PLAY IN THE CITY

04. REFLECTION
APPROACHES TO SPACE AND TECHNOLOGY
WEEK 2, 23.01.18
SEMINAR READINGS
Graham, Stephen. “The End of Geography or the Explosion of Place?
Conceptualizing Space, Place and Information Technology.” In Progress
in Human Geography 22, no. 2: 1998, pp. 165 - 185.
Wertheim, Margaret. “Internet Dreaming: A Utopia for All Seasons”, in Tofts,
Darren. Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History. New Ed edition.
Cambridge, Mass.; Sydney: MIT Press, 2004, pp. 216 - 226.
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The compression of space and time through the development of
telecommunication technologies has led to an ever growing single
integrated ‘global’ community. The consequence of this phenomena
and the implications this has on the local is considered by Graham
in the “The End of Geography or the Explosion of Place?” He argues
that the digital realm, since its inception, and physical space have and
continue to co-evolve. To support the case for co-evolution Graham
looks to the research of Greg Staple:
[Staple] believes that the Internet and other communications
technologies, far from simply collapsing spatial barriers, actually
have a dialectic effect, helping to compress time and space barriers
while, concurrently, supporting localising, fragmenting logic of
‘tribalisation’. Far from unifying all within a single cyberspace,
the Internet, he argues, may actually enhance the commitment of
different social and cultural interest groups to particular material
places and electronic spaces, thus constituting a ‘geographical
explosion of place’. 1
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1. Stephen Graham, “The End of Geography or the Explosion of Place? Conceptualizing Space,
Place and Information Technology.” in Progress in Human Geography 22, no. 2 (1998). p. 174.
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