Uniquitous Cartography: Casual Power in Digital Maps

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with the production and deployment of the digital maps in contemporary computational culture. By bringing together theories from Media Studies, Critical Cartography and Science and Technology Studies (STS) I look at digital maps as interfaces, designed to be implemented on various screens and modes. Building on production-studies informed ethnographies within a major public mapping organization and a smaller private commercial developer, I point out the tendency for such digital maps to be simultaneously ubiquitous in their desire to be available to all users, on all devices while being personalised by implementing various ways of tracking the user. Thus, I suggest the term ‘uniquitous’ to describe such configuration, and tie it to the changing nature of digital media and cartographic practices. Consequently, I offer a new conceptual framework to understand the emerging relations between mapmakers and map-users, which I name ‘casual power’. The framework identifies the ways digital map-makers attempt to embed into their interfaces affordances that reduce user reflexivity, make using the map seamless and enjoyable, and blur the differences between the map and the world it purports to represent. Such maps become naturalized objects in the habitual chains of actions that users perform vis-à-vis the world. Specifically, I have located three conceptual lenses that should be used when examining the inscription process I summarise above. First, I acknowledge that the cartographic illusion of maps changes when maps are transformed for screens. This happens due to the nature of contemporary media-scapes to operate under the conditions of the attention economy. From a static representation of the world, the animated map becomes a dynamic actor that aims to represent the world in (near) real-time while competing for the increasingly scarce attention of the user. The co-habitation of the map on digital platforms with other objects that actively demand user attention necessitates this, and the economic conditions that commodify such attention through views, clicks, shares and the like promote it further. Second and in conjunction, the digital map can be seen as inherently playful, especially when considering playfulness as an attitude expressed through objects and the view of ‘play as systems’. This is emphasized by the developing form of gameful design, underscoring autotelic engagement with the map rather than its use for a certain purpose. In line with processual and navigational views of cartography, mapping interfaces can thus be designed to be used ‘for fun’ rather than to serve any particular rational goal. Third and following the previous two, this is achieved through the numerical forms of the digital map that both underpin its existence as a data object and are used as interface elements to affect users. In particular, I claim that such modes could be understood by looking into quantifiable interactions within the context of neo-liberalism and the desire for more, as well as a digital design technique grounded in decoupling the understanding of processes grounded in physical world from the perception of the screen.