Code/Space

Martin Dodge has put together a rough and ready web page to summarise research on code/space he conducts in collaboration with Rob Kitchin.

Code/Space research is examining the new spatialities and new modes of (spatial) governance and empowerment enabled by the development and adoption of software through an exploration of the dyadic relationship between software and space; how the production of space is increasingly reliant on code, and code is written to produce space. In so doing, we are developing a set of conceptual tools for identifying and understanding these relationships, illustrating our arguments through rich, contemporary empirical material relating to different spatial spheres and everyday activities (travel, home, work, consumption). The principal concepts we detail are transduction and automated management. Through the concept of transduction we theorise space and spatialities as ontogenetic in nature, as constantly in a state of becoming. Software, through its technicity – its ability to do work in the world – transduces space; enables space to unfold in multifarious ways. We formulate the concept of automated management to think through the various ways that new software systems survey, capture and process information about people and things in automatic ways and make judgements algorithmically without human scrutiny.

Relation to my thesis: The emergence of new forms to experience space through technologies have sparked research in a number of different disciplines, including sociology, computer science, interaction design, urban planning, and in the case of Code/Space, geography. The concept of automated management seem closely related to the WikiCity‘s real time control systems.