Marriage of Neogeoraphy and neo-informationalism - Another “Blame the Data” Excuse with Google Maps adding another layer to existing geopolitical disputes in India/China

Ahh Google, here we go again! Your algorithms are everywhere! This time in Arunachal Prades - a disputed area claimed by China, governed by India.

John Gravois tells us the story by giving an excellent historical lesson in the history of cartography’s history with imperialism, Google’s hand in the politics of digital mapping, and more examples of Google Maps imbroglios. What I find interesting is this new type of corporate responsibility among digital companies where they blame their algorithms. I wrote about this last year when HP claimed the same excuse with their “racist” cameras.

So one of the trends that neoinformationalism (I explain the term here) carries over from neoliberalism is that institutions do not take the responsibility of their actions and constantly deflect them. However, I think neoinformationalist corporations have perfected this because the blame is deflected to some outside entity, or even faulty bureaucracy, but on algorithms. Naughty numbers. Uncontrollable data. Time to watch some anime!

Thank you to my new fave journal from Ben Hammersley, The Journal of Post-Digital Geopolitics, for posting this story.

Here are my favorite sections from John’s article:

“That new user-generated system of production, married to the technology of searchable “virtual globes” like Google Earth, has given rise to what people have begun calling “neogeography.” In the colonial era, the mapmaker’s imperative was to tame the foreign wilderness with names and boundaries—to discipline a profusion of facts and claims into a narrow and authoritative set of data. Now the profusion of facts and claims is a feature, not a bug.”

“This isn’t to say that Google is a democracy. In its own way, Google may be just as imperious in its approach to knowledge as the nineteenth-century European powers were in their approach to territory. The corporation simply wants to have searchable dominion over as much information as possible—the more plural and local, the better. (More unique search terms mean more revenue streams.) Meanwhile, by filling the information vacuum left behind by the old state powers, Google has also made it inevitable that it will sometimes be confused for them.”

“The statement then transitioned into upbeat talk of the democratization of information.”

“It all points back to a simple question: What is Google? Is it a repository for all of our mutually exclusive claims, or is it a higher power to which we appeal? It cannot be both, and yet we seem to treat it as both. This tension may only heighten going forward.”

I love these quotes from Michael Frank Goodchild, a cartographer at UCSB:

“The standard U.S. topographical map is now on average thirty-five years out of date,” says Goodchild, who is widely regarded as a founding father of geographic information science. “Modernist government data collection efforts like the census are in decline all over the world.”

“Essentially,” Goodchild says, “they’re replacing the traditional production systems that governments are no longer willing to fund.”

“The modern era was an era of the expectation that every feature should have a single name, and a top-down authority would determine that,” says Goodchild. “I think we’re moving past that with digital technology.” With policies that often favor ambiguity, Google maintains centralized control over the most official features on its maps—national borders, bodies of water, and the like—while in the “community layer” of map information, users have an open canvas. Geography has been democratized.