Space, Place, and Identity in the Digital Age

Maps for Text-Based Game Worlds (Zork)

For my graduate seminar, we have been exploring the connection between maps, embodiment, and the production of space. As an experiment in proprioception, we decided to get our bearings playing Zork. We played two short sessions of 5 minutes each. The first time, we simply wandered and tried to get as far as we could. The second time, we started over, but I asked each student to draw a map to keep track of our position in the game world. We all experienced the feeling of getting lost in the space and, interestingly, the maps seemed to only highlight the feeling of being lost (e.g., “According to my map, we should be back at the house instead of here!”). The “cognitive maps” created while wandering offered a very different sense of proprioception than the maps which they drew as we played. Here are the maps below (for only the very first potion of the game):

Handout on Thrift’s Non-Representational Theory

Here is the link for Felix’s handout on Nigel Thrift’s Non-Representational Theory.

• Burgos_Thrift discussion [PDF]

Books for Review / Places to Publish

Below is a list of recent books (published since 2009 or 2010) related to our course’s topics. Beneath this list, you’ll find a list of journals that accept book reviews on these topics.

• Blum, Andrew. Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. New York: Ecco, 2012.

• Brinkerhoff, Jennifer. Digital Diasporas: Identity and Transnational Engagement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

• Coyne, Richard. The Tuning of Place: Sociable Spaces and Pervasive Digital Media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2010.

• Crang, Philip, Claire Dwyer, and Peter Jackson. Transnational Spaces. New York: Routledge, 2011.

• Cresswell, Tim and Peter Merriman. Geographies of Mobilities: Practices, Spaces, Subjects. Ashgate, 2011.

• Cresswell, Tim. In Place / Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

• De Souza e Silva, Adriana and Jordan Frith. Mobile Interfaces in Public Spaces: Locational Privacy, Control, and Urban Sociability. New York: Routledge, 2012.

• Dourish, Paul. Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011.

• Gordon, Eric and Adriana de Souza e Silva. Net Locality:Why Location Matters in a Networked World. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

• Hall, Suzanne. City, Street and Citizen: The Measure of the Ordinary. New York: Routledge, 2012.

• Harvey, David. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. New York: Verso Press, 2012.

• Harvey, David. Social Justice and the City. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2009.

• Kitchin, Rob and Martin Dodge. Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011.

• Lima, Manuel. Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011.

• The Map Reader: Theories of Mapping Practice and Cartographic Representation. Ed. Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin, and Chris Perkins. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

• Online Territories. Ed. Miyase Christensen, André Jansson, and Christian Christensen. New York: Peter Lang, 2011.

• Rainie, Lee and Barry Wellman. Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012.

• Race After the Internet. Ed. Lisa Nakamura, Peter Chow-White, and Alondra Nelson. New York: Routledge, 2011.

• Ryan, Terre. This Ecstatic Nation: The American Landscape and the Aesthetics of Patriotism. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011.

• Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space. Ed. Mark Shepard. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011.

• Sheller, Mimi. Citizenship from Below: Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.

• Taylor, Yvette. Fitting into Place? Surrey: Ashgate Publishers, 2012.

• Tuan, Yi-Fu. Religion: From Place to Placelessness. Chicago: Center for American Places, 2010.

• Wilken, Rowan and Gerard Goggin. Mobile Technology and Place. New York: Routledge, 2012.

• Wilken, Rowan. Teletechnologies, Place, and Community. New York: Routledge, 2011.

Journals in this Field that Publish Book Reviews:

• Aether: The Journal of Media Geography http://geogdata.csun.edu/~aether/

• American Quarterly: http://www.americanquarterly.org/submit/book_reviews.html

• Annals of the Association of American Geographers: http://www.aag.org/cs/publications/annals/annals_book_review

• Body & Society: http://bod.sagepub.com/

• Cultural Geographies: http://cgj.sagepub.com/

• Fibreculture: http://www.fibreculture.org/reviews.html

• International Journal of Communication: http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc

• Journal of Popular Culture: https://www.msu.edu/~tjpc/submissions.htm

• Leonardo: http://www.leonardo.info/ldr.php

• Mobile Media & Society: http://www.sagepub.com/journals/Journal202140

• New Media & Society: http://nms.sagepub.com/

• Postmodern Culture: http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/

• The Senses and Society: http://www.bergpublishers.com/?TabId=523

• Space and Culture: http://sac.sagepub.com/

• Theory, Culture & Society: http://tcs.sagepub.com/

Link: Race Maps

Here is the link to the race maps we discussed in our last class:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157626354149574/detail/