You Are Here - Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics - page 25

PIXELS
“We need to know for certain where we are,” says a man holding a map titled Los
Angeles Fires and Civil Unrest , in a corporate brochure for real-time GPS mapping. 5
The open reference of the statement summarizes the promise and the dream of
GPS: accurate positions, instantaneously and continuously. One newspaper report
on GPS in passenger cars was headlined: “In Japan, They May Never Ask for Direc -
tions Again.” 6 Not simply for pilots and engineers and ambulances, but for every -
one, anyone, facing a location crisis. “With today's integrated circuit technology,”
suggests one manufacturer's handbook, “GPS receivers are fast becoming small
enough and cheap enough to be carried by just about anyone. That means that
everyone will have the ability to know exactly where they are, all the time. Finally,
one of man's basic needs will be fulfilled .... Knowing where you are is so basic to
life, GPS could become the next utility.” 7
Another announcement for a GPS image-mapping software package, combin -
ing GPS, GIS, and remotely sensed images from Landsat and SPOT, promises that
it can finally deliver a reliable answer to the questions that continue to vex even
the users of the most powerful maps: “'Which pixel am I standing on?' or worse,
'Where am I?'” 8 Not “Where am I?” on the Earth, but where on the map? At a time
when these digital technologies seem to offer great leaps in our ability to locate
ourselves and when not only frightened urbanites, but some of our most radical
social critics, are calling for “an aesthetic of cognitive mapping,” a critical analysis
of new mapping technologies seems imperative. 9 But perhaps the sense of what's
“worse” conveyed by the GPS announcement needs to be rethought: the older and
perennial question of “Where am I?”—the question that gives rise both to panic
and to new discoveries—has been replaced or displaced by a still stranger inter -
rogative, “Which pixel am I standing on?” How to orient oneself in the cyberspace
that promises orientation? What could it mean to stand on a pixel? Who or what
stands in or on the data space of a pixel? The orbital front at once offers unprec -
edented mapping and positioning powers—capacities which for better or for worse
should not be underestimated—and opens new questions that challenge the most
basic ways we think about space.