The Map in the Machine: Charting the Spatial Architecture of Digital CapitalismDigital technologies have changed how we shop, work, play, and communicate, reshaping our societies and economies. To understand digital capitalism, we need to grasp how advances in geospatial technologies underpin the construction, operation, and refinement of markets for digital goods and services. In The Map in the Machine, Luis F. Alvarez Leon examines these advances, from MapQuest and Google Maps to the rise of IP geolocation, ridesharing, and a new Earth Observation satellite ecosystem. He develops a geographical theory of digital capitalism centered on the processes of location, valuation, and marketization to provide a new vantage point from which to better understand, and intervene in, the dominant techno-economic paradigm of our time. By centering the spatiality of digital capitalism, Alvarez Leon shows how this system is the product not of seemingly intangible information clouds but rather of a vast array of technologies, practices, and infrastructures deeply rooted in place, mediated by geography, and open to contestation and change. |
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Alvarez León applications ARPANET automobile Big Data broader Cambridge cars Cartography Central Place Theory century chapter cities context core Critical GIS Crowdsourcing cultural cyberspace dabbawala decades delivery workers digi digital capitalism digital economy digital information digital mapping digital platforms digital technologies drivers dynamics Earth Economic Geography emergence factors food delivery platforms fundamental geographic information geographic information systems GeoJournal geolocation geospatial data geoweb global Google Maps hailing https://www Human Geography imagery industry infrastructure innovations interactive labor Landsat launched LICRA logic Luis F mapping platforms MapQuest markets mobility NASA navigation Neogeography Netflix networks online mapping operations passengers Progress in Human remote sensing ride role Sarah Elwood satellite ecosystem search engine smartphones social space spatial architecture specific structure system of automobility tion TNCs transformations transportation Uber University Press urban users valuation Walter Christaller Yahoo