Mapping cultures: A spatial anthropology

Abstract

A short video on YouTube called Google Maps 1 provides an entertaining and gently subversive take on the much-hailed ‘democratization’ of mapping practices and the Faustian nature of the social contract that delivers these technologies, so to speak, to our door. At his apartment Jeff is surfing away on his laptop. His flatmate comes into the room and asks him if he knows where he can buy pictures frames. ‘I don’t know but I can Google Map it,’ Jeff replies. The flatmate is new to the technology so a demonstration ensues. ‘Double click … and you’re at street view,’ he is shown. ‘There’s our apartment! … Let’s go in the courtyard,’ suggests the flatmate excitedly. ‘You can’t, it’s a picture from a moving car,’ Jeff informs him (unreliably as it turns out). They click and the stairway to their apartment flashes onto the screen. ‘That’s weird …’ They click some more. The Google Map image is now of the interior of their apartment. ‘That’s my jacket I just put on the couch!’ They zoom in further. Several clicks later and they arrive at an overhead view of themselves hunched over the laptop. With their backs to the camera (if that is what it is), they stare at themselves staring at themselves. Cue moody suspense music. Very slowly they turn around and look up. Now decoupled from virtual space we no longer see what they see. All of a sudden a red light bathes Jeff’s face and there is an ominous droning sound.