prosumption’, geographer Michael Goodchild’s idea of volunteerist ‘citizen scientists’, and economic commentator Nicholas Carr’s critique of the ‘ignorance of crowds’. We then go on to discuss the changing nature of cartography in the Web 2.0 era with respect to authorship, ontology, representation and temporality.

Keywords: cartography, crowdsourcing, Internet, Web 2.0, authorship, ontology, representation, temporality

2011-09-02T03:45:00.000-07:00

Our Code/Space book gets its first mention in an academic article. Paul Dourish and Melissa Mazmanian cite it in their new and interesting paper, "Media as Material: Information Representations as Material Foundations for Organizational Practice".

Dourish, a professor of informatics, does a lot of interesting work looking at the intersections of computer code, software systems and the wider social implications and culturual meanings of pervasive digital technologies.

Also, our large edited collection on cartography, The Map Reader, gets a nice write-up on Fabian Neuhaus' blog, UrbanTick.

2011-08-04T10:18:00.000-07:00

Envisioning the spaces of the Ship Canal

As part of my ongoing Mapping Manchester research I am focusing on understanding the diversity of the representations of the geographical extents and spatial imaginaries of significant pieces of infrastructure in the city. The Manchester Ship Canal is a key infrastructure of interest, and in the past I put up a set of scans of historic maps and plans online. These have proved to be quite a popular cartographic resource.

More recently I have come across some lovely information graphics from the 1920s and 30s promoting the Ship Canal through a range of spatial portrayals of the power of the infrastructure. These are part of the Greater Manchester County Record Office archives I think and have been scanned and put online in flickr as part of the Manchester Archive Plus initiative. Some of the most effective were produced for the Textile Mercury, including the striking example shown above, which is reminiscent with Soviet-era propaganda with the inhuman scale of ship steaming towards you and the huge red edifice of smoking industrial chimneys. Check out the rest of them here.

2011-07-25T10:47:00.000-07:00

I was pleased that our book Code/Space got a nice feature in the new MIT Press catalogue for computer science, right next to Wendy Hui Kyong Chun's related book Programmed Visions. I am wondering how well Code/Space is being received - we are waiting for some reviews and citations.

2011-07-14T05:48:00.000-07:00

Archival research on the history of cartography

I spent much of last week working at the National Archives in London. I was looking in a range of different central government records for historic maps and plans related to various aspects of the built environment in Manchester. The research was kindly supported by a J.B. Harley Research Fellowship in the History of Cartography that I was awarded in 2010.

It was enjoyable looking for old material but rather confusing at times - the scale of the available archives is somewhat overwhelming. Although the staff at the National Archives were very helpful it still took a couple of days to work out their systems and what kinds of material to order that were likely to yield interesting maps. In the end I found interesting cartographic materials related to public transport plans, electricity infrastructure, city centre parking and second world war air raids. Some of these material will become part of the Mapping Manchester book I am working on with my colleague Chris Perkins.

The standout find was in the railway records and was a very long track plan from the early 1970s of the 'Victoria - Piccadilly Tunnel Link: Proposed Resignalling and Electrification'. A small segment of the plan detailing the tunnel planned under Manchester city centre is shown below. (If you want to track it down yourself it is contained in file reference AN 129/64, Transport facilities Manchester conurbations: plans and estimates, 1971 Jan - 1973 July.)

2011-07-04T11:38:00.000-07:00

I was very pleased to have been invited to participate in an interesting workshop on visual cognition, space and memory in Bologna last week. The presentations at the workshop were fascinating, although largely beyond the core of my research. The people were also very friendly and welcoming of new ideas. I gave a talk arguing for the value of studying new forms of participatory mapping as a way to advance understanding of the authorship of representations of place.

The title of my talk was 'Mapping Experiences and Culture of Opensource Cartography' and the abstract was as follows:
"My talk will consider newly emerging map-making practices - so-called crowd cartography - in relation to visual knowledge and embodied senses of place. I want to think about how scholar interested in visual cognition and everyday spaces might profitably analyse mapping projects, such as OpenStreetMap, considering the nature of collaborative authoring of place knowledge and map-based memories. The discussion with draw on theorisation in terms of sociologist George Ritzer's notion of 'prosumer societies', geographer Michael Goodchild's volunteerist 'citizen scientists' and economic commentator Nicholas Carr's critique on the 'ignorance of crowds'."

It was not one of my most accomplished presentations to be honest – I was talking at the end of a long day in a very hot room and my energy levels was seriously flagging. But if you’re at all interested you can download my slides from here.

The workshop was well organised, in large part, by Francesco Mazzucchelli at TraMe - Centro di studi interdisciplinare su memorie e traumi culturali, at the Università di Bologna.

It was also my first trip to Italy and I really enjoyed a spare day after the workshop to do some exploring through the centre of Bologna. A lovely historic city – best view from the top of the Asinelli Tower (see the typical tourist gaze photo I took of the cityscape at the top of this post).

2011-06-02T08:51:00.001-07:00

The Map Reader

The 'big book' is out and shipping in the UK and just about to start shipping in the US I think. The Map Reader took a large amont of my time to pull together and edit the materials but I am really pleased with the end result. Its a chunky printed object at 478 pages in hardback cover. It was a good team effort in the end working with my co-editors Rob Kitchin and Chris Perkins. The editorial and production team at Wiley also did a very good job in getting the book done.

I really like the cover design using a powerful central image that I suggested to the designers at Wiley. Although perhaps not to everyones taste - Andrew Cook (Map Archivist at the British Library) on a comment on the lis-maps mailing list said

: "An

intriguing throwback for the book cover illustration? Out on the moorland the controlling male folds and holds the map, pointing out and trying to tell the submissive female where exactly it is that he has brought her. Shades of Ellis Martin covers from the OS of the 1920s and 1930s?".

This pdf gives some more detail on The Map Reader, with the full table of contents listing the extensive range of material we chose to include, our preface explaining the aims of the book and the first interpretative essay. Details are also given on the Wiley promotional webpage. Below are images of a couple of page spreads showing a sample of the text layout and an example of the colour plates. Through the Wiley e-book library service you can also look at all six of the colour plates in the book for free (although they are large pdf files, so beware quite slow to download). But to be honest the colour plates are one of the more disappointing aspects of the book - they lack the impact that I hoped for and some of the images are simply too small on the page for legibility.

While we appreciate The Map Reader is an expensive academic book (RRP is 80 quid) and likely beyond an impulse individual purchase, it is a really nicely produced hardback volume that we hope will find a role as a valuable reference and source of ideas for researchers and students. It can be ordered direct from Wiley or from your favourite bookshop, including Amazon.

We are keen to promote The Map Reader to a wide audience and to reach beyond the small core of academic cartographers and human geographers interested in mapping. If you have any ideas please drop me a note - m.dodge@manchester.ac.uk

2011-05-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

New Paper

A paper I worked on with Matt Zook and Lomme Devriendt has just been published in Journal of Urban Technology (Vol. 18, No. 1). The title of the paper is: Cyberspatial Proximity Metrics - Reconceptualizing Distance in the Global Urban System. I was very much a third author on this and the key conceptualisation and all the analysis was undertaken by Matt and Lomme.

You can download a copy of the paper here.

Abstract: In this paper we analyze how distances between a sample of a hundred major world cities varies when measured in cyberspace. The project develops a novel spatial statistical model based upon the number of user-generated placemarks indexed by Google Maps. We demonstrate how this metric captures the “invisible” patterns of intercity information flows and helps comprehend the contours of the complex digital network that exists between large urban centers across the world. Using a specially designed software program to interrogate Google Maps, a series of keyword searches (“tourism,” “business,” “hotel”) as well as each of the city names were conducted in each of the sample places. Comparing this digital measure with the material movement of people and other relevant descriptive variables, such as national economic development and language differences, we were able to provide a cogent model that plausibly explains why certain city pairs (especially those that are physically distant) exhibit strong informational linkages. While the strength of these digital connections undoubtedly demonstrates the continued importance of physical proximity and established transport infrastructures in the twenty-first century, one can also observe significant evidence for [new?] digital “wormholes” whi ch indicates that processes of globalization driven by online interaction also operates by its own rules.

2011-05-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

Code/Space, at last, makes it to ink on sheets of dead wood

Our book Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life (MIT Press) was printed a couple of weeks ago and is now shipping in the US and is just about to be published in the UK.

I am pleased in many respects with the finished result and think it contains some interesting ideas and reads like a coherent argument around the significance of software in the production of the spaces of everyday living. Its a proper monograph eventhough its built from an existing set of journal papers we've published over the last five or so years. This promotional pdf flyer I put together gives more details on the book, including the table of contents, our preface and the first chapter.

The discussion in Code/Space is perhaps a little dated in parts and lacks full empirical detail that I would have liked (if only I had had more time for digging out factual material over last couple of years). The 'heavy lifting' in the writing load on the book was defintely taken by Rob Kitchin.

The book also is a bit thin physically I think - it needs an extra 50 pages or so to really feel like a substantial monograph. This is partly my fault I think for not contributing more to the last couple of chapters. I am also ambivalent about the book's dustjacket cover. The designer did a fair job with our suggestions for representing 'code' (city lights at night; close-ups of computer chips) and avoided the worst of corporate clipart and hackneyed montages; but the overall impression does seem borderline noir 'cyber' cliche from the 1990s. The most annoying issue about the book, from my perspective, is with the figures. A couple of the illustrations do not work well when printed in black and white - this is my fault. Also, several pages of figures - like the one below - have been incorrectly sized and poorly laid out by the typesetter, so they look a little duff.

I have been trying in the last couple of weeks to spread the word about Code/Space and hope that the stature of MIT Press and their marketing team can work to promote the book to wide audience. It will be interesting to see what reviews we pick up from geographers and hopefully some from a wider range of social scientists and perhaps beyond.

More details on the research by Rob Kitchin and myself are given on our Code/Space page. We need to do some more papers on this theme this year (I have have some draft pieces and other more speculative ideas), seek funding for in-depth empirical research and arrange for some sessions at the next AAG meeting in New York.

If you're interested please consider buying the book - its actually quite reasonably priced for an academic press! Or get you're library to order a copy. (Available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.)

2011-04-28T06:31:00.000-07:00

Visual beauty of monstrous industrial ruins?

I was in the Czech Republic the other week, on a fieldtrip with a group of geography students. We spent some time in Prague with its impressive architecture and many historical sites, but we also visited a large industrial city, Ostrava that is well off the international tourist trail.

The Ostrava regional has a been a major centre for mining and heavy industry in central Europe and the city itself has grown up around huge iron works and steel plants. One of the highlights of the trip for me was a guided tour of disused Lower Vitkovice iron works. This is a vast complex of mine workings, a coking plant, gas tanks and massive blast furnace assemblages. The site is slowly decaying since its closure and the beginning of industrial ruins have a particular kind of aesthetic that I find appealing. The sheer complexity of the machinery and mysterious nature of it original purpose, the abstract geometry and inhuman scale of the structures, and the gorgeously varied colours of the rusting metal. The image above left is one of the pictures I took and there is some more details on the site are here.

While the Manchester region has a great deal of industrial heritage, it has no vast ruins from large-scale heavy manufacturing on the scale of Ostrava. Apparently there was a large steel plant just outside Manchester proper, at Irlam on the side of the ship canal. Some historic aerial photographs of this site in its working days in the 1930s capture something of its scale. There is nothing remaining of the plant as the site is now an industrial estate and tracts of new housing.

The Partington Steel Works in 1932.
(Courtesy of Manchester Library's Local Image Collection.)

The Partington Steel Works in 1933.

(Courtesy of Manchester Library's Local Image Collection.)

2011-03-29T11:29:00.000-07:00

We've persuaded Routledge to do a paperback version of our 2009 edited collection Rethinking Maps. This was only available as an *expensive* (over-priced!) hardback and, yet, despite the £90 price tag the small print run did sell out. The pb version should be out in May and cost about £25 - some details are here.

I also worked on them to do a decent cover, replacing the bland blue corporate default they employ on all books in this series. I wanted them to use a 'blank' map in homage to the illusory mapping in The Bellman's Speech of Lewis Carroll's famous poem The Hunting of the Snark. Shown left is Routledge's cover design and they kinda don't really get the concept behind the 'blank' and have plonked the main text in the midst of the map. ho-hum...

More details on the contents of the book - which are unchanged - can be found on my blog post from July 2009.

2011-03-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

New books coming soon...
By unplanned happenstance it seems like I will have two new book out in a single month. April should see the publication of Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life (co-written with Rob Kitchin, published by MIT Press) and The Map Reader (co-edited with Chris Perkins and Rob Kitchin, published by Wiley-Blackwell). They have both taken a while in production to finish and be printed. They are both available for pre-ordering through your favourite bookshop.

We received some nice, supportive endorsements from significant academics for backcover of Code/Space:

* “Software is all around us. It is making new worlds of which we are often only faintly aware. So it is not just good to have this map of code/space, it is essential. All concerned citizens need to read it and think again about the world they inhabit.” Nigel Thrift, Vice-Chancellor, University of Warwick

* “This book represents a ‘William Gibson moment’ for the critical social sciences. Drawing upon the insights of geography, science and technology studies, and social and cultural theory, it offers an analytic encapsulation of how we should approach software and code when coming to terms with contemporary social ontology. It is a book written with a rare clarity, and it draws upon a rich set of empirical illustrations. Essential reading for all those concerned with how the social sciences should approach a world in which algorithmic power and processes of software sorting are coming to define ever more domains of everyday life.” Roger Burrows, Department of Sociology, University of York

* “Code/Space is like a travel guide to a new world—a world run on a hidden universe of computer code. With all aspects of contemporary life—from air travel to social networking, from online shopping to political violence—now orchestrated by obscure worlds of software, this dazzling book is the first to define the politics, sociology, and geography of this rapidly emerging world.” Stephen Graham, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University

2011-01-18T15:10:00.000-08:00

Bunker Books - more underground eye candy!

I am endlessly fascinated by stories, maps, charts and images of 'secret' underground spaces. I am also a sucker for large-format picture books. So I recently ordered another 'bunker book' for my overflowing office bookshelves.

This new book by Nick McCamley is a nice volume with some good details, good mix of historic and recent photographs of the different bunkers used by UK military and govt in the 2nd WW period (mainly converted underground stone quarries) and also some detailed orginal layout plans. The text is fairly readable and offers some insight into how the bunkers were acquired and operated. Given that its published by a small press, the production values are also good.

2011-01-13T11:20:00.000-08:00

The Map Reader is moving fast toward printing and publication.

We are working hard checking and correcting the page proofs. Its going to be a big book - well over 500 pages in length. There are 60 chapters, including 5 new essays we've written to introduce the different sections. The table of contents lists the wide range of key work on mapping we have chosen to excerpt.

Here is the pageproof draft of the foreword that gives some background on why we produced the book and how we made our selection of material.

2011-01-09T13:29:00.000-08:00

The book is now shipping according to Amazon.co.uk and I just noticed that Wiley put the introductory chapter, What are the 'classic' articles in cartography? , up on the product webpage.

More details, including the table of contents, on the publishers product page.

I'm currently working hard on the pageproofs for the next edited book, The Map Reader.

2010-12-17T04:38:00.000-08:00

I received a welcome early Christmas present yesterday of a boxful of my new edited book courtesy of the nice people at Wiley. I am quite pleased with the final product, I think Classics in Cartography is a handsome volume. Although not so sure the intellectual content will set the world of scholarly map research on fire..... Its also somewhat expensive for an individual purchase, although you could always ask Santa for a copy.

More details on the publishers product page.

Thanks to the range of contributors who willing provided new reflection essays for the book.

2010-10-26T14:32:00.000-07:00

Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life

We are just checking the page proofs for our book Code/Space that is nearing publication after a somewhat slow production process through much of this year.

The book has an ISBN and is now listed on the MIT Press website, although we are waiting to see what cover design is going to be applied. The RRP of £25.95 for Code/Space seems quite responsible, especially as Routledge is charging £85 for Rethinking Maps.

Code/Space is structured in four sections and has eleven chapters:

I Introduction
1 Introducing Code/Space
2 The Nature of Software
II The Difference Software Makes
3 Remaking Everyday Objects
4 The Transduction of Space
5 Automated Management
6 Software, Empowerment, and Creativity
III The Transduction of Everyday Spatialities
7 Air Travel
8 Home
9 Consumption
IV Future Code/Space
10 The Promise of Everyware
11 A Manifesto for Software Studies
Brief Glossary of Concepts
References
Index

More details on our ongoing research on code/space and various published papers are listed on this webpage.

2010-10-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

I recently reviewed a copy of From Here to There: A Curious Collection from the Hand Drawn Map Association, by Kris Harzinski (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010) for the journal Cartographica.

I was not very impressed by the book and my review is really quite negative! I conclude with:

"Overall, this volume fails to deliver an insightful intellectual understanding of the practices and meanings of hand-drawn mapping. It also fails as a coffee-table book, because the visuals and production design are not good enough. It is not even quirky enough to be the 'curious collection' claimed in the subtitle. There is clearly scope to do better with this topic!"

You can read the whole of my review here.

2010-09-26T04:07:00.000-07:00

The Map Reader manuscript all submitted, at last

We've finally finished up all the chapters for The Map Reader and I'm about to send them into our editor at Wiley. This new edited book has grown into quite a 'big beast' - it has 54 excerpts of significant academic writing about the nature of mapping, along with five introductory chapters we have authored. The book is divided into five broadly defined themes: (1) cartographic conceptualisations, (2) technologies, (3) aesthetics and design, (4) cognition and culture, (5) politics and power.

Its taken up lots of my time over four months, despite three of us editing material. Now I have to finish off collecting all the copyright permissions and then push the book through production. I would guess its going to take at least six months until it hits the shops.

The best of the draft cover designs from Wiley is shown above - its not perfect and we've asked for amendments to fonts and colours make it feel more contemporary. But I do like the central image that I suggested they use.

2010-09-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

The summer of research is rapidly coming to a close with the looming start of semester and a return to undergraduate teaching duties. It seems I spent most of the summer on editing other peoples material for three books rather than writing anything new myself.

None of the books is quite finished, despite a lot of time and energy expended - but 'Classics in Cartography' is the closest to completion. I've just checked over the book's cover one last time (shown below). The book is now listed on Wiley's website and can be pre-ordered from Amazon. All being well it will be printed and ship by December.

Now I just need to get The Map Reader manuscript finished up and submitted to Wiley for production. This is a reader style book, an anthology of 54 key pieces about cartography, along with new editorial essays. Its co-edited with Chris Perkins and Rob Kitchin. Its going to be a pretty big book!

2010-06-30T11:48:00.000-07:00

I did a short visit to Edinburgh earlier in the week and had a productive meeting with Chris Fleet who manages the maps collection at the National Library of Scotland. He is pioneering work in making a wide range of historical mapping available online in georeferenced form. We are hoping to do similar for Manchester by creating a custom historical web portal.

While exploring Edinburgh for a few hours I also came across a really nice bronze tactile map of part of the city on display near the National Gallery of Scotland.

2010-06-09T14:53:00.000-07:00

A Couple of Reviews

Firstly, a positive review of our edited book Rethinking Maps (Routledge, 2009) by Daniel Lewis has just been published in the journal Environment and Planning B.

The review starts "[t]his collection of essays marks a milestone of scholarship in critical cartography, a discourse most notably augered by the seminal work of John B Harley collected in The New Nature of Maps (2001). This collection moves forward from Harley and provides a timely summation and spur for future research in maps and mapping." Nice.

The review also mentions specifically the value of our introductory chapter and concluding 'map manifesto' in the book. These two chapters are online 'unofficially' in uncorrected page proof versions.

Secondly, our Mapping Manchester exhibition was reviewed by Adam King and Mark Sansom in Maplines, the newsletter of the British Cartographic Society (winter 2009 issue). A little late to blog this but I've only just got hold of the review. The exhibition itself finished in April but you can get a sense of the content from the e-catalogue. We have hopefully now got a publisher for a comprehensive 'coffee-table' book version of exhibition and will be signing a contract soon. Although, the book itself won't be complete for at least another 18 months.

2010-06-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on a not really Magnificient Maps exhibition....

I was in London last week and went along to the British Library to visit their new mapping exhibition.

It was busy and clearly seems popular. Visitors were all talking and quite engaged. Lots of pointing and close examination of the large maps. Many people were trying to find places they recognise or know on the maps. Many were impressed by sheer scale of some and the novelty of level geographic detail not normally seen on general purpose maps. They also seemed surprised at the quality of the old objects and how well they've preserved. (Some items in exhibition are facsimilies and not sure everyone realised this.)
The exhibition represents an impressive effort in terms of staging and marketing - with big cross over support. Obviously lots of institutional support for the exhibition and therefore maps, which is encouraging.

But I thought it was boring, and felt rather old fashioned, snobbish. Reifying the map as art object.
Walking through the collection, overall, seems very samey - ye olde 'classic' feel. Many maps displayed are largely black and white or with faded colours (The cartoon maps stand out with their bold colour). Felt very disconnected from present excitement around mapping. Why so backward looking?
Too many old European city/regional maps - I don't think thes work well - little connection to English audience. Needed more maps of Britain.
There seemed to be a scattergun selection of locational themes for the maps.
Many of the really old Medieval Mappa Mundi maps are rather meaningless I always think in terms of public display - we've completely lost their historical context. They are merely weird pictures and strange shapes, and not really mapping.
There only seem to be 2 really contemporary maps and they were rather lost amongst the throng of oldies, especially the Grayson Perry's 'Map of Nowhere' that was tucked away in a corner. 'The Island', by Stephen Walter, an immensely detailed hand-drawn imagined map of London, is actually fascinating up close. I spent quite a while finding the different places I've lived in London.

I would have liked to know how some of the maps in the exhibition came to be in the BL and how, if ever, they are used by historians.

Gallery space for exhibition was so so, rather disjointed being split into smaller room. Some rooms were rather cramped, with low ceiling and low light. Felt corridor-like. Some lighting also creates significant shadows on the maps.
Audio commentaries for several exhibits were annoying after a short while.
I felt the captions were a bit short and lacked meaty details. But difficult judgement call - its meant as a public exhibition.
Several cabinets of globes but these don't really fit well and could have been dropped.
Digital magnifying glasses for a couple of high profile examples don't really work. No other digital mapping or interactivity.
The vertical wall mounting is good as people can get up close and point things out. Opens space for shared discussion around the map. But also feels weird, too much like an art show with 'dead' maps mounted in picture frames, safely behind glass. Rather than mapping that is performed and does work in the world.
Lots of merchanise tie-ins, although all rather predictable - no surprises or charm. No real intellectual challenge to take away from the exhibition except the catalogue book.

Selection:

Selection criteria not clear. Some don't (superficially) *look* that magnificient.
No obvious chronological story told - which might have given it some narrative sense.
Not convinced by their grouping of exhibition into genres of display space (the palace, the merchant's house, the school room, etc). The spaces of display are not really brought alive.
They are almost all single, flat map sheets. Not much diversity. Surely much is missing.
Its very much the standard narrative: cartography is about power of kings, princess and churches. Land ownership dominates. Exhibition lacks the quirky, the provincial, the fun, social mapping, flows, etc, etc. All rather pompous and serious. Cartography is done by professionals, its a separate and special knowledge domain.
Not clear what you're supposed to have learnt by the end.
I'm glad I visited (and I'd recommend it if you're in London and have time) but it did not surprise me or challenge me.

2010-05-14T11:49:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some digging around for old maps and plans relating to the development of the Universities in Manchester and some of the iconic academic buildings. I've found some fascinating material in the archives and stores of University of Manchester Estates department. Some of this material will be folded into a chapter in a future 'Mapping Manchester' coffee-table style book. (We are in discussions with a publisher at the moment and are hopeful of getting a contract.)

One of the university buildings that most fascinates me is the Maths Tower, a striking late 1960s block that was located on Oxford Road. The photo above shows an original design model of it by the architects and below is a sectional plan. The Maths Tower was demolished in 2005, just when I joined the University Of Manchester so sadly I never got to go inside. The replacement building - University Place - is an uninspiring piece of architecture I think and very bland interior wise.

More information and lots of good photographs are available on Nick Higham's website about the Maths Tower.

A scan of an original architects drawing for the Maths Tower.
(Courtesy of the University of Manchester Estates Department.)

2010-04-12T14:58:00.000-07:00

Mapping the Imagined Futurity

Here is a draft of a new paper analysing the different roles of the many visual representations found in 1945 City of Manchester Plan. It is co-written with my colleague Chris Perkins and has been submitted for a theme issue on Manchester in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library. The 1945 Plan is an impressive feat of urban planning and now a fascinating historical document when read with over 60 years of hindsight to see how much Manchester has changed. At some point when I find some spare time I want to put a scan of the full Plan as a resource on www.mappingmanchester.org.

I like the term 'futurity' used in the paper's title, although my co-author Chris thinks its far too pretentious .....

2010-03-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

Our exhibition Mapping Manchester has ended today. I am going into Rylands Library tomorrow to help empty the display cabinets and arrange the safe return of various items we borrowed from other collections. The exhibition was a success I think and seemed to spark a lot of public interest, as well as being enjoyed by some Royal visitors a few weeks ago. Its a shame to end the exhibition but it was always going to be temporary. We are also developing plans for a follow-on 'coffee table' style book.

In other news, my colleague and exhibition co-curator Chris Perkins was interviewed for a BBC Radio 4 documentary On the Map. You can listen to the programme online for another couple of days.

2010-03-14T15:50:00.000-07:00

A draft cover design for a new edited book I am just completing. It reprints 10 'classic' articles on different aspects of cartographic theory and mapping research published over the last thirty years in the journal Cartographica. The articles are accompanied by newly commissioned reflective essays considering the significance of the original ideas. It is being published by Wiley-Blackwell and should (hopefully!) be out by the end of the year.

The main image in the cover design is courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey's multimedia gallery. The original photograph is from 1957 and is titled 'USGS Mapper at Work'. Apparently, it shows an unamed 'map editor plots General Land Office (GLO) data on a Shaw Mountain, Oregon manuscript'.

2010-03-10T14:18:00.000-08:00

'Mapping Manchester and its Hidden Hydraulic Engineering'

This is a shortened and adapted version of our 'hydraulic city' paper with an added outline on our Mapping Manchester exhibition. It has been published in the professional magazine, Civil Engineering Surveyor with a nice range of relevant illustrations. You can also read the magazine as an online e-book.

2010-03-07T14:21:00.000-08:00

We featured part of a Soviet era map of Manchester in our exhibition. This 'invasion' map garnered a fair amount of press coverage last August (see links to stories here) and seemed to sparke a surprising amount of public interest (despite their rather dull visual design).

There are four topographic sheets cover Manchester area. These have been scanned by the Rylands Library and are now shared online in their LUNA image browser. Hopefully the browser window is shown below.

You can buy reprints of these Soviet maps from the University of Southampton's cartography unit.

2010-01-31T15:00:00.000-08:00

Chris Perkins and myself are giving a talk at a conference in Liverpool in a couple of weeks. This presentation will be some of the initial research we have done on the envisioning of the hydraulic city that is coming out of our ongoing 'Mapping Manchester' project.

Our paper is entitled "Maps, Memories and Manchester: The Cartographic Imagination of the Hidden Networks of the Hydraulic City". The paper analyses how various aspects of water supply and management have been made possible through maps and plans. Its a work in progress and we'd welcome comments. Hopefully, we will also get some useful feedback when we read the paper at Mapping, Memory and the City: An International Interdisciplinary Conference, being held at the University of Liverpool, 25-26th February 2010. The conference is organised by the 'City in Film' project at Liverpool University.

2010-01-31T04:21:00.000-08:00

I gave a public talk on my 'code/space' research at URBIS at the end of last year. A short article based on the presentation has been written up and published in the Urbis Research Forum Review (vol 1, issue 2, January 2010).

The presentation and article builds upon ongoing research on the social and spatial role of software in everyday life. Much of this work is collaborative with Rob Kitchin. More information and links to our other papers on this theme are here.

2009-12-21T10:30:00.000-08:00

I am organising a session for the Royal Geographical Society conference next summer. The call for papers is below.

Call for papers 2010 RGS-IBG Annual International Conference,
1-3rd September 2010, London, UK

Mapping Underground

Representing Subterranean Spaces, Practices and Cultures

Session organisers:
Martin Dodge and Chris Perkins
Geography, School of Environment & Development, University of Manchester

Context:
What lies beneath the ground is hidden and usually unrepresented but is vital for many spaces and practices occurring above. In these concealed and largely impenetrable subterranean spaces lurk unknown dangers and the possibilities for adventurous exploration; moreover they serve as potentially profitable resources, as engineering challenges to overcome, as risks to be mapped and managed, as a spring of spiritual well-being or the site of death and burial, as the source of artefacts of the human past to be recovered and conserved, and as a scientific record of geologic histories. The diversity of subterranean spaces, practices and cultures have attracted scholarly attention including concern for symbolic and multi-layered mythologies of representation (Rosalind Williams, David Pike), the strangely sublime nature of underground infrastructures like drains and ducts (Paul Dobraszczyk, Geoff Manaugh), the psychic anxieties of the unmappable underground (Steve Pile), the political economy and social ecology of subterranean facilities and flow (Matthew Gandy, Maria Kaika). Beyond the academy there is also burgeoning ‘amateur’ interest in charting the subterranean extent of cities (with substantial books documenting the arcane underground features of, for example, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Manhattan), along with obsessive collecting behaviour of enthusiasts mapping out all the tunnels and ‘lost’ stations, and recording war-time bunkers, emergency shelters and other forgotten subterranean heritage.

On most topographic maps the representation of space stops at the ground level but there are many specialised geographic visualizations of the underground. Examples include colourful and cryptically labelled geological maps, complex engineering plans of tunnels and sewers, volumetric models, and profiles of strata employed in oil exploration and mineral extraction, geo-physical subsurface displays produced with reflected mapping of radar and sound waves penetrating the solid ground surface. We seek theoretically informed papers that consider how and why the underground has been mapped (and not mapped), relating characteristics of subterranean spaces to different forms of representational practice and visual culture.

Suggested themes might be across the following binaries:

Mapping the underground as spaces of weapons and war / representing the underground as a safe refuge and as peaceful resting place

Mapping subterranean transportation, flow and mobility / mapping hidden infrastructures of governance, control and monitoring

Subterranean spaces of scientific knowledges: geological, geophysical, mineralogical, archaeological, climatic science, speleological, and palaeontological mapping practices / mythological understandings, deeper senses and alternate ways of knowing what lies below

The underground as impenetrable, secret, and unknown / urban exploration, photographic exposure and subterranean touristic experiences

The Hadean underworld symbolized as site of death and damnation / the earthly underground charted as source of life, rebirth and healing

Aesthetic and artistic challenges to envision the underground / technological capacities to more accurately survey subterranean spaces

Subterranean sanitary potential for clean water and cleansing wastes / underground spaces seen as soiled, pathogenic, polluted and polluting

Mapping space for rubbish dumps and disposal / representing subterranean resources and potential extractive riches

Mapping human / non-human animal underground practices

Mapping underground spaces of punishment and imprisonment / representing subterranean escape and evasion

Mapping the everyday mundane subterranean city / representing the inexplicable, exotic or fantastical things lurking down below

Imagined and romanticised undergrounds / mapping the materially engineered and mechanical reality of subterranean services

Mapping organic, active and living underground ecologies / solid subterranean spaces seen as lifeless voids or inert geological matter

Mapping the liminal boundary between above / below

---
Proposed papers with a title and short abstract (250 words maximum) should be submitted to Martin Dodge (m.dodge@manchester.ac.uk) by 31 January 2010. Further details on conference are at www.rgs.org/AC2010

2009-12-20T15:22:00.000-08:00

We got a lot of snow today. Here is an atmospheric picture I took of some woods near where I live. It was just a snap but I really like the light and feel captured in the image.

2009-12-16T11:49:00.000-08:00

I recently applied for a Harley Research Fellowship in the history of cartography. I am very pleased to say I have been awarded a fellowship with funding to do a spell of archival research in London. I am planning to do this sometime next summer and will be working primarily in The National Archives looking for mapping related to Second World War bombing of Manchester. The title of my project is 'War Time Civilian Cartography: Investigating the Mapping of Manchester Before, During and After the Second World War'. The image above shows an example of a bomb census tracing.

The Harley Fellowship is named in honour of the noted historical geographer and cartography scholar Brian Harley.

2009-12-04T12:40:00.000-08:00

I thought it was interesting that the Guardian newspaper felt compelled to post a clarification on access to the Soviet 'invasion' map in our Mapping Manchester exhibition. Apparently, their original story in August was misleading.

2009-11-18T13:28:00.000-08:00

Cool enough to be Copied!!

Just been told by Rob that our edited book Rethinking Maps has been pirated and the whole content is currently free online. Its interesting how its become feasible with cheap scanners and pdf software to copy whole books very quickly and widely distribute them online.

More details on the book are given on the publishers page and if you're very keen you can actually BUY a copy!

We will see if the piracted version stays online...........

2009-11-13T11:37:00.000-08:00

A web version of our exhibition has been created on the Rylands Library site. It is a useful addition and contains a number of maps and plans from the exhibition as pdf downloads. The plans and photographs from the 1945 City of Manchester Plan are really interesting.

It can also be consulted alongside the e-catalogue which contains more images and a full list of items in the exhibition.

The physical exhibition in the Rylands Library on Deansgate runs for another couple of months, until next January 17th.

2009-10-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

I have put up an initial web page to support the ongoing Mapping Manchester research. Its a bit of a holding page at the moment, basically providing links for the exhibition.

I am working on a page of scans of maps and plans of the the Manchester Ship Canal from Bosdin Leech's 1907 book.

2009-10-06T12:43:00.000-07:00

I thought people might be interested in the e-catalogue booklet we have produced for our Mapping Manchester exhibition. It is available as a free pdf. Here is a sample page:

(A version with higher resolution graphics is also available but its 30 megs.)

2009-10-04T12:54:00.000-07:00

A contemporary version of a 'drink map' for Manchester. This one maps self-report points of public drunkenness and rowdy behaviour shown as red dots. However, I'm not sure there is any particular spatial pattern evident. The map is one of many presented in recent social analysis of the city in the State of the Wards Report 2008/2009 (warning - 20 meg pdf).

2009-09-18T13:30:00.000-07:00

This drink map provides a fascinating historical representation of the social geography of the city from 1889. It is taken from the 'Moral Economy' display cabinet in our 'Mapping Manchester' exhibition.

The Drink Map of Manchester, 1889.
(Source: Manchester Geographical Society.)

=================

The moral city

Temperance reformers in the late Victorian period argued for a causal connection between poverty and the distribution of places where the demon drink could be purchased. A ‘rash’ of outlets are seen to cluster in the poorer parts of Manchester on the Drink Map. A tension between the pleasures of drink and its opposition to an ethos of propriety and hard work is mapped out. Alcohol consumption continues to evoke strong emotions, currently in connection with the effects of binge drinking, and mapping illustrates it to be a significantly greater problem in some parts of the contemporary city.

Statistical map of binge drinking, from
Manchester’s 2nd State of the Wards Report, 2007/2008
(Courtesy of the Manchester Partnership and Manchester City Council,
www.manchesterpartnership.org.uk)

2009-08-29T14:25:00.000-07:00

We got a big burst of media coverage for our Mapping Manchester exhibition on Wednesday and Thursday following a clever press release by the University's media officer. This got picked up by the Manchester Evening News and the Guardian, who did an interview with my colleague Chris Perkins. The next day rehashed stories appeared in many of the papers, including The Mirror. The highlight was an interview with Chris in the 'and finally' slot of the News at 10.
The Russians are denying the validity of the story, claiming the map is a fake.

2009-08-16T13:03:00.000-07:00

Another couple of examples from the 'Public Transport' display cabinet in our 'Mapping Manchester' exhibition.

Network map detailing rail passenger statistics by station.
(Source: Transport Statistics: Greater Manchester, 2005.)

=================

Public transport

Most people in Manchester move around the city using public transport. Changes in network patterns have been mapped out over the last century and a half. Some of these maps promote the effectiveness of bus, train and tram routes and stations across Manchester. Others emphasise a more practical use and are designed to help passengers find their way. Policy makers have also created mapping to help them monitor passenger numbers, travel times, and to plan where future lines need to be developed. Largescale surveys of stations, tramways, or railway lines conducted at different times reveal a fascinating level of historical detail about the
local significance of public transport to the city.

Reproduced from The Picc-Vic Project brochure, Greater Manchester Council, 1975. The ambitious early 1970s plans for an underground link between Piccadilly and Victoria stations were never realised despite this mapping. (Some more details on the Picc-Vic wikipedia page.)

2009-07-28T12:07:00.000-07:00

Here is another map we have featured in our 'Mapping Manchester' exhibition in the Rylands Library. It is a nice example of transport mapping displayed in 'Car and the City' cabinet that focuses on surveys and plans of car travel and new road schemes.

Flowline map reproduced from
S.E.L.N.E.C. A Highway Plan, 1962

(Courtesy of Chetham's Library)

The daily flow of vehicle traffic on major routes into Manchester is dramatised here as black arterials that converge on the city centre, nearly obliterating places unlucky enough to be underneath. The map indicates in a powerful fashion that traffic volumes were overwhelming current capacity.

=================

The car and the city

The rapid expansion of car ownership since the 1950s has had a profound effect on Manchester. New routes have cut across the city and many roads have been widened and reconfigured. The planners responsible for these new highways have relied on a multitude of maps and models.

The map displayed here is the triumphal product of the South-East Lancashire and North-East Cheshire Area Highway Engineering Committee. The flagship representation of their 1962 Highway Plan set forth the need for numerous road building schemes deemed essential once funds became available. It symbolises the hopes of the early 1960s that visionary planning could, through scientific analysis, improve the functioning of roads and thus the efficiency of the city region. Much of this grand vision was never realised, although some key aspects of the inner and outer ring roads have come to pass, albeit in a the piecemeal fashion. What has become the M60 orbital motorway took until 2000 to realise.

2009-07-23T11:55:00.000-07:00

Rethinking Maps: New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory

Edited by Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin and Chris Perkins

Our edited book is finally out in print. Its taken a while as it started life as a session at the RGS-IBG conference in August 2006.

The book contains 12 original chapters. Unfortunately, it is only published in hardback and is tad expensive. Also, the cover is rather bland; Routledge would not use our nice design idea of a blank map.

1. Thinking about Maps
By Rob Kitchin, Chris Perkins and Martin Dodge

2. Rethinking Maps and Identity: Choropleths, Clines and Biopolitics
By Jeremy W. Crampton

3. Rethinking Maps from a more-than-human Perspective: Nature-society, Mapping, and Conservation Territories
By Leila Harris and Helen Hazen

4. Web mapping 2.0
By Georg Gartner

5. Modelling the Earth: A Short History
By Michael F. Goodchild

6. theirwork: the Development of Sustainable Mapping
By Dominica Williamson and Emmet Connolly

7. Cartographic Representation and the Construction of Lived Worlds: Understanding Cartographic Practice as Embodied Knowledge
By Amy Propen

8. The 39 Steps and the Mental Map of Classical Cinema
By Tom Conley

9. The Emotional Life of Maps and Other Visual Geographies
By Jim Craine and Stuart Aitken

10. Playing with Maps
By Chris Perkins

11. Ce n.est pas le Monde [This is not the world]
By John Krygier and Denis Wood

12. Mapping Modes, Methods and Moments: A Manifesto for Map Studies
By Martin Dodge, Chris Perkins and Rob Kitchin

Page proof versions of chapters 1 and 12 can also be read online.

2009-07-13T11:05:00.000-07:00

The 'view from nowhere'? Spatial politics and cultural significance of high-resolution satellite imagery

The theme issue I have been co-editing with Chris Perkins is now officially published in Geoforum. There are five papers and a fairly lengthy introductory essay from us.

Geoforum, vol. 40, No. 4, July 2009

Edited by Martin Dodge and Chris Perkins

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00167185

1. Theme introduction: The 'view from nowhere'? Spatial politics and cultural significance of high-resolution satellite imagery
Martin Dodge, Chris Perkins
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.04.011

2. Walter Benjamin's Dionysian Adventures on Google Earth
Paul Kingsbury, John Paul Jones III
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.10.002

3. NGOs as intelligence agencies: The empowerment of transnational advocacy networks and the media by commercial remote sensing in the case of the Iranian nuclear program
Sean Aday, Steven Livingston
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.12.006

4. Placemarks and waterlines: Racialized cyberscapes in post-Katrina Google Earth
Michael Crutcher, Matthew Zook
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.01.003

5. Digging into Google Earth: An analysis of 'Crisis in Darfur'
Lisa Parks
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.04.004

6. Satellite imagery and the spectacle of secret spaces
Chris Perkins, Martin Dodge
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.04.012

2009-07-11T13:18:00.000-07:00

Over the next few weeks I will post scans of some of the maps and plans we have featured in our 'Mapping Manchester' exhibition in the Rylands Library. To start with 'Wealth and Poverty' cabinet that focused on surveys and plans of housing conditions and new development schemes.

Sales map for the Oaks Estate, 1843
(Courtesy of Manchester City Library and Archives)

Wealth and Poverty

Manchester’s burst of population growth in the first half of the nineteenth century brought with it severe housing problems. By the 1840s the ‘Shock City’ became notorious for its slums.

Concerted efforts from social reformers to improve the housing of the poor can be seen in the cartographic results of their surveys. Richard Bastow’s survey in the late 1880s mapped out the age of housing as part of a sanitary campaign, and in 1904 a report on housing conditions, produced by The Citizens’ Association of Manchester, included a detailed map of housing quality. The areas of worst housing were shaded in dark colours, and the map shows a cluster which almost completely encircles the commercial core of the city. (A nice online interface to this map is availabile here.)

From the mid-nineteenth century private estates of substantial suburban villas were constructed, away from the poverty and crime of the inner neighbourhoods, for the affluent beneficiaries of Manchester’s industrial prosperity. An example of these developments can be seen in the sales map for the Oaks Estate, planned in 1843 (shown above). In its bucolic design, individual houses are arranged in their own wooded grounds with curving driveways. The area of Oaks Estate is now occupied by the, not quite so elite, Owens Park student halls of residence of the University of Manchester!

2009-06-26T03:44:00.000-07:00

Our exhibition Mapping Manchester is now open to the public in Rylands Library. The photo above shows the invited guests to the 'private view' from Wednesday evening, with the Reading Room lit up in bright sunshine. (Photograph taken by Antonio da Cruz.)

Some details on the exhibition are given in the press release to promote it to the media. BBC Manchester have featured a slideshow of images from the exhibition, including the city centre map from the 1945 Plan.

2009-06-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

A couple of pictures of display cabinets in our Mapping Manchester exhibition from the initial fit out. Above is part of the 'city and the car' cabinet and below is the 'industry' one. The exhibition opens on Thursdays 25th June.

2009-06-10T13:46:00.001-07:00

Some more information on my Mapping Manchester exhibition is given in this leaflet. Download a PDF version from here.

2009-06-05T01:24:00.000-07:00

For the last few months I have been putting together a public exhibition with my colleague Chris Perkins. The exhibition is entitled Mapping Manchester: Cartographic Stories of the City and it is due to open on the 25th June 2009. The promo poster image is shown above.

The aim of exhibition is to reveal some of the ways in which mapping is ingrained into urban life. It seeks to demonstrates how maps work and change over time in response to technology, society and economic imperatives, highlighting visually striking cartographic representations of Manchester. It showcases the wealth of cartographic ‘treasures’ held by the University of Manchester and other institutions in the city, including generous loans of materials from the Manchester City Library and Archives and Chetham’s Library. The maps exhibited are more than just ‘pretty pictures’: they are powerful tools instrumental in the making of the contemporary Manchester, and can be read as rich stories of urban life.

The exhibition is being held in the Reading Room of the John Rylands Library on Deansgate in the central Manchester.

A historic picture of the Reading Room.

I hope that we get some visitors. I will post details on the maps in exhibition in future blog posts.

2009-05-27T11:21:00.000-07:00

Software and Automatic Production of Space theme issue

The theme issue I have co-edited with Rob Kitchin and Matt Zook has now been published formally in Environment and Planning A, vol 41, no 6.

You can read our guest editorial: How does software make space? Exploring some geographical dimensions of pervasive computing and software studies, by Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin and Matthew Zook.

The theme issue includes the following six papers:

Intensive movement in wireless digital signal processing: from calculation to envelopment, by Adrian Mackenzie

The Software Slump?: digital music, the democratisation of technology, and the decline of the recording studio sector within the musical economy, by Andrew Leyshon

Worlds of affect: virtual geographies of video games, by Ian Graham Ronald Shaw and Barney Warf

Software, objects, and home space, by Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin

The software-simulated airworld: anticipatory code and affective aeromobilities, by Lucy Budd and Peter Adey

Infrastructures of the imagined island: software, mobilities, and the architecture of Caribbean paradise, by Mimi Sheller

2009-04-10T14:39:00.000-07:00

Software and Space Theme Issue
I have been co-editing a theme issue for Environment and Planning A coming out of sessions at the 2007 AAG conference. The theme issue has six papers and should be published in June. A bunch of the papers are now online as pre-publication articles:

The Software-Simulated Airworld: Anticipatory Code and Affective Aeromobilities, by Lucy Budd and Peter Adey.
Intensive Movement in Wireless Digital Signal Processing: From Calculation to Envelopment, by Adrian Mackenzie.
Worlds of Affect: Virtual Geographies of Video Games, by Ian Shaw and Barney Warf.

A draft of the theme issue introduction, co-written with Rob Kitchin and Matt Zook, is also available: How Does Software Make Space? Exploring Some Geographical Dimensions of Pervasive Computing and Software Studies.

I also co-authored a paper for theme issue with Rob Kitchin, titled, Software, Objects and Home Space which is forthcoming in June issue of Environment and Planning A.

Abstract:
Through a series of interrelated developments, software is imbuing everyday objects with capacities that allow them to do additional and new types of work. On the one hand, objects are remade and recast through interconnecting circuits of software that make them machine readable. On the other, objects are gaining calculative capacities and awareness of their environment that allow them to conduct their own work, with only intermittent human oversight, as part of diverse actant networks. In the first part of the paper we examine the relationship between objects and software in detail, constructing a taxonomy of new types of coded objects. In the second part we explore how the technicity of different kinds of coded objects is mobilised to transduce space by considering the various ways in which coded objects are reshaping home life in different domestic spaces.

2009-04-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

I attended the AAG conference last week in Las Vegas. I participated in a panel organised by Renee Sieber titled Neogeographers meet Paleogeographers (here are my slides for the panelists' 5 minute intro). I also gave a presentation titled 'Software surveillance of farms, farmers and food', in paper session on Spaces of Surveillance: Power and Control in the Information Age organised by Hille Koskela and Francisco Klauser. (The slides of my talk are available here.)

I also co-organised a successful double session discussing Is Google Good for Geography, with Matt Zook. Despite being on the last day of the conference we had a packed seminar room.

2009-04-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

Here is a small selection of photos from a recent trip to the USA and visits to some lovely national parks in Arizona and Utah.

View of the Grand Canyon.

Geographer at the canyon - typically touristic shot.

A view of a pillar of stone at Bryce Canyon.

Another shot of me in a small snow storm at Bryce Canyon.
Me again, this time at Zion national park, which I thought was stunning.

2009-03-08T14:23:00.000-07:00

You can see the detail of Marr's map of housing conditions in Manchester and Salford in 1904 on this nice web interface. A scan of the map is georeferenced and overlaid onto contemporary base mapping. Produced by Alex Singleton and colleagues at UCL.

2009-03-01T13:17:00.000-08:00

A lovely old thematic map of Manchester showing housing conditions in 1904. Taken from T.R. Marr, Housing Conditions in Manchester and Salford. Scanned by Alex Singleton and colleagues at UCL.

2009-02-28T13:06:00.000-08:00

Rethinking Maps: New Frontier in Cartographic Theory

At the moment I am doing the page proofs for our edited book, Rethinking Maps. The book should be published in June 2009; you can pre-order from Amazon.co.uk if you're really keen! I have made available pdfs of the uncorrected page proofs of the introductory and concluding chapters for anyone interested. Here are the preliminary pages that list the chapters and the contributors.

Chapter 1: Thinking About Maps, by Rob Kitchin, Chris Perkins and Martin Dodge.

Chapter 12: Mapping Modes, Methods and Moments: A Manifesto for Map Studies, by Martin Dodge, Chris Perkins and Rob Kitchin.

2009-02-24T02:03:00.001-08:00

Mapping Stories: Why Do Geographers Make Maps?

Hello, I have put together a double session of papers for the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference this summer in Manchester. The sessions are co-organised with Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crampton. The aim is to bring together papers about the processes underpinning spatial knowledge claims. They marry local storytelling to a critical and contextual emphasis on how and why geographers make, and have made maps. And equally why some geographers don’t make maps anymore.

The papers are listed below and the short abstracts are available here.

Session one:

1. From Cartography to Neogeography
Steve Chilton

2. Reconstructing the Map: Post-communist Cartographic Identities in Latvia and Slovenia
Alex Kent, Department of Geography, University of Southampton

3. Mapping the Everyday
Sarah West, Community Scientist- OPAL (Open-Air Laboratories) Stockholm Environment, Institute University of York

4. Uneasy Cartographies: Practicing Participatory Mapping and Critical Geography within the Academy
Sarah Elwood, Department of Geography, University of Washington

5. Database Ethnographies: Using Social Science Methodologies to Enhance Data Analysis and Interpretation
Nadine Schuurman, Geography, Simon Fraser University

Session two:

1. Trends and Approaches in Cartographic Textbooks and Teaching
David Forrest, Dept of Geographical & Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow

2. Mapping as Tools in Critical Thinking and Engagement with Principles of Social Justice: Stories from Montserrat and Singapore
Tracey Skelton, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore

3. Elements of Ludic Cartography: Videogame Design Laid Bare
Ifan D H Shepherd, Middlesex University, London, UK

4. Maps, Minds, and Mysteries
Stanley D. Brunn, Department of Geography, University of Kentucky

2009-01-30T10:27:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week I gave a lunchtime seminar at the University of York to the Science and Technology Studies Unit. The title of my talk was "A New Countryside Code? Software, Surveillance, Simulation of Rural Spaces". If you are interested the slides are available here.

2009-01-24T13:41:00.000-08:00

Pervasive Computing and the Subtle Surveillance of Everything

I've done a book review of Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence (2008) for the journal Surveillance & Society.

Book details as follows:

David Wright, Serge Gutwirth, Michael Friedewald, Elena Vildjiounaite and Yves Punie editors (2008) Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence. London, Springer. 291pp. Hardback $159.00 (US), £91.00 (UK). ISBN-978-1-4020-6661-0.

2009-01-16T02:03:00.000-08:00

I have been co-editing a theme issue in the journal Geoforum with Chris Perkins. The title of is 'The view from nowhere? Spatial politics and cultural meanings of satellite imagery'; it emerged from sessions we organised at the AAG conference in 2007.

The papers for the theme issue are now all coming together and the first article by Paul Kingsbury and John Paul Jones III has recently appeared online in the journal's 'in press' section. (You can download an copy from here and it is also available the on Geoforum site for those with access.)

We hope the full theme issue will be out officially by the end of the year.

------
Walter Benjamin’s Dionysian Adventures on Google Earth

Paul Kingsbury
Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada

John Paul Jones III
Department of Geography and Regional Development, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, United States

Received 16 October 2007; revised 4 September 2008. Available online 24 December 2008.

Abstract:
This paper argues, following Friedrich Nietzsche, that recent evaluations of Google Earth uncritically privilege the product’s Apollonian determinations at the expense of its Dionysian uncertainties. Specifically, when we understand Google Earth as a virtual globe composed of surveyed panoramas, sober rationalization, dystopic control, and transparent order – or, even, as a tool for participation and empowerment – we undersell its capacities as an alluring digital peep-box, an uncertain orb spangled with vertiginous paranoia, frenzied navigation, jubilatory dissolution, and intoxicating giddiness. We argue that the former interpretations not only risk foreclosing our theorizations about how Google Earth is actually used in various ways and different contexts, they also reproduce a one-dimensional and conservative reading of technology that can be traced back (at least) to the writings of Theodor Adorno. By drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin (Adorno’s critic and pen pal for more than a decade) we aim to ‘go beyond Apollo and Adorno’ by illustrating the extent to which Apollonian order and Dionysian love makes Google Earth go round. To do this, we examine Google Earth as a “digital peep-box” with an online collective that revels in its “Spot the Black Helicopter” competitions; illuminated profanities; alien and giant insect invaders; naked sunbathers; and crashed transport planes in Darfur.

Keywords: Google Earth; GIS and society; Participatory GIS; Critical cartography; Walter Benjamin; Friedrich Nietzsche

2009-01-16T01:41:00.000-08:00

Call for Papers: 2009 RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, 26-28th August 2009, Manchester, UK

Mapping Stories: Why Do Geographers Make Maps?

Session organisers:
Chris Perkins and Martin Dodge
Geography, School of Environment & Development, University of Manchester

Jeremy Crampton
Department of Geosciences, Georgia State University

Context:
Research in the history of science and technology increasingly accepts the need for ethnographic approaches to the construction of knowledge, which follow key actors in the process, and also trace the inscriptions they leave behind (Latour 1987). Geographers have only recently begun to explore their own knowledge communities in this way (see for example Barnes 2004; Livingstone and Withers 2005), reflecting critically on the contextual significance of place, and the political significance of historical processes in our making and imagining of spaces. But the discursive power of narrative in the construction of particular geographical imaginations has long been recognised (see Gregory 1993). This session seeks to bring these two approaches together to deepen our understanding of the processes underpinning spatial knowledge claims, by marrying storytelling to a critical and contextual emphasis on why geographers make, and have made maps. And equally why some geographers don’t make maps anymore.

Last year’s conference included well-attended methodological sessions focusing on maps that matter to geographers but little is known about why mapping might be deployed across different areas of the discipline, or about the reasons for changing relations between cartographic practices and geography. We invite papers that focus in a critical way on this relation, and tell particular and positioned stories about the strongly contested, ambiguous and fluid links between representational practice, image use, technologies of production and learning with mapping in the academy. We are interested in new insights into what geographers do and how geographical knowledge emerges. Tell us your local mapping story!

Suggested themes:
1. Changing pedagogic uses of mapping
2. Institutional influences on mapping practice
3. Technologies and changing research emphases
4. Aesthetics and the politics of design
5. Changing roles of the maps and other illustrations in published research
6. The materiality of mapping in the neo-liberal academy
7. Mapping spaces and academic identities
8. The public image of geographers and mapping stereotypes

----
Proposed papers with a title and short abstract (250 words maximum) should be submitted to Chris Perkins (c.perkins@manchester.ac.uk) by 5th February 2009. Further details on conference are at www.rgs.org/AC2009

Download this Call for Papers in PDF format.

2008-11-17T12:25:00.000-08:00

Worldwide Universities Network Virtual Seminar

I gave a video-conference talk last week considering the question, 'Do we need user-generated mapping?'. The presentation was part of the Autumn 2008 Global GIS Academy seminar series on neogeography. You can download the slides of my talk from here, although they do not make much sense in themselves.

2008-11-11T11:54:00.000-08:00

Map Studies Manifesto

The complete manuscript of our edited book Rethinking Maps has now been submitted to the publisher Routledge. A draft of the concluding chapter titled 'Mapping modes, methods and moments: a manifesto for map studies' is now available online. The book's introductory chapter is also online. Feedback is welcome.

The image left is our idea for the book cover using the concept of the 'blank map' from Lewis Carroll's poem Hunting of the Snark. Not sure if we can persuade Routledge to go with as the cover, we shall see.

Hopefully the book will be in bookshops by mid 2009.

2008-11-02T02:35:00.000-08:00

Walked along an interesting stretch of the Peak Forest canal through Hyde yesterday afternoon, including where it passes under the M67 motorway. Took this photograph of the juxtaposition of old and new transportation. Its hard to imagine the canals as a busy transportation network now.

2008-10-27T14:44:00.000-07:00

AAG sessions - Is Google Good For Geography? Web2.0 and the Political Economy of User Generated Geographical Knowledge

Hello, Matt Zook and myself have pulled together a double session with 9 papers and a discussant for next AAG annual meeting.

The contributors are as follows:

Elad Segev, Intentional and Unintentional Biases in Google Earth and Google Maps
Tim Wallace, Has Google Homogenized our Landscape?
Marc Boeckler, Tourism and Imaginative Geographies 2.0
Andrew Boulton, Problematizing participation in the geoweb: Google Maps and the ideology of invitation
Jeremy Crampton, Mapping Without a Net: Only for Google to Rope Us In?
Matthew Zook, Mapping the GeoWeb: The Spatial Contours of Web 2.0 Cyberspace
Sean Gorman, Can the GeoWeb Get the Public to Care about Geography? The Positive Externalities of a Web Enabled Ecosystem
Michael Crutcher, Placemarks and Waterlines: Racialized Cyberscapes in Post Katrina Google Earth
Richard Tomlinson, The Influence of Google on Urban Policy in Developing
Countries
Michael F. Goodchild, Discussant

Note, we have not decided quite yet on the planned running order of
presentations.

A list of the paper abstracts is here.

2008-10-18T13:43:00.000-07:00

Fame at Last! I recently submitted a photograph I took on the nearby hills to the local free newspaper, the Glossop Advertiser. This week they printed it in their Reader's Views feature.

The photograph is reproduced below. It shows aircraft crash debris on Mill Hill, with a view of Bleaklow in the background.

2008-10-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

A word cloud created from the text in a Rethinking Maps, an edited book I am trying hard to finish off. The image was created using Wordle, a fun online for generating clouds.

2008-10-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

Atlas of Cyberspace book - full content for free!

A book I co-authored with Rob Kitchin in 2001 is now available for free online. The book is basically out of print now, so we decided to get the copyright back from the publisher Pearson. (The full content can be downloaded here, made available on Creative Commons License. )

Dowload for free:

Full book - low resolution graphics - 28 MB pdf

Full book - high resolution graphics - 228 MB pdf

Download by sections (warning some pdf files are very big):

Many thanks to Pearson for willingly granting the copyright back to us and to their staff for handling this process so efficiently.

If you're still interested in getting a hard copy of the Atlas of Cyberspace there are a good number of second hand copies available to buy (e.g. see AbeBooks listing).

------

Atlas of Cyberspace by Martin Dodge & Rob Kitchin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

2008-10-05T14:34:00.001-07:00

Managed to get OSM into the RGS!

Graham Bowden, in the Cartographic Unit at the university used data for central London from OpenStreetMap to produce a nice custom location map for the back of the programme of the prestigious Royal Geographical Society conference this summer. This is a bit of wiki-map coup as the RGS is, in some senses, the home of 'old school' cartography and last year they used a rather nasty looking Google map on their programme.

Graham's OSM-derived location is available as a nicer pdf from here.

2008-10-05T14:20:00.000-07:00

Walking this afternoon in the sunshine on the hill above Hayfield. Above is a view towards Lantern Pike. Below is a view down a lane towards Knder Scout.

2008-09-29T11:50:00.000-07:00

Participating in a fieldtrip to Keswick last week, I managed to sneak away one evening to visit Castlerigg stone circle above the town and surrounded by hills.

2008-09-20T07:43:00.000-07:00

The edited book, Rethinking Maps, that I have been working on for a good while is nearing completion. Here is the introductory chapter, 'Thinking About Maps', by Rob Kitchin and Chris Perkins.

The book itself will be published by Routledge and will (hopefully) be out next spring. The contents of the book is as follows:

1. Thinking about maps
Rob Kitchin and Chris Perkins

2. Rethinking maps and identity: choropleths, clines and biopolitics
Jeremy Crampton

3. Rethinking maps from a more-than-human perspective: Nature-society, mapping, and conservation territories
Leila Harris and Helen Hazen

4. Web mapping 2.0
Georg Gartner

5. Modelling the earth: A short history
Michael Goodchild

6. theirwork: the development of sustainable mapping
Dominica Williamson & Emmet Connolly

7. Cartographic representation and the construction of lived worlds: understanding cartographic practice as embodied knowledge
Amy Propen

8. The 39 Steps and the mental map of classical cinema
Tom Conley

9. The emotional life of maps and other visual geographies
Jim Craine and Stuart Aitken

10. Playing with maps
Chris Perkins

11. Ce n’est pas le monde (This is not the world)
John Krygier and Denis Wood

2008-09-18T14:14:00.000-07:00

Call for papers - 2009 Association of American Geographers Annual Conference. 22-27 March 2009, Las Vegas, USA.

Is Google Good for Geography? Web2.0 and the Political Economy of User Generated Geographical Knowledge

Session organisers:

Matthew Zook
Department of Geography, University of Kentucky

Martin Dodge
Geography, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester

Context:
The dramatic rise of Web2.0 applications and practices have facilitated the creativity and voluntary collaboration of masses of Internet users, e.g., wikis, folksonomies, mash-ups, tagging, social networking, etc. Of particular interest to Geographers are the evolving forms, functions and scope of spatial referenced information such as local news, reviews, commentaries, recommendations, photographs and maps. Perhaps the highest profile example is GoogleMaps which allows for user generated placemarks and geotagged images, ground-truthing, spatial reviews, etc. and is changing the amount and granularity of information readily available about vernacular places. But widespread user generated data and notations need not translate into valuable knowledge nor is this process neutrally distributed across all places or among all peoples. In short, this session explores where, by whom, about what and how the introduction of Web2.0 applications is producing knowledge about places.

Suggested themes:
We invite theoretically informed analyses questioning the social effects, cultural meanings and political economy of Web2.0 innovations for geography, with particular consideration of the following themes:

# Assessing the real potential of Web2.0 geographical knowledge to encompass alternative voices and richer descriptions of place.

# The perils of Web2.0 geographical knowledge to further the commodification of local places and the marketisation of personal feelings and ideas.

# The politics of the Web2.0 socio-technical infrastructures and corporate structures underpinning the collection and distribution of user generated geographical knowledge.

# The economies of who owns, indexes, aggregates and repackages user generated knowledge about places.

# Consideration of the risks that flow from people's unwitting trust in the truth of Web2.0 geographical knowledge.

# The embodied practices of user generated geographical knowledge and the ways in which these may be associated with social power, e.g. gendered, classed, aged, etc. to create the cultural meanings attached to Web2.0.

# The efficacy of Web2.0 geographical knowledge. How do we evaluate the accuracy and fidelity of new geographical databases, taxonomies and wiki maps?

# The artistic, playful, or subversive potential of the Web2.0 geographical knowledge.

# The ethics of web2.0, particularly relating to individual privacy and community rights. The geo-surveillance potential of Web2.0 for states and corporations.

----

Proposed papers in the form of a title and short abstract (250 words maximum) should be submitted to Martin Dodge (m.dodge@manchester.ac.uk) by 8th October 2008. Further details on the paper requirements and cost of registration for the AAG meeting are at:
http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/2009/index.htm

http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/Is_Google_Good_for_Geography_AAG_CFP.pdf

2008-09-02T14:20:00.000-07:00

Maps that Matter

A new project to identify the most significant maps, charts and diagrams for geography. Browse our current hits list at: http://mapsthatmatter.blogspot.com

Chris Perkins and myself put together an initial attempt to narrate something of the impact of our current top 15 examples as a rolling Powerpoint presentation. This was displayed at the Royal Geographical Society last week as part of their Annual International Conference. (You can download a pdf version of the slides from here.)

Comments on our current selection of maps that matter to geography are welcome. We would also appreciate suggestions for other 'classics' diagrams, charts and maps that has influenced geographical theory and practice.

2008-09-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

Last week I also did a days trips out on the sailing barge Greta from Whitstable. We went out around the new offshore wind farm and then onto Red Sands WW2 forts. Shame the weather was lousy for much of the day - low grey clouds.....

2008-09-01T09:37:00.001-07:00

'Maps as Method' Sessions and 'The Future of the Map' Plenary

At last week's RGS-IBG Annual International Conference I co-organised three paper sessions and a plenary with my colleague Chris Perkins. The sessions were titled 'Maps as Method' and focused on showing how maps can make a positive difference to what we do, and that working through maps can be both creative and emancipatory.

The following 12 papers were presented over three sessions (abstracts for the papers are available here as a Word document).

Session 1:

Mashup cartography for data exploration, presented by Aidan Slingsby;
Tranquillity matters too - mapping tranquillity, presented by Duncan Fuller;
Geography made by outsiders? Maps and the Google generation, presented by Paul Longley
Teaching and learning the city through participatory mapping, presented by Kimberly Libman
Mental mapping as a methodology, presented by Jen Gieseking

Session 2:

Noise to signal ratio - mapping the boundaries of science as art and art as science, presented by Muki Haklay;
Getting the words onto the map: walking interviews, rescue geography, presented by Phil Jones;
Using maps creatively to more critically understand the creative city, presented by Chris Brennan-Horley;
Interactive community mapping in London, presented by Coleen Whitaker;

Session 3:

Local-scale vernacular geographies: what matters to whom, and how can we collect it? presented by Laura Green, Clare Davies;
Cartography - a discipline of two halves, presented by Mike Smith;
A Vision of Britain through Time: Publishing an on-line historical atlas for everyone, presented by Humphrey Southall;

In addition to the paper sessions we also organised a plenary discussion on 'the future of the map' with Ed Parsons (geospatial technologist for Google), Mary Spence (President of British Cartographic Association) and Denis Wood (indepedent cartography theorist and writer). This lively discussion as well as a good deal of media interest (sparked in part by a clever press release written by RGS!).

2008-08-16T07:10:00.000-07:00

The birth of the Internet - nice visual story of the Internet history in the USA with many video clips from key people. But not too sure about the usefulness of their 2007 Internet map!

2008-08-08T14:49:00.000-07:00

Revised paper for theme issue of Environment and Planning A has been accepted.

Software, objects and home space

Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin

Abstract
Through a series of interrelated developments, software is imbuing everyday objects with capacities that allow them to do additional and new types of work. On the one hand, objects are remade and recast through interconnecting circuits of software that makes them machine-readable. On the other, objects are gaining calculative capacities and awareness of their environment that allow them to conduct their own work, with only intermittent human oversight, as part of diverse actant-networks. In the first part of the paper we examine the relationship between objects and software in detail, constructing a taxonomy of new types of coded objects. In the second part we explore how the technicity of different kinds coded objects is mobilised to transduce space by considering the various ways in which coded objects are reshaping home life in different domestic spaces.

2008-08-03T13:11:00.000-07:00

Research Agenda in a Quote

Hello, I recently re-found a quote that I came across a while back. It really summarise nicely my research agenda on politics of visualization and geospatial technologies. Its from a paper on inner workings of GPS by Laura Kurgan:

“But the space or the architecture of the information system that wants to locate and fix us in space has its own complexity, its own invisible relays and delays. The difficulty of charting the spaces that chart the spaces, of mapping the scaleless networks of the very system that promises to end our disorientation, demands redefining the points and lines and planes that build the map, and lingering in their strange spaces and times.” p. 17

Source: Kurgan L. (1994) "You are here: information drift". Assemblage 25, 14-43 (a version of this is available from JSTOR). See also Kurgan's "You are here" exhibition.

2008-08-02T06:07:00.000-07:00

PhD Thesis

Understanding Cyberspace Cartographies: A Critical Analysis of Internet Infrastructure Mapping
Martin Dodge, University of London, April 2008.

After a rather protracted and painful process the examiners of my PhD have just agreed the thesis has passed. If anyone is at all interested, you can download the whole thing (warning, its over 13 meg due to many images) or browse by chapter.

Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Delineating the Map
Chapter 3. Cyberspace Cartographies
Chapter 4. Imagining Internet Infrastructures
Chapter 5. Statistical Mapping of Internet Globalisation
Chapter 6. Marketing Maps of Internet Networks
Chapter 7. Conclusions: The Cartographic Imagination of Cyberspace
References
Appendix One: Building the Atlas of Cyberspaces
Appendix Two: Statistical Maps of the Internet Globalisation
Appendix Three: Network Marketing Maps from Website Survey

2008-08-01T07:54:00.000-07:00

The state of progress I've made on mapping the lanes and paths of greater Glossop area.

View Larger Map

2008-07-09T13:07:00.000-07:00

A re-written paper submitted for review for a theme issue in Geoforum.

(image courtesy of Trevor Paglen)

Satellite Imagery and the Spectacle of Secret Spaces

Chris Perkins and Martin Dodge
Geography, School of Environment and Development
University of Manchester

Abstract:
This paper documents and assesses emerging efforts to resist and subvert deep-seated and long-held governmental secrecy over geographical spaces of military/security activities and other sites deemed sensitive by the state. It explores tensions in new web-served mapping and high-resolution imagery of these sites, which view them though ‘pin holes’ of publicly available data. These ‘counter-mappings’ focus attention on the significance of sites that are either buried unnoticed in seamless global image coverage, or else censored on official mapping. Some reveal a strongly anti-hegemonic and oppositional discourse, others a more playful set of cultural practices. We situate these newly witnessed secret sites in contemporary visual culture, exploring the spectacular and Debordian possibilities of resistance that they offer, and evaluate the significance and ironies of these diverse imaging practices.

Keywords:
Secrecy, Spectacle, Satellite Imagery, Power, Resistance, Debord

2008-07-08T14:22:00.000-07:00

An entry on cybergeography that I co-wrote a while back for the Encyclopedia of Geographic Information Science, edited by Karen Kemp (Sage, 2007). Unfortunately, I only have a scan of the entry.

2008-07-07T15:20:00.000-07:00

Scottish sunset pixs

The view from Dorlin out across Loch Moidart and to the sea.

A view across to Castle Tioram.

2008-07-07T15:05:00.000-07:00

Some photos from my holiday in Scottish highlands last week.

The cottage we were staying in on the Loch Shiel Estate.

Messing about on the famous Singing Sands.

A view from shoreline to Castle Tioram.

A view of the hills on the nice circuit walk around Dorlin.

2008-06-25T02:46:00.000-07:00

The proofs of an entry I co-wrote a while back for the forthcoming mega International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, edited by Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift. This entry is number 457 out of I don't know how many, so the finished product is going to be big.....

Internet-based measurement

Martin Dodge and Matthew Zook

Abstract:
Internet-based measurement is a set of methods applied to quantitatively describe the structure, workload, and use of the Internet. They provide a practical means of doing a kind of virtual ‘fieldwork’ on the Internet using online tools and network monitoring techniques to gather fine-scale primary data. Internet-based measurement as a methodology for human geography is important because it (1) provides insight to the underlying structural processes of the Internet and Internet-based activities; (2) allows users to explore and analyze the Internet for themselves; and (3) allows researchers to aggregate data spread across multiple websites to analyze offline phenomenon. After outlining the five distinct kinds of geographical locations associated with an Internet-based resource (lexical, hardware, production, ownership, and use), this article outlines a range of tools and techniques for exploring these geographies. These include IP address geocoding, domain name whois lookups, website rankings, ping, and traceroute. These tools can provide an understanding of the topological structures and geographies of the Internet, and allows users to construct information firsthand and critically question network operations directly.

Keywords:

Domain name; Internet; IP address; Network; Ping; Traceroute; Whois; World Wide Web

2008-06-22T10:19:00.000-07:00

Did a nice walk yesterday in the south of the Peaks, from the village of Hartington down Wolfscote Dale and around a bit and then back along Biggin Dale. Despite the bouts of rain, endless drizzle and low mist, the landscape was fascinating and great change from the Dark Peak moors.

2008-05-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

The 'rant' I co-wrote with Chris Perkins on the status of the map in British geography is now published as a commentary in the journal Environment and Planning A.

"Reclaiming the map: British geography and ambivalent cartographic practice" Environment and Planning A 40(6) 1271-1276 (local copy).

2008-05-10T02:37:00.001-07:00

RGS-IBG Annual International Conference

In collaboration with Chris Perkins I have organised sessions and a plenary at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference in London in late August. They have a triple session on ‘maps as method’ and are chairing a high profile lunchtime plenary discussion on the ‘future of the map’ with Denis Wood, Mary Spence and Ed Parsons.

Papers in the three sessions are as follows:

Session One:

Mashup Cartography for data exploration
Jason Dykes (City University), Jo Wood (City University) & Aidan Slingsby (City University)

Tranquillity matters too - mapping tranquillity
Helen Dunsford (Northumbria University), Duncan Fuller (Northumbria University) & Claire Haggett (University of Newcastle)

Geography made by outsiders? Maps and the Google generation
Pablo Mateos & Paul. A Longley (University College London)

Teaching and learning the city through participatory mapping
Kimberly Libman (City University of New York)

Mental mapping as a methodology: Its evolution, its usefulness, and the ways in which we may analyze them
Jen Gieseking (City University of New York)

Session Two:

Noise to signal ratio - Mapping the boundaries of science as art and art as science
Muki Haklay (University College London) & Christian Nold (University College London)

Getting the words onto the map: walking interviews, rescue geography and the joys of KML
Phil Jones (University of Birmingham), James Evans (University of Manchester) & Jane Ricketts (University of Birmingham)

Using maps creatively to more critically understand the creative city
Chris Brennan-Horley & Chris Gibson (University of Wollongong, Australia)

Interactive community mapping in London
Coleen Whitaker & Louise Francis (London 21 Sustainability Network)

Session Three:

Cartography - a discipline of two halves
Mike Wood (Aberdeen University) & Mike Smith (Kingston University)

Comics and table saws: Experimental cartography methods for recovering ontology
Jeremy Crampton (Georgia State University) & John Krygier (Ohio Wesleyan University)

A Vision of Britain through time: Publishing an on-line historical atlas for everyone
Humphrey Southall (Portsmouth University)

Mapping narratives
Mei-Po Kwan (Ohio State University)

2008-05-10T02:35:00.001-07:00

Alport Castles

Top of the dam at the end of the Howden reservoir.

2008-05-06T13:50:00.000-07:00

'Its All In The Database'

The BBC are running a consciously sinister advert for TV licensing that stresses the all-knowing power of database surveillance. One aspect that particularly interests me is the use of a combination of visual and aural metaphors of urbanity shown through computer hardware to represent the nature of a 'database'. (The style of the advert stressing the power of surveillance is part of a longer trend used to scare people into paying the TV license, see my post of a print advert from last summer that states overtly 'There's nowhere to hide'.) See further comment on this by 'error gorilla'.