The SSL ‘Book of the Month’ feature highlights a book in our collection that has been chosen by one of our Subject Consultants. This may be a recent addition to our stock or an existing item that we would like to share with you.
September’s Book of the Month was selected by Andy Kernot, Subject Consultant for Geography, Social Policy & Intervention, Public Policy, and Internet Studies.
The map in the machine: charting the spatial architecture of digital capitalism
Luis F. Alvarez Leon
University of California Press, 2024
Digital technologies have changed how we shop, work, play, and communicate, reshaping our societies and economies. To understand digital capitalism, we need to grasp how advances in geospatial technologies underpin the construction, operation, and refinement of markets for digital goods and services. In The Map in the Machine, Luis F. Alvarez Leon examines these advances, from MapQuest and Google Maps to the rise of IP geolocation, ridesharing, and a new Earth Observation satellite ecosystem.
Book Overview
In this book Luis F. Alvarez Leon develops a geographical theory of digital capitalism centered on the processes of location, valuation, and marketization to provide a new vantage point from which to better understand, and intervene in, the dominant techno-economic paradigm of our time. By centering the spatiality of digital capitalism, Alvarez Leon shows how this system is the product not of seemingly intangible information clouds but rather of a vast array of technologies, practices, and infrastructures deeply rooted in place, mediated by geography, and open to contestation and change.
Reviews
“The Map in the Machine deconstructs the spatial architecture of the new digital economy, uncovering its deeply geographical foundations. Synthesizing geographical political economy and critical approaches to information technology, Luis Alvarez Leon offers an original framework for understanding processes of location, valuation, and marketization across the variegated worlds of digital capitalism.”
Jamie Peck, Professor of Geography, University of British Columbia
“Despite the persistence of abstract, fluffy metaphors like the cloud and Ethernet, The Map in the Machine conclusively demonstrates that digital information is–and always has been–intimately intertwined with our physical and material world. This is a must-read book for anyone looking to understand the place-based underpinnings of digital capitalism.”
Catherine D’Ignazio, Associate Professor and Director of the Data + Feminism Lab, MIT, and coauthor of Data Feminism
How can I access it?
We have one lending copy of this book, which is located on our New Books Display Area (around the corner from our Issue Desk). Its shelfmark is GV109.4 ALV 2024. It is also available as an eBook which can be accessed from a Bodleian Library computer or use it remotely, by logging on to SOLO with your SSO.
What would your SSL Book of the Month be? Do you have a favourite book in our collection? If so, we would love to know what it is. Add a comment below or email us.