Google Earth As Dionysusphere
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6. John Lanchester, “The Global Id,” London Art Institute, and New Haven and London: Yale Tremble at Google’s Bird’s-Eye View”, The New What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its Review of Books, 28(2), January 26, 2006, University Press, 2008): 41-57. York Times, December 20 (2005) http://www. PAUL KINGSBURY IS AN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR sun? Where is it moving now? Where are we moving to? Away http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n02/john-lanchester/ 22. For example, the “picture of one of the worst nytimes.com/2005/12/20/technology/20image. IN THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY AT SIMON FRASER from all suns? Are we not continually falling? And backwards, the-global-id [23.03.10] things on the planet: the Athabasca oil sands html?_r=1&ei=5070&en=4b89cb0ad323cec6 UNIVERSITY. SpECIALIZING IN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL sidewards, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an up 7. David Vise, with Mark Malseed, The Google in Alberta, Canada” selected by Yann Arthus- &ex=1189051200&pagewanted=all [30.03.05]; GEOGRAPHY, HIS RESEARCH DRAWS ON THE THEORIES or down? Story (Basingstoke and Oxford: Pan Macmillan, Bertrand as his best photograph. “What you’re Lester Haines, “Taiwan Huffs and Puffs at OF JACQUES LACAN AND FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE TO —Friedrich Nietzsche1 2008): 39. looking at is essentially poison and pollution, Google Earth,” The Register, October 4, 2005, EXAMINE MULTICULTURALISM, CONSUMPTION, POWER, AND 8. Cited in Vise, The Google Story: 3. yet the shot has great beauty.” “Yann Arthus- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/04/tai- AESTHETICS. In his 1969-70 seminar, “The Other Side of Psychoanalysis,” Jacques 9. John Markoff, “Hiding in Plain Sight, Google Bertrand’s Best Shot,” The Guardian (G2), wan_google_earth/ [30.03.10]; Lester Haines, Lacan coined the term “alethosphere” to address the Information Seeks More Power,” The New York Times, June September 24, 2009: 23. “Liverpool Throws Strop at Google Earth,” The Age’s proliferation of newfangled communication devices such as 14, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/ 23. Steven Johnson, “The Long Zoom,” Register, November 27, 2006, http://www. JOHN PAUL JONES III IS PROFESSOR satellites, computers, and telebanking networks.2 The neologism technology/14search.html?pagewanted=2&_ The New York Times Magazine, theregister.co.uk/2006/11/27/liverpool_google_ OF GEOGRAPHY IN THE ScHOOL OF GEOGRAPHY AND “alethosphere,” drawing on the Greek aletheia (referring to both r=1&ei=5070&en=5f47a9cc1f8a2faf October 8, 2006, http://www.nytimes. earth_outrage/ [30.03.10] DEVELOPMENT AND DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF SOCIAL concealment and truth), is a place where something “gets recorded. If &ex=1189396800 [23.03.10]. com/2006/10/08/magazine/08games.html?_ 37. “Picture is Not Always Clear”, The Daily AND BEHAVIORAL ScIENCES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF you have a little microphone here, you are plugged into the aletho- 10. Lanchester, “The Global Id.” r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all [25.03.10]. I Telegraph, January 13, 2007. http://www. ARIZONA. HE IS THE RECENT CO-EDITOR OF THE SAGE sphere.”3 Lacan notes that even “if you are in a little vehicle that is 11. Ken Auletta, Googled: The End of the World as am grateful to Amy Kulper for this reference. telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1539400/ HaNDBOOK OF SOCIAL GEOGRapHIES AND RESEARCH transporting you to Mars you can still plug into the alethosphere” We Know It (London: Virgin Books, 2010). 24. For example, Vittoria Di Palma, “Zoom: Google Picture-is-not-always-clear.html [30.03.10] METHODS IN GEOGRapHY: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. much like the astronauts who orbited the moon and “had some minor 12. Alex Williams, “Planet Google Wants You,” Earth and Global Intimacy,” in Vittoria di Palma, 38. Thomas Harding, “Google Blots Out Iraq problems at the last minute… with their little machine… By virtue of The New York Times, October 15, 2006, http:// Diana Periton, and Marina Lathouri, ed.s, Intimate Bases on Internet,” The Daily Telegraph, January this [the human voice] they could allow themselves to say nothing but www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/fashion/15google. Metropolis: Urban Subjects in the Modern City 20 (2007) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ bullshit [conneries], such as for example that everything was going html?ex=1189051200&en=1640e28bbf02e82e (London and New York: Routledge, 2009): worldnews/1540039/Google-blots-out-Iraq- well when everything was going poorly. But that’s beside the point. 4 &ei=5070 [22.03.10]. 239-270. bases-on-internet.html [30.03.10] GOOGLE EARTH The point is that they stayed within the alethosphere.” 13. Ibid. 25. Stuart Elliott, “Marketing on Google: It’s 39. For a report on the appearance of high-resolu- If Lacan were alive today, he would regard geospatial technologies 14. Ibid. Not Just Text Anymore,” The New York Times, tion images of Israel on Google Earth in 2007, see such as Google Earth (hereafter GE) as a key part of the aletho- 15. Robert Verkaik, “Google Is Watching You,” The September 22, 2006, http://www.nytimes. http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=23961 sphere. Lacan’s notion of the alethosphere (and his psychoanalytic Independent, May 24, 2007: 1-2; 2. com/2006/09/22/business/media/22adco. [30.03.10] theories more generally) brings to the fore how social bonds take AS DIONYSUSPHERE 5 16. Victor Keegan, “That Ringing Sound Is Google html?_r=1&ex=1188964800&en=0e8871e8854 40. On the website they helpfully provided a place through people’s jouissance (hereafter, enjoyment). As Joan on the Phone,” The Guardian (Technology), 36af5&ei=5070 [27.03.10] “Search for bin Laden at Home!” link http://www. Copjec puts it: September 13, 2007: 4. 26. Michael Miller, Google.pedia: The Ultimate wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/start.html?pg=10 17. Fred Smith, From Counterculture to Google Resource (Indianapolis: Que Publishing, [30.03.10] The [“high-tech heaven” of the alethosphere] myth is probably Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth 2007): 323. 41. Charles Starmer-Smith, “Zooming In: The inspired by the section of Civilization and Its Discontents where Freud Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism 27. Photograph reference: AS17-148-22727. World at Your Fingertip,” Daily Telegraph, speaks of modern man’s capacity to remake himself as ‘a kind of (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). Vittoria De Palma also discerns a relation between November 5, 2005, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ prosthetic God,’ to replace every lost appendage or damaged organ 18. Stewart Brand, ed., The Next Whole Earth Google Earth and this image in “Zoom: Google travel/733938/Zooming-in-the-world-at-your- with another, superior one endowed with fantastic powers. In this Catalog: Access to Tools (POINT/Random House, Earth and Global Intimacy”: 264. fingertip.html [27.03.10] alethosphere … the prosthetically enhanced, plugged-in subject does 1981 [4th printing]): 2. 28. Denis Cosgrove, Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic 42. Lester Haines, “Giant Colonel Sanders Visible not need to flee reality in order to indulge his pleasure principle, for he 19. Kevin Kelly, “Scan this Book!”, The New York Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination from Space,” The Register, November 17, 2006, is now able to remould reality in accordance with it.6 Times Magazine, May 14, 2006, http://www. (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/17/colo- nytimes.com/2006/05/14/magazine/14publishing. Press, 2001): 257-267. nel_sanders_mosaic/ [27.03.10] In this essay, we illustrate the extent to which GE users’ html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ei=5070&en=a 29. Studied by Robert Poole in Earthrise: How 43. Anders Albrechtslund, “Surveillance in experiences are plugged into the enjoyment of what we call the c7163de40132770&ex=1189051200&adxn Man First Saw the Earth (New Haven and London: Searching: A Study into Ethical Aspects of an “Dionysusphere.”7 In so doing, we take inspiration from another nlx=1188918074-MfeDRLvuvFFoXIiFxqjuUw Yale University Press, 2008). Emergent Search Culture”, unpublished paper, no social theorist who was fascinated by the technological incorpora- [22.03.10] 30. Brand, ed., The Next Whole Earth Catalog: 1. pagination. I am grateful to the author for providing tions of pleasure and reality: Walter Benjamin. Benjamin is key to our 20. See Susan M. Roberts and Richard H. 31. On the relation between the Apollo images me with a copy of his essay. argument because he focuses on people’s practice-based — that Schein’s discussion of images of the globe and James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, see Poole, 44. http://www.motivatepublishing.com/ is, embodied, psychical, and emotional — interactions with tech- in advertisements by geographic information Earthrise: 170-189. library/default.asp?categorycode=About_ nology. Writing on the rise of popular cinema and the mechanical providers, in which they note: “Views from above 32. In later releases, there is an option to switch on mp&ID=About_mp [30.03.10] reproduction of art in Europe during the 1930s, Benjamin affirmed underscore the advertiser’s totalizing claims of a shading effect, which disappears upon zooming 45. Mike Davis, “Does the Road to the Future End the indeterminacy of technology. That is, Benjamin was careful not complete coverage, of being everywhere.” Roberts in. at Dubai?,” Log: Observations on Architecture and to assign any inherent positive (e.g., progressive) or negative (e.g., and Schein, “Earth Shattering: Global Imagery 33. Randall Stross, Planet Google: How One the Contemporary City, 6 (2005): 61-64; 61. fascist) tendencies, qualities, or outcomes to cultural media and and GIS,” in John Pickles, ed., Ground Truth: The Company Is Transforming Our Lives (London: 46. http://www.nakheel.com/en/news/2008_ technology more generally.