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2010 13: 121Space and CultureJakob Linaa Jensen

Augmentation of Space: Four Dimensions of Spatial Experiences of Google Earth

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DOI: 10.1177/1206331209353693http://sac.sagepub.com

Augmentation of Space: Four Dimensions of Spatial Experiences of Google Earth

Jakob Linaa Jensen1

Abstract

This article discusses and analyzes the online phenomenon of Google Earth, which poses a number of spatial ambiguities. By using a tourism perspective emphasizing the dynamics between physical, imaginary, and mediated experiences, four dimensions of Google Earth users’ practices are analyzed: a cartographic, an informational, an emotional, and a social dimension. It is argued that Google Earth facilitates an enhanced spatial and social experience, a spatial augmentation. It demonstrates that the Internet is not a space radically distinct from the space of the “real world.” Rather it is used and included as a part of the users’ social space by constant dynamics between physical, imaginary, and mediated experiences.

Keywords

Internet, online communities, geography, space, tourism, mobility

The upsurge of digital media, most notable the Internet, raises interesting spatial implications, particularly exemplified by online communities drawing on notions of space. Among these communities are virtual games, such as World of Warcraft, constructions of new worlds such as Second Life, and cross-cutting applications such as Google Earth.

The rise of the Internet partly coincides with a theoretical trend within social sciences, the so-called “spatial turn.” Among the prominent works in this field are Soya (1989) and Lash and Urry (1994). From a specific media perspective, Meyrowitz (1985) and Couldry (2000) have been highly influential. Common for those theorists is that the notion of space no longer corresponds to a mere physical place. Lefebvre (1991), for instance, distinguishes among physical and social spaces, and Jansson (2002) operates with physical, imaginary, and mediated spaces.

The focus on space within the social sciences is naturally linked to an increased focus on mobil-ity (see, e.g., Thrift, 1996). A certain aspect of mobility, tourism has generated an independent and distinct tradition of studies. The tourism industry has for decades been on a steady rise and so has the body of literature within the field. Tourism has been regarded as one of the most important forms of social action and a characteristic feature of the contemporary society (Urry, 1990/2002). Bauman (1996) has seen the tourist as a metaphor of the restless postmodern human being, shop-ping around in an endless space of possibilities.

1University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark

Corresponding Author:Jakob Linaa Jensen, Department of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus, Helsingforsgade 14, DK-8200 Aarhus N., DenmarkEmail: [email protected]



122 Space and Culture 13(1)

There are at least two reasons why tourism in particular challenges well-known concepts of space and mobility. First, tourism is about space: about appropriations, constructions, and distinc-tions of space (Rojek, 1997; Urry, 1990/2002). Second, new media such as the Internet has shown to be of paramount importance for the development of tourism. The worldwide, 24-hour network has proved an unprecedented ability to link travellers, destinations, and transportation options and even provide travellers with virtual representations of the destination before actually going there. Through enhanced graphics, three-dimensional technologies, and greater bandwidth, online sim-ulations of reality are becoming more and more “natural.” Molz (2004) and O’Reilly (2005) have raised the question whether tourism will entirely go online, making travel to real destinations abun-dant. Thereby, tourism would be the first example that the “virtual world” substitutes the “real.”

Google Earth, a Web-based application providing a representation of planet Earth, is a particu-lar interesting example of such spatial ambiguities at play when tourists and other travellers use Internet technologies. Although the application aims to present the users with a three-dimensional, embodied experience of the real world, it is obviously neither a physical place nor a space in the normal social sense. On the other hand, it is something more than just another virtual or imaginary community.

In this article, I will analyze Google Earth from a user’s perspective. By employing a frame-work from tourism studies, I will demonstrate how users interchange between physical, imaginary, and mediated practices and how the application altogether facilitates a changing spatial experi-ence. I shall call this as an “augmentation of space.”

In the following sections, I will first address in more details the increased focus on space and mobility within the social sciences in general and media studies in particular, especially the debate about the spatial status of the Internet. Next, I will outline a perspective inspired by tourism stud-ies, more specifically by John Urry (1990/2002) and André Jansson (2002). I will argue that distinguishing between physical, mediated, and imaginary tourism is useful to analyse the dynam-ics of Google Earth, more specifically the users’ experiences of various spatial ambiguities. I shall refer to four dimensions of such experiences: cartographic, informative, emotional, and social dimensions. In daily practices, the users do not distinguish between Google Earth and the “real Earth.” Instead, physical, mediated, and imaginary experiences seamlessly merge. As the various experiences enhance rather than exclude each other, I will conclude that the Internet might increase rather than substitute “real,” physical tourism.

The Spatial Turn in Social SciencesFor decades, an increased spatial focus has been prominent in social sciences, particularly notable within the field of media studies. There are several reasons why.

First, individuals, at least in the developed countries, no longer live only within fixed geo-graphical boundaries. Either they are physically mobile by travelling around the world or they are mentally mobile by means of telecommunication, surfing the Internet, or zapping through TV channels showing events in distant countries.

Second, media have become highly interactive and are often user-driven. Media users move back and forth between roles of consumers and producers and ordinary people become editors through Web sites, blogs, and online social networks.

Third, media are no longer only mass media. Nicholas Negroponte (1995) has coined the concept of the “Daily Me,” which refers to the possibility of individualizing newspaper and TV information to suit personal interests and opinions. Through the media it is possible to customize one’s own representation of the world and, ultimately, to enclose oneself in that world. Media become personal—“me” media instead of “we” media.

Fourth, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between actual and mediated experiences. Media fundamentally alter the spatial conditions for social action. Cairncross (1997) has claimed



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that satellite TV and the Internet results in a death of distance, that all kinds of events and experi-ences are available independent of geographic distances between individuals. Furthermore, media no longer only reproduce reality but also produce events of their own. Good examples are large media events such as the TV-transmitted war in Iraq, which everybody could follow in real time and popular reality TV shows, entirely constructed media products. Media use is no longer only about mediation but mediatization (Couldry, 2003). As such, we are coming closer to what Debord (1967/1995) calls “the society of the spectacle” where media play a dominant role, not only in mediating events but also in mediating social relationships.

As the Internet is playing a major role in these changes, there has been much debate about how to define it in spatial terms. A now classic concept is that of “cyberspace,” often associated with William Gibson (1984):

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts . . . A graphical representa-tion of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. (p. 51)

The idea of cyberspace contains an implicit assumption that the Internet is something out there, distant from the “real” world. This concept is still dominant in daily language when we say, “find it on the Internet” or “I’m going online.” This conceived dualism is similar to Paddy Scannell’s (1996, p. 72) concept of the doubling of place. According to Scannell, modern television events take place in two different places: where they actually take place and in front of the screen, where they are perceived.

What might be wrong about such ideas is that in reality, virtual and real worlds are not clearly separated. In daily, social practices, online and off-line experiences are interrelated. People keep in touch with friends via the Internet, which is also used for establishing new relationships—for example, through online dating. Often the interactions between the experiences are seamless, and the users do not clearly distinguish as demonstrated in various studies of social communities online (e.g., Kendall, 2002; Turkle, 1995). Furthermore, electronic media do not bypass the basic physical conditions of life, time, and space. Although the users’ experience of time and space and their possibilities of social actions, from banking to social conversations, are fundamentally expanded by the Internet, we cannot live only in the virtual world. Basic physical necessities such as food and sleep are still bound to the cycles of the real world.

However, the use of computers and the Internet is challenging traditional understandings of mobility. We can sit in front of the screen and navigate the entire world. This process is mental as well as physical. Mentally, it is possible to move seamlessly through texts, images, and other online features. Physically, the user moves from Web site to Web site, transported at the speed of light among different hosts situated around the world. While “surfing” the Internet in front of a computer, we are physically as well as metaphorically moving around; we are stationary, but our activity is highly mobile (Parks, 2004).

Furthermore, traditional distinctions of the virtual and the real are challenged. As Rob Shields (2003) has demonstrated, the idea of the virtual is not new, but the rise of the Internet makes the definition of reality more relevant than ever. The tourist is an example that dynamics between virtual and the real experiences has a long history. Löfgren (1999, p. 14ff) has argued that tour-ism is based on a constant interplay between real and imagined destinations, between landscape and mindscape. The tourist imagines a destination before going, compares the actual and the expected experiences when at the spot, and subsequently constructs a memory of the destination. Today, the memories can be communicated to friends and family instantly through various com-munication technologies, thus producing and spreading new imaginations.

Media are as important as ever in the processes of tourism as TV, radio, magazines, and the Internet are abundant with information on distant destinations, how to go there, and what to see.




Especially, the visual media are powerful. As John Urry (1990/2002) has demonstrated, vision is the most important dimension of modern tourism, which he describes as the “tourist gaze.”

The relationship between physical, imaginary, and mediated tourism can be modelled as a triangle inspired by André Jansson (2002), where the three dimensions of tourism constitute and enhance each other as shown in Figure 1.

This model is useful as a point of departure for analyzing the dynamics of Google Earth. I will demonstrate how users’ spatial experiences are characterized by a constant interplay between physical, imaginary, and mediated aspects. I distinguish among four dimensions of the spatial experiences: a cartographic, an informational, an emotional and a social dimension. But first, a brief introduction to Google Earth.

Google Earth—Origins and InterfaceGoogle Earth is created by the California-based Google Corporation, inventors of the world’s lead-ing Internet search engine. The application is a part of the company’s strategy of making the Internet’s vast amount of information searchable in easy and intuitive ways. Contrary to Google itself, where searches are performed by typing keywords, Google Earth presents a geographical interface based on an exact model of the physical world. The application is built on several different technologies: for example, Google’s well-known search engine, various visualization techniques, and satellite images from NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).

Opening the application, one encounters a representation of planet Earth floating freely among the stars of the universe. The virtual globe is easily navigable as one can move freely in all directions, rotate the globe, and even tilt the view within a range between the initial 90° view and 0°, parallel to the Earth’s surface. By tilting the image, the user is able to flow across a three-dimensional landscape, fly over mountains, and dive through deep valleys. The crucial technology behind this feature is various kinds of three-dimensional software that transform satellite pictures into three-dimensional representations. For landscapes, this feature works pretty well, but the tech-nology is not always perfect—for example, the Big Ben in London looks like a tower when viewed from above, but at street level it is entirely flat.

The graphics and information of Google Earth derive from various sources. The actual imaging of the landscapes, one of the major components, is based on NASA’s satellite photos; National Geographic and the Discovery Channel provide information about special places and areas of interests, and the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) World Fact Book contributes information on countries and their people. Commercial actors are also part of Google Earth. For instance, The Coca-Cola Company has developed a plug-in allowing the user to monitor the actual geographical positioning system (GPS) positions of Coca-Cola vans around the world.

Physical tourism

Mediated tourism

Imaginary tourism

Figure 1. The interplay between physical, imaginary, and mediated tourism



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Although such technological and commercial perspectives might be interesting, this article takes a user’s perspective and analyzes their spatial experiences and practices, especially by high-lighting the dynamics between physical travel, virtual experiences, and the medium itself.

The Cartographic Dimension: Google Earth as a Personal, Three-Dimensional MapAs a media product, Google Earth places itself within the genre of maps and globes, which by default poses spatial ambiguities. First, there is the dilemma of scale. Traditionally, physical maps and atlases are made according to a certain scale, both for convenience of use and because fixed physical materials, such as paper and plastic do not allow the inclusion of an unlimited number of details.1 Digital, Internet-based applications such as Google Earth are much more flexible because of their immaterial properties. Thereby, it is possible to make the scale as well as the level of details customizable for the user.

Second, maps always carry an ambition of representation of actual space. Good maps make the user able to imagine the location. Most children have tried to look at an atlas and dream about distant rivers, mountains, and kingdoms. Google Earth enhances the representation in powerful ways by allowing the user to change the views between traditional map views, satellite views of landscapes, and even three-dimensional flyovers from destination to destination.

Even more powerful, Google Earth includes a variety of features allowing the user to person-alize and control the information obtained. As a map, it is expandable, foldable, zoomable, and fundamentally in the hands of the individual user. For example, it is possible to measure any distance on the surface of the planet, either point-to-point or based on a route. The users can draw their own travel routes and share this information with others, through the Internet or by

Figure 2. The interface of Google Earth




GPS units. Finally, the user can place virtual pins in certain places, as if Google Earth was a paper-based atlas or wall map. With these pins, the user can add information, pictures, or per-sonal accounts to the place and share it with other users. As discussed later, this feature makes Google Earth more than just an information searching system. It is also a social space—a kind of community.

In a cartographic sense, Google Earth represents a move from two-dimensional atlases and maps, which have been dominant for centuries, to a three-dimensional representation aiming to give the impression of navigating through an actual landscape. Google Earth is moving from rep-resentation to simulation! Naturally, because of limitations in the graphic resolution and bandwidth, Google Earth is mostly a poor simulation of reality, especially when the user zooms in on actual locations. However, new and more detailed satellite photos are added constantly and the level of details is improving rapidly. The future might bring a much more close-to-reality simulation.

In sum, from a cartographical perspective, Google Earth users experience an enhanced sense of space compared with using traditional maps, through the three-dimensional representations that contribute and by the rich possibilities of interacting with the maps. Google Earth is a bit like travelling in the atlas, meeting people on the way.

The Informational Dimension: Google Earth as a Spatial Search EngineGoogle Earth is first and foremost intended as a giant information service, a graphical represen-tation of satellite images and other data of the world. Uniquely, Google Earth is a combination of various well-known ways of sorting and presenting information: the encyclopaedia, the library, and the map.

In the encyclopaedia, information is categorized by alphabetically listed keywords. Although this is probably the most common way of organizing information, there is the limitation that the infor-mation is linked to certain words rather than concepts. In the library, on the other hand, information is divided into concepts and topics, but it might be difficult to find the exact piece of informa-tion. For both the encyclopaedia and library, however, the organization and presentation of information is based on the linear text medium.

Google Earth is an example of a third method, a spatially based approach to organizing informa-tion. The method is known from maps, atlases, globes, and other models of the actual world. However, these media have their limitations as the information is static. Often, it is updated only every 10 or 20 years. Besides, they can contain only certain amounts of information whereas the amount of information storable by Google Earth is unlimited. Therefore, Google Earth combines the strengths of the encyclopaedia and the library with a spatial organization of information, which can be updated as often as necessary. New sources of information can be added endlessly, and the pos-sibilities of use depend only on the bandwidth of the computer and the users’ cognitive capacities.

Even more striking is the possibilities of selecting and controlling which information to show and which to exclude. By default, Google Earth shows landscapes, but it is also possible to choose to see roads, borders, cities, place names, sights, and places of special interest. Thereby, users are able to personalize their map of a certain destination and to read only the selected information about the place.

Another example of the users’ information control is the showing of the exact degrees of lati-tude, longitude, and even altitude of a certain point in the landscape. This information is constantly updated as the user moves around across the landscapes.

Finally, Google Earth can be integrated with GPS possibilities. It is possible to import and export data to and from GPS devices, using the application in planning actual routes as well as storing information of the places already travelled.



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In sum, Google Earth is providing the users with a personalized informational space. But using Google Earth is not a question of passive consumption of information alone. Contrary to traditional globes and atlases, the user can add information linked to certain places through the application of virtual “pins.” It is possible to map personal physical travel experiences by drawing routes travelled and posting comments, images, and travel tips linked to certain destinations. The users can interact with the digital “library” in new and unprecedented ways. Google Earth is an interac-tive “me-medium” where real-world experiences constantly contribute to redefine the individual as well as the collective experiences.

Importantly, all this takes place in a spatial context. The experience of information is quite dif-ferent from the traditional library or encyclopaedia, where the information is presented in a linear way. In Google Earth, the information available and the discussions in the related forums are related to specific, physical locations. Still, there is no privileged perspective on the world, one point of space from where to start, as is often the case in online role games and other graphical communities. Each user defines his or her position in space: from where to look and what to look at. There are no predefined information hierarchies and roles of consumers, spectators and producers merge. Using Google Earth is what Deleuze and Guattari (1987) have named a rhizom-atic: The experience as everything is interrelated and there is no end or no beginning.

The Emotional Dimension: Bodily Control and Global AwarenessGoogle Earth is constantly updated with new features and satellite photos to provide an exact representation of planet Earth. That representation by no means claims to be real in any meta-physical sense. Rather, Google Earth struggles for being real in terms of the users’ experience. Similar to films and computer games, it aims for transparency and immediacy, creating a feeling among the users of experiencing reality. As Bolter and Grusin (2000, p. 53) put it, such media try to deny the fact of mediation. If succeeding, they evoke an immediate (and therefore authentic) emotional response.

On the emotional dimension, two features are particularly relevant: the navigation facilities creating an illusion of bodily presence and control and the discourse of global awareness, which is implicit in Google Earth.

The navigation facilities of Google Earth are rather advanced. First and foremost there is the possibility of moving up and down, right and left, and back and forth in every possible direction, thereby giving the user ultimate control over the views and routes across the planet. It is “just like being there” with your physical body.2 Second, Google Earth simulates the familiar feeling of a physical globe. By dragging the mouse, it is possible to tilt, twist, or spin around the globe as though it was physically present in the living-room. Thus, the bodily sensations are similar to those of the armchair traveller and the sensomotoric experiences give the user a feeling of having the whole world in his hand.

The illusion of moving around in and even controlling reality is strengthened by the fact that the user is able to move in ways impossible in the physical world. It is possible to fly by enor-mous velocity, dive down behind mountain ranges, and look at deserts from up close or far away, all within seconds. When moving in physical landscapes, the vistas are always limited by landscapes, clouds, or the horizon and on maps, the orientation is normally always North–South.3 Such limitations are overcome in Google Earth as the perspective can be shifted between maps and detailed landscapes within seconds and manipulated in countless ways. An example is the options of tilting or rotating the views, allowing the user to view Europe South–North as illustrated in Figure 3, with Spain on top and the Arctic in the bottom. Ultimately, such possi-bilities might affect the users and make them look at the world in new ways, not just in Google Earth but also “out there.”




The discourse of global awareness is immanent in Google Earth by the way the planet is initially portrayed and by some of the extra features recently added to the application. When Google Earth is launched on the computer, the first image encountered is of the Earth seen from space. This was the view experienced by the first people on the Moon in 1969: the Earth as a blue and green oasis in the midst of millions of stars on a dark sky. When the first images from space were broadcast to the entire world, it helped facilitate a new perspective on the planet. Many people started to see the Earth as a little part of a big universe. The cosmic perspective became part of everyday discourses on politics, the environment, and the future. It inspired environmental thinking, such as James Lovelock’s (1979) idea of “Gaia,” the Earth as one big system where everything is interrelated.

The development of Google Earth demonstrates that the global discourse is present in the process of enhancing the application and adding new features. Among the various organizations providing data is UNEP, the United Nations Environmental Program, which offers information and images of the changing climate and environmental conditions around the planet. One can view oil pollution, the spread of the deserts, or the effects of global warming. World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has added information on 150 conservation projects around the world in an attempt to raise consciousness on endangered species. Recently, close-up images of the conflict in Darfur in the south of Sudan were added, showing movements of refugees and deserted or burned-down villages.

Such initiatives spark the imagination among the users. Similar to other mass media, Google Earth might contribute to emotions of global awareness, eventually resulting in change of behav-ior in the physical world. The media, imagination, and physical actions play together.

Figure 3. Ways of manipulating the worldview: Europe South–North



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In sum, Google Earth might have a stronger emotional impact than other three-dimensional online communities incorporating spatial and corporeal elements, for example, World of Warcraft and Second Life. It does not simulate another artificial world, but the physical world in which we are all living. Movements in Google Earth might be replicated in real places and vice versa. Physi-cal and emotional experiences around the world are referred to by the use of personal markers, stories, and information. Users are able to reproduce earlier trips by drawing routes or record a flight across Grand Canyon or a trek up Everest. These trips can be “played” again and again, creat-ing an almost cinematic experience. Users can gaze and feel enthralled by watching their hometown or even their house, and they can imagine unknown destinations and find inspiration for actually going there. All the time, the users can shift seamlessly between the God-like perspective of the whole globe and the viewing of details normally only available through physical presence.

The Social Dimension: The Whole World as a PlaygroundAs already mentioned, Google Earth is more than a search engine or just another gadget. It is also becoming a huge, global online community where users interact, discuss, and compare travel experiences. From a more political perspective, the discourse of global awareness might also facilitate a certain community feeling among the members. However, in this context, I will con-centrate on the social aspects of information sharing, discussions and “writing the globe.”

The users can share information in two ways. First, they can attach information to virtual pins placed on certain locations, for example, Mount Everest as illustrated in Figure 4. On clicking a pin, the attached information is revealed in a small text box. It might be a description of the place, an anecdote, a photo, or a link to further information. This information is available for all users. The use of virtual pins is a main part of the social dimension of Google Earth. By placing pins, the users are writing the globe, inscribing their presence in the space. In the physical world, it is most often prohibited to write graffiti on buildings. In Google Earth, it is perfectly legal as the whole world is the playground for writing and tagging. Hereby, the users position themselves spatially, in the world and within the community.

Second, the information might be linked to discussions in the forum, Keyhole BBS. Here, thousands of people discuss places, travel, and other topics, including their experiences of Google Earth. Some of the discussions are related to physical destinations whereas others are related only to the information provided, shared, and developed within Google Earth.

Users move seamlessly between the representations of Google Earth and sharing accounts of real-world travel experiences. Thereby, imaginations of foreign destinations might be sparked further. For example, a user has created a guided tour through his favourite ski resort, offering a three-dimensional flight over the slopes. He has added pictures and a link to a webcam at the actual destination, altogether contributing to a more enhanced experience—just like being there—than might have been possible through traditional forms of media. Furthermore, he and other users might use Keyhole BBS to discuss the practical aspects of actually going there, such as accom-modations, restaurants, and sights. In that way, virtual and real destinations converge.

Even though the forum topics of the Keyhole BBS are quite diversified, tourism is a main theme. Many users join the discussions to plan actual trips to specific destinations. The discus-sions seem to inspire and promote physical tourism. The discussions are often dominated by global tourist elites of dedicated and experienced travellers who often urge less-travelled members to go more, before “it is too late.” The general discourse of the discussions is that travelling is great and that there are many things you ought to see “before you die.”4 Sometimes there is an almost religious or pilgrim-like tone in the discussions.

Another important feature topic of the discussions is the development of the Google Earth appli-cation itself. Not only are the users able to create their own information and representations, by using and developing certain scripts and codes it is also possible to add technical features or




improvements to the application, further enhancing the experience for other users. As in other Internet-based forums, the technically minded users are generally helpful to their fellow users and will eagerly discuss and improve new technical features. For example, one user has made a map of Mars, complete with valleys and mountains, which can be “wrapped around” the Earth; so Google Earth becomes “Google Mars.”

These features together form the Google Earth Community, where everybody can access the information but only members can contribute. By the creation of the community, the founders at Google clearly state that Google Earth is a social utility as well as a practical tool. In many ways, the social dimension of Google Earth reminds of other spatially based online communities such as World of Warcraft and EverQuest. However, there is no game or play in Google Earth; it is rather a world in which to navigate, act, and perform.

ConclusionIn this article, I have demonstrated how Google Earth is an example that digital, interactive media often poses new spatial ambiguities or re-actualize old ones. I have argued that it makes no sense to distinguish clearly among virtual and real spaces. In the practical use of Google Earth, the dimension melt together, thus boosting imagination of distant destinations. Physical, mediated, and imaginary experiences play together. I have analyzed four dimensions of how these processes take place.

Figure 4. Virtual pins on the way up to Everest



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On a cartographic dimension, Google Earth is a major change from the traditional strong dis-tinction between maps or globes and the actual landscape. Traditional maps were only representations where Google Earth opts for simulation. Even though generations of map users might have been able to imagine and dream about foreign destinations, Google Earth provokes a stronger sensation and imagination through three-dimensional representations and fully flexible navigation. The scale and level of details is determined by the users, thus making Google Earth plastic, flexible, and ultimately personal compared with traditional cartographic media. Further-more, there are certain dynamics between the actual landscape and Google Earth. Maps and globes are updated infrequently, where Google Earth is updated almost constantly by new satellite photos, thereby reflecting changes in the physical landscape. By providing their own information, the users take part in that process. The users’ experience is something in between the static informa-tion of a map and the ultimate informational flexibility of actually visiting a destination.

The informational dimension of Google Earth is obvious as the application is first and foremost a part of the Google strategy of making information on the Internet readily available for the users. Contrary to encyclopaedias, libraries and other well-known information systems, the information of Google Earth is organized and embedded in a spatial context. Whereas traditional browsers are graphic, Google Earth is geographic. Certain information is linked to certain places, ultimately affecting the users’ appropriation of the information. Furthermore, the digital-stored information can be customized and personalized by the users, one of the great strengths of the Internet. Last but not least, the information can be used when actually visiting the destinations through the use of GPS units, laptops, and mobile ones by which it is also possible to contribute and update infor-mation, another example of the melt-together between the virtual and the real world. By the lack of central perspective and the flux-like state of information and interactions, Google Earth resem-bles Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) rhizome: a structure with no end and no beginning where all points interrelate and where there is no privileged perspective.

Emotionally, it is clear that Google Earth is not real in any metaphysical sense. However, from a users’ perspective it invokes certain corporeal and emotional sensations similar to those experi-enced in real life. By including and remediating various other media it makes a strong attempt to deny the fact of its own mediation. That might not be new as media, such as film and TV, have for almost 100 years struggled for denying their own mediation.5 But Google Earth has more than cinematic effects. By three-dimensional views and advanced navigation tools, the users get a certain feeling of embodiment, of actually being there. Google Earth also presents the user with a kind of preview of physical destinations, which might facilitate and enhance the experience once actually going there. Again, physicality, mediation, and imagination play together.

Another emotional aspect is linked to the global awareness discourse articulated both through the graphical presentation of the Earth and through various information sources related to actual environmental and humanitarian disasters. Thus, Google Earth might be a tool for changing images and understandings of the state of the planet, just as the moon-landing in 1969 did it. Google Earth is even more democratic than the moon-landing as everybody gets the astronauts’ view.

Finally, Google Earth has an important social dimension. Besides being a tool for looking up destinations and seeking information, it is also an online community where users interact by exchanging virtual pins, information, and opinions. Google Earth shows some of the same tenden-cies as other hobby-based online communities. Users are generally friendly and helpful toward each other and eagerly discuss real-world destinations as well as improving and enhancing the application itself. Apart from initial information provided by Google and various other sources, most of the information is provided by the users, discussed, renewed, and melted together as a kind of a collective memory of the planet. These online interactions are embedded in a spatial context, most significant through the virtual pins by which users inscribe themselves in the globe. Hereby, they take up positions of the physical world as well as within the online community. They




can present and exchange their real-world experiences and by the virtual information of fellow-users create new imaginations and aspirations and, ultimately, going new physical places. Google Earth is a social guidebook, travel magazine, TV program, and tourist brochure at the same time.

To sum up, Google Earth is a multidimensional phenomenon. From a cartographic perspective, it revolutionizes the possibilities of ordinary maps and globes. From an informational perspective, it foregrounds bright new ways of organizing and distributing information. It has the strengths of film and TV of invoking emotions among the users and it can facilitate some of the bodily sensa-tions of virtual reality devices, providing the users with an almost corporeal experience of navigation and annihilation of information. Finally, it is a social medium and shows similarities with other online communities. By combining the strengths of maps and globes, libraries, the film media, and the Internet community, it does not only remediate. It is a meta-medium.

Some critics might point out that Google Earth is close to what Debord (1967/1995) has called the society of the spectacle, that the social relationship between people that is mediated through images rather than by personal, “true” interactions. However, such criticism of new media is a long-standing phenomenon, often associated with the theoretical critique of TV from the Frankfurter School. Against Debord, one could argue that by technologies such as Google Earth, it makes no sense to distinguish between media and the “real world” as Google Earth is part of real-life experi-ences, sensations, and emotion sharing. It is not alienating but rather facilitates social life and actual physical, emotional experiences. On a metaphysical level, Google Earth might exits only on servers and through hasty glimpses of electrons in the global informational infrastructure. But from the users’ perspective, Google Earth facilitates a changing spatial experience: by enhanced geographi-cal and corporeal sensations of the globe, by accessing vast amounts of information in new ways, and by exchanging knowledge and information with other users and possibly form new relations and friendships. Google Earth facilitates an increased range of personal and social actions, an extension of social space. This experience melts together with existing social and corporeal experi-ences. Thus, in sum, Google Earth contributes to an augmentation of space.

By the example of Google Earth, it seems as if the Internet strengthens the interplay between physical, mediated, and imaginary experiences. Rather than substituting the real, lived world it seems to supplement, enhance, and even accelerate it. From a travel and tourist perspective, by using virtual representations of reality, such as Google Earth, the urge to go to real places will probably increase rather than decrease. To return to the question of Molz (2004) and O’Reilly (2005), the pos-sibilities for virtual tourism might accentuate rather than reduce the amount of real, physical travel.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

Notes

1. Even though a globe is three-dimensional, in principle it is still a two-dimensional piece of paper wrapped around a ball. Relief maps might account for three dimensions, but still, depending on their size, the extent of detail is limited.

2. A former Web site “justlikebeingthere.com” aimed for creating a similar illusion by presenting massive amount of images and information on distant destination. Even though the illusion was much less strong this Web site is long gone, I am thankful for borrowing the concept.

3. Even though Medieval maps used to be oriented, toward East, and the Australians have produced maps where Australia is on top and Europe and America at the bottom.



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4. The term is borrowed from Patricia Schultz’ (2003) book, 1000 Places to See Before You Die, where she urges the readers to go to certain places particularly worthwhile.

5. For interesting analyzes of similarities of and the film medium, see Manovich (2001).

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Bio

Jakob Linaa Jensen is associate professor at the Department of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus, Denmark. He holds a Ph.D. in political science, also from University of Aarhus. He has pub-lished three books and several international articles on e-democracy, the public sphere, media and tourism and social uses of the Internet.



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