Provenance, Power and Place: Linked Data and Opaque Digital Geographies

Ford, Heather; Graham, Mark

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2827054

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…However, its inclusion within Google's index (facilitated by a growing adoption of semantic web technologies) has demonstrated that Google's representation of contested places such as Jerusalem is far from transparent (which Google's infobox presently declares “The Capital of Israel”, despite a lack of such recognition from the international community). In similar cases, Google often outputs geographic information that displays a loss of nuance, an obscured provenance, hidden personal filtering, and an increasingly complex technical operation behind the process of trying to contest, update or otherwise modify the information itself (Ford and Graham , ). This raises two significant concerns for the right to the city.…”

Section: Google—where Do You Get Your Power From?mentioning

confidence: 99%

An Informational Right to the City? Code, Content, Control, and the Urbanization of Information

2017

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Henri Lefebvre talked of the "right to the city" alongside a right to information. As the urban environment becomes increasingly layered by abstract digital representation, Lefebvre's broader theory warrants application to the digital age. Through considering what is entailed by the urbanization of information, this paper examines the problems and implications of any "informational right to the city". In directing Tony Benn's five questions of power towards Google, arguably the world's most powerful mediator of information, this paper exposes processes that occur when geographic information is mediated by powerful digital monopolies. We argue that Google currently occupies a dominant share of any informational right to the city. In the spirit of Benn's final question-"How do we get rid of you?"-the paper seeks to apply post-political theory in exploring a path to the possibility of more just information geographies. Résumé: Henri Lefebvre parle d'un "droit à la ville" comme allant de pair avec le droit à l'information. Alors que de plus en plus de représentations numériques abstraites se superposent à l'environnement urbain, la théorie générale de Lefebvre mérite d'être appliquée à l'ère du numérique. En se penchant sur les enjeux de l'urbanisation de l'information, cet article analyse les difficultés et les implications d'un "droit informationnel à la ville". Après avoir posé à Google, le vecteur d'information le plus puissant du monde, les cinq questions que Tony Benn avait adressées aux détenteurs de pouvoir, le texte expose les processus dérivant de l'intermédiation de l'information géographique par de puissants monopoles numériques. Il montre que Google occupe actuellement une position dominante dans tout droit informationnel à la ville. Dans l'esprit de la question finale de Benn-"Comment peut-on se débarrasser de vous?"-cet article vise à appliquer la théorie post-politique afin d'explorer les voies vers des géographies informationnelles plus équitables.Keywords: Lefebvre, urban, ICTs, post-politics, right to the city, GoogleShould we feed all the data for a given problem to a computer? Why not? Because the machine only uses data based on questions that can be answered with a yes or a no. And the computer itself only responds with a yes or a no. Moreover, can anyone claim that all the data have been assembled? Who is going to legitimate this use of totality?Who is going to demonstrate that the "language of the city", to the extent that it is a language, coincides with ALGOL, Syntol, or FORTRAN, the languages of machines, and that this translation is not a betrayal? Doesn't the machine risk becoming an instrument in the hands of pressure groups and politicians? Isn't it already a weapon for those in power and those who serve them?

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Section: Google—where Do You Get Your Power From?mentioning

confidence: 99%

An Informational Right to the City? Code, Content, Control, and the Urbanization of Information

2017

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“…There has been a raft of scholarship pointing to the ways that technology companies like Google exert undue power over the ways people interact with their cities (cf. Ford & Graham, ; Graham et al, ). A similar fear underpins much critical scholarship on “smart cities” (cf.…”

Section: Code Law and The Formation Of Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Hacking code/space: Confounding the code of global capitalism

Zook

Graham

2018

Trans Inst British Geog

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Information-technologies are essential for global capitalism to function at speed across scale, space and complexity. The importance of software and algorithms in the governance of these systems is reflected in the attention of scholars to the ways digital code and materiality (re)combine to create hybrid digital/material spaces of economic activity, movement and everyday life. This paper extends this work in two key ways: first by emphasising the relational aspect of these code/ spaces, and second by showing how the digital algorithms of code/spaces are hackable rather than hegemonic. Using the case study of frequent flyer programmes we demonstrate how networked knowledge-sharing reshapes code/spaces to provide unintended opportunities such as low-cost travel and access to spaces normally only frequented by global elites. Although this case highlights vulnerabilities in the code of global capitalism, it is primarily only those with significant lifestyle privilege who are able to fully participate in these subversions. Moreover, while much of the value captured by "airline hackers" comes from airlines' profit margins, the relationality of code/spaces can impact citizens and consumers not directly connected to or interested in airline travel. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates that in contrast to characterisations of omnipresence and hegemony, the information networks and algorithms of global capitalism contain moments of uneven porousness and selective hackability. K E Y W O R D Sair travel, airlines, code/space, digital life, hacking

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“…Digital geographies are concerned with the temporal and spatial production of geographical knowledge through digital practices (Ash et al., 2018; Ford & Graham, 2016; Graham, 2011, 2013; Graham et al., 2014; Kitchin & Dodge, 2011), how physical locations are represented, reproduced, and reorganised virtually via digital technologies (Kitchin, 2014), and the digital socio‐spatialities that develop people's understandings of their lived world (Ash et al., 2019). In digital societies, previously private experiences are quantified and datafied (Kitchin, 2014; Thatcher et al., 2016); digital devices, such as smartphones, are used as technological extensions to the human brain; and urban lives are digitally networked (Barns, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring selfie practices and their geographies in the digital society

Liu

2021

Geographical Journal

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Drawing on a practical perspective and a posthuman approach, this article maps the quotidian digital geographies of selfie practices. The empirical analysis of this research is based on a qualitative study that took place in a Chinese city – Guangzhou. The empirical sections of this research investigate the digital geographies of daily selfie practices by focusing on the process of preparing for, taking, editing, and sharing selfies which are facilitated by both non‐human and human agencies. The findings of this article indicate that selfie practices are simultaneous a technology of self and a reflexive performance by which people construct diverse selves in extraordinary scenes and an obsessive way of seeing, consuming, and communicating shaped by wider digital cultures and social norms. More broadly, this article suggests that local contexts still matter in shaping the visual cultures and practices in contemporary digital society.

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Provenance, Power and Place: Linked Data and Opaque Digital Geographies

Cited by 5 publications

References 20 publications

An Informational Right to the City? Code, Content, Control, and the Urbanization of Information

An Informational Right to the City? Code, Content, Control, and the Urbanization of Information

Hacking code/space: Confounding the code of global capitalism

Exploring selfie practices and their geographies in the digital society

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