GEOGRAPHY AND TECHNOLOGY

This chapter examines how technology changes

geography and, in the process, changes in the

most fundamental ways what and how we know.

Knowledge is imbricated in the cultural use of

technology (Latour, 1999), yet geography has

only recently begun to probe how technology

influences the production and representation of

geographic knowledge. This lacuna is wide-

spread. Western civilization tends to represent

technology as a neutral tool. Geographers often

unquestioningly adopt this view. Technology has

usually been thought of as a means to improve

analyses of space and place (the study of geogra-

phy) through better observation and analysis, or

as the means through which humans intervene in

the environment.

A good example of this is Simpson’s (1966)

article which appeared in the Annals of the

American Association of Geographerswith the

apposite title ‘Radar, geographic tool’. In it

Simpson demonstrates the capabilities and utility

of radar, a tool for geographers. Yet radar, even

considering its uses in air traffic control and

weather forecasting, is not just a neutral tool.

Originally developed by the military, it allowed

for the distant recognition of objects. Because it

could detect objects far beyond the range of

human sight, it became integral to a new form of

command and control, requiring the organization

of a new type of technocratic bureaucracy to direct

and coordinate soldiers, ships, and planes. Radar

changed the space of war, and the allied victory in

World War II was seen as a victory for technology,

technological rational organization, and the

creation of new spaces of control at a distance.

In this chapter, I present ways to understand

the imbrication of technology in the production

and representation of geographic knowledge.

Following the introduction, the second section

provides an overview of the theoretical corpus

that addresses the manifold relationships

between geography and technology. Shifts in the

scholarly discourses surrounding these issues

point to increasing awareness that, in the most

fundamental ways, technology has reframed our

thinking (Poster, 1990). This scholarship rests on

Marxian and neo-Marxian readings of know-

ledge production and engagement with the sub-

stantial bodies of literature that since Heidegger

and Ellul have examined the instabilities and

complications of technology.

The third section situates current and recent

engagements with the implications of techno-

logy’s role in the production and representation

of geographic thought in terms of three streams

of thought. The first of these, a historical per-

spective on the development and use of techno-

logy in geography, points to key themes in

human geography that have always relied on

technology to overcome human limitations. The

second, simulation and communication, is per-

haps the most pervasive aspect of geographers’

use of technology on behalf of state or corporate

interests. GIS is included here as a technology

(of simulation) that underpins both disembodied

engagements with the world and reifications of

the geographic imagination. The intermingling

of simulation and communication points to

the hybrid role technology plays in cultural

29

Knowledge and Geography’s Technology –

Politics, Ontologies, Representations

in the Changing Ways We Know

Francis Harvey

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