The Map in the Machine: Charting the Spatial Architecture of Digital Capitalism

Talk:
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 this keynote, based on his recent book, The Map in the Machine, Luis F. Alvarez León examines these advances, from MapQuest and Google Maps to the rise of IP geolocation, ridesharing, and a new Earth Observation satellite ecosystem. He 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 León 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.
References: Alvarez León, L. F. (2024). The map in the machine: Charting the spatial architecture of digital capitalism. University of California Press. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520389328/the-map-in-the-machine

Workshop:
Networks of Signaling Hinterlands: Non-City Spaces and Urban Dynamics in Digital Capitalism
Networks seem to be everywhere, connecting humans and non-humans alike. Yet, with the advent of digital technologies, networks are often treated as aspatial. However, most networks are endowed with a spatial dimension, connecting different locations, individuals, and places. As such, digital information networks (like social media networks), are deeply entangled in fundamental geographic dynamics such as urbanization. Following Rosen and Alvarez León (2023), in this workshop we will explore how social media networks enroll various locations in non-city spaces while bringing them into the orbit of urban dynamics. Specifically, this is done by leveraging the potential of non-city spaces to signal and amass social, cultural, and economic capital through platforms like Instagram and Google Maps (e.g., new tourist locations). This, in turn, establishes new metropolis-hinterland relationships through new social media dynamics, which we identify through the concept of signaling hinterlands.  
References: Rosen, J., & Alvarez León, L. F. (2023). Signaling Hinterlands and the Spatial Networks of Digital Capitalism. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2023.2249974