Google Earth: Outreach and Activism

Description

In order to be able to communicate and engage with each other via new communicative spaces such as Google Earth, we need to understand as much as possible about how they work as cultural texts: how and why we make them and how we respond to them. Launched in 2005, Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program, mapping the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery and aerial photography. By addressing the sociopolitical issues at stake in society’s use of social websites, the author provides the first ever extended close reading of Google Earth as a powerful player in the communication realm of social media. By grounding the context of its military pre-history, its construction, its links to other similar world-making sites such as Google Maps and how it is perceived critically by social scientists, it is imperative to understand how social networking and information sites work in socio and geo-political contexts if society is to use these sites effectively and for the public good. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgements 1. An Introduction CONNECTION with (nearly) anyone at any time: Web 2.0 A numinous virtually real world Methodology: Hermeneutic framework and fi eldwork Another kind of vision A political aesthetic A case study Towards an ethical embodied vision 2. ‘What Is Google Earth?’ So, what exactly is Google Earth? Google Earth brought to you by Google.com Moving maps Layers Embodied space at the interface So much information 3. Using Google Earth – Who, How and Why ‘Dual use’ of data visualization Digital mapping Outreach Google Earth Outreach Using Google Earth Using Google Earth for research and education A ludic interface: Playing Google Earth ‘Flying through space above the earth, around the world’: A fieldwork experience The cultural performance of Google Earth 4. ‘Crisis in Darfur’: A Google Earth Outreach Case Study in Affect and Compassion An affective process of immersion in cyberspace Immersion via interactivity Embodied immersion Compassion ‘Crisis in Darfur’ The ‘intolerable image’ Framing the ‘disappeared’ Face-to-face An augmented reality – Performing with our naked eyes 5. Human Rights Activism via Remote Sensing – An Extended Case Study of Activism in ‘Crisis in Darfur’ Online activism: Working for the social good in the public sphere of the web An aesthetic of the possible Web Weaving Theatre of the Web ‘Crisis in Darfur’ – again Broken links, new links A new kind of history Celebrity activism and the Satellite Sentinel Project A personal reading Ethics of mediation and a ‘politics of dislocation’ The social gest of a new political aesthetic 6. In Conclusion: Humanist Trajectories in Google Earth Content–technology–screen vision Changing time in space Bioconvergence and our machinic companions Machines of sunshine In a different voice Love at a distance? A cultural performance References Index