Meridan Book Award 2011

My book Code/Space, co-written with Martin Dodge, has won the Association of American Geographers Meridan Book Award for the Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography 2011 for "the one book published last year that makes an unusually important contribution to advancing the science and art of geography". I guess I better savour this one as I doubt I'm going to get another best book in the discipline award (well of those books that were considered at least) any time soon. Of course, there's an award ceremony at the end of the month in New York at the annual meeting which I am going to miss as, for only the second time in 17 years, I'm not attending. Ironically, I've decided to devote the week instead to trying to catch up on some writing. 8-9,000 geographers in one place at one time, all talking geography over five days, is kind of weird, intense week. My plan is to talk to no geographers that week, just to read some of their work and write!

ALA CHOICE award

Got an email last night from MIT Press to say that my co-authored book with Martin Dodge, Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life, has been awarded 'CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2011' by the American Library Association. Very pleased with that. That's two years in a row - last year the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, for which I was editor in chief, won an award. It won't happen for 2012 as I've no academic book due out this year!

New book arrived

Yesterday I received a copy of my new book, Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life, published by MIT Press (ISBN: 978-0-262-04248-2). It looks great. We'll see what readers make of the argument.

It ships on Monday and can be bought from all good bookshops. For a hardback academic book the cost is pretty reasonable. You can find it at Amazon.com for $30 and Amazon.co.uk for £24.

The back cover blurb:
After little more than half a century since its initial development, computer code is extensively and intimately woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. From the digital alarm clock that wakes us to the air traffic control system that guides our plane in for a landing, software is shaping our world: it creates new ways of undertaking tasks, speeds up and automates existing practices, transforms social and economic relations, and offers new forms of cultural activity, personal empowerment, and modes of play. In Code/Space, Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge examine software from a spatial perspective, analyzing the dyadic relationship of software and space. The production of space, they argue, is increasingly dependent on code, and code is written to produce space.

Examples of code/space include airport check-in areas, networked offices, and cafés that are transformed into workspaces by laptops and wireless access. Kitchin and Dodge argue that software, through its ability to do work in the world, transduces space. They develop a set of conceptual tools for identifying and understanding the interrelationship of software, space, and everyday life, and illustrate their arguments with rich empirical material. And, finally, they issue a manifesto, calling for critical scholarship into the production and workings of code rather than simply the technologies it enables–a new kind of social science focused on explaining the social, economic, and spatial contours of software.

"This book represents a ‘William Gibson moment’ for the critical social sciences"

A new version of the Code/Space jacket cover arrived by email during the night. It has a new city image and the back cover author endorsements (click on the image for larger version). The endorsements are pretty flattering and from a great set of scholars. This statement made me smile: "This book represents a ‘William Gibson moment’ for the critical social sciences." It would be great if it were true, especially as Neuromancer is near the top of my list of best reads, but alas I fear it is the usual bookcover hyperbole, nice though it is. Here are the endorsements in full.

“Software is all around us. It is making new worlds of which we are often only faintly aware. So it is not just good to have this map of code/space, it is essential. All concerned citizens need to read it and think again about the world they inhabit.”
Nigel Thrift, Vice-Chancellor, University of Warwick

“This book represents a ‘William Gibson moment’ for the critical social sciences. Drawing upon the insights of geography, science and technology studies, and social and cultural theory, it offers an analytic encapsulation of how we should approach software and code when coming to terms with contemporary social ontology. It is a book written with a rare clarity, and it draws upon a rich set of empirical illustrations. Essential reading for all those concerned with how the social sciences should approach a world in which algorithmic power and processes of software sorting are coming to define ever more domains of everyday life.”
Roger Burrows, Department of Sociology, University of York

“Code/Space is like a travel guide to a new world—a world run on a hidden universe of computer code. With all aspects of contemporary life—from air travel to social networking, from online shopping to political violence—now orchestrated by obscure worlds of software, this dazzling book is the first to define the politics, sociology, and geography of this rapidly emerging world.”
Stephen Graham, Newcastle University

Nice! Thanks guys, cheques are in the post.

Code/Space book cover

The designer at MIT Press has just emailed through the cover design for our forthcoming Code/Space book. What do you think? Good? Needs tweaks? Hopefully should be out March/April time.

Ego massage ...

The reviews of our manuscript for MIT Press, Code/Space, turned up yesterday. Thankfully they were, on the whole, positive and provided a nice little ego massage. Well, two of the reviews did, the third brought us back down to ground with a bump. Here's a couple of nice snippets and then the bump.

"This is an excellent draft of an interesting book and I strongly recommend that MIT publish it. The book is nuanced and sophisticated in its portrayal of software as socially created, with complex and contingent effects. Overall, I find it to be engaging, convincing, and formative in its analysis of how software is injected into, and transforms, innumerable spaces of contemporary society."

"Code/Space will be a really influential text. No other book is as informed, comprehensive or accessible on the subtle and crucial intersections of code and geography. Few other authors understand these often opaque, ignored or misunderstood processes as well as Dodge and Kitchin."

"My overall and honest reaction to this text was to dislike it."

Just as you think it can't get better review number 3 pops up to put sand in the massage oil, which is probably no bad thing (although I'm quite used to sandy oil at this stage, usually accompanied by a rejection letter!)

We now have until April 15th to address the reviewers comments for it to make a Spring 2011 publication. That's going to require a little rejigging of the diary, but it'll have to be done to avoid further delay in publication. Goodbye reading time ...

Falling over the finish line ...

After much delay I finally sent the final draft of Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life to MIT Press this afternoon. It should hopefully be published sometime next year, assuming the publisher is happy with the script. We're still thinking about cover ideas, so if you have any I'll be grateful to hear them (right is our working version).

Aeromobilities

Since I’m off on a long distance flight on Sunday I thought I’d give a plug to the Aeromobilities book edited by Saulo Cwerner, Sven Kesselring and John Urry (Routledge, 2009). It brings together a collection of essays that explore the modern airport and air travel in general from a broad social sciences perspective.

Myself and Martin Dodge contributed a chapter on the role of software in governing and regulating how airports operate and in particular how contemporary airports consist of a set of interlinked code/spaces – that is spaces that are dependent on software to function as intended (to check people in, to pass through security, to move baggage from one place to another, to let people into a country, and so on). Our argument is that the transduction of code/space is not deterministic (i.e., software determines in absolute, non-negotiable means everyday practices) or universal (i.e., such determinations occur in all places and at all times in a simple cause-and-effect manner), but rather that the work that software does in the world is emergent, relational, contingent and embodied in nature. Code/space is never consistently created and experienced the same, but rather it is always (collectively) produced by people and code; it is always in a state of becoming, emerging through individual performances and social interactions that are mediated, consciously or unconsciously, in relation to the mutual constitution of code/space.

In other words, software’s ability to do work in the world is always mediated by people – either through a direct interface between passenger or worker, or through gatekeepers who take the outputs of a program, interpret the results, and negotiates with a passenger(s) or fellow worker(s). What this means is that how travelers engage with software and its gatekeepers (the travel agent, check-in, security, immigration staff, and so on) and react through embodied practice varies between people and is contingent on their abilities, experiences, knowledges, and the context in which interactions occur. It is a social and cultural event, not a simple, deterministic exchange or an act of naked governmentality, and it unfolds in multifarious, ever-changing ways.

In this sense, the code/spaces of air travel are of-the-moment and performative. The airport is never repeated exactly twice and never fully predictable or ordered (though that is what systems of management and regulation aspire). If there is a seeming orderly pattern at a broad-level it is because the various parts of the airport assemblage are citationally performed and people and systems are employed to make air travel work in particular ways. The airport is remade as the airport continuously – cleaners clean; security guards patrol; food is prepared, served, cleaned away; planes land, taxi, disgorge passengers and luggage, are cleaned, re-fuelled, serviced, re-boarded and leave; passengers and luggage flow through the various circuits and are helped on their in various ways (by signs and flight information display screens, by printed boarding cards, by audible announcements, by customer service agents). If one spends time in the airport observing what is happening its diverse realities become all to clear. And much of this work in citationally reproduced through people and code doing work together. This becomes very apparent if a software system fails and the space fails to be produced as intended (e.g., the check-in area becomes a waiting room) and passenger flows rupture into flux.

In order to illustrate our arguments we detailed observant participant research that focused on three key sites and practices – checking-in, security screening, and immigration - in a number of airports to illustrate how code/spaces are diversely transduced, contested and negotiated.

What this all means is that every trip through an airport turns into a research expedition and I’ll have my notebook at hand to capture observations and useful nuggets of information! It'll be no different this Sunday.

We're all prosumers now ...

We’re all prosumers now and blogs are a form of what some are calling prosumption – we help produce what we consume …

My plan for most of the summer is to try and complete a book for MIT Press I’m co-writing with Martin Dodge entitled, ‘Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life.’ The book is basically complete bar the final chapter and quite a bit of editing and polishing. For the past week I’ve been trying to get a working, full draft of a chapter concerning how software is changing the nature of consumption and trying to think through and devise a taxonomy of different forms of prosumption. Prosumption is the idea that rather than simply purchase or consume a product, we take a more active role in how a product is delivered and consumed. Below is what I’ve written so far followed by some very brief comments relating to the prosumption of fiction.

Consumers have long been active participants in the production of the services or goods they are consuming – such as self-service in a restaurant or at a petrol pump or as members of an audience or sports event. Such participation has led to the notion of prosumption - that customers prosume rather than simply consume a service (Andrejevic 2007, Ritzer 2007) – they fulfil a vital role or add crucial value in the delivery of a service for which they are paying. In the main, prosumers do this additional work for little or no recompense, either getting enjoyment from the task, or a sense of empowerment, or they save money/time as the cost of the service is reduced and often becomes more flexible in nature (such as checking in to a flight from home). As such, a complex set of factors shape prosumption including ‘choice, coercion, enjoyment, false consciousness, manipulation’ (Ritzer, no date: 27). In return the service provider or retailer receives labour, talent, expertise, opinions, and gains efficiencies and valuable information (Ritzer, no date).

Code has deepened and diversified participation by enabling people to interactive with, customize, and accessorize ever more media and products; to move from being a consumer to a prosumer. The nature and level of contribution to the production of goods, media and services consumed by active participants variously enormously from simple feedback that shapes present and future outcomes to the highly involved production of key resources such as the supply of code to open-source projects. As such, for us, prosumption needs to be unpacked to think through the ways in which software re-shapes the relationship between patrons and what they prosume. Code enables at least six forms of prosumption: feedback, customization, content, architectural, market, and self-service.

Feedback consists of prosumers actively contributing information to producers that then helps shape the product being prosumed. For example, voting on reality television programmes actively shapes which contestants stay in the competition and which ones leave, and ultimately who will win. Such a process provides highly detailed information to producers as to which act(s) will succeed in the marketplace, especially since the voters have already invested capital, time and emotional energy into shaping the product. Feedback used to be largely limited to studio audiences, but automated phone services, texting and online voting now allow feedback from any viewer. As a result, huge numbers of votes can be cast. For example, over sixty five million people voted in the final of American Idol, series 3 (580 million over the series).

Customization allows prosumers to actively shape and configure the product they are buying selecting specification, components, colours, materials and so on. In other words, the product is not simply bought off the shelf but is tailored to meet the needs of prosumer. Such services have long been available, such as tailored clothes, but only to those with the wealth to be able to afford it. Now customization is available to cheap, mass produced goods such as running shoes and computers and peripherals, and can be selected at a distance and previewed through online ordering. For example, the Dell laptop used to write this sentence was custom built to the specifications chosen by one of us rather than simply designed and supplied by Dell.

Content prosumption refers to users actively supplying the substantive material for the service they are prosuming. For example, prosumers of social networking sites, such as Facebook or blogs, actively contribute material about themselves and their lives and or write comments in relation to other people or provide remixed content (such as new mixes of songs). Content is not supplied by service provider itself; their contribution is the infrastructure that enables prosumption. Similarly, information sites such as Wikipedia are both passively consumed (e.g. an individual reading an entry) and actively prosumed (e.g. adding, editing and updating entries). Commercial or proprietary sites also enable prosumption such as the adding of reviews to products on Amazon.com or submitting videos, photos, stories to news and entertainment websites. Such is the utility of user-generated content that companies now often run competitions for advert and product ideas taking advantage of free creativity and labour.

Architectural prosumption concerns the active contribution of prosumers to informational architecture that supports an activity or service. The mostly widely practised example is that of open source programming where scores of programmers work collectively to produce a software product that they themselves use. Linux, for example, is collectively produced by volunteer contributors who then use the operating system they have added to. Other examples include mash-ups that enable different capta to be spliced together to create new applications.

Market prosumption relates to the creation of online marketplaces to buy and sell goods. The goods on sale and their details are supplied by the users of the site. For example, ebay and craigslist enables people to sell a product and others to bid on the sale; to take an active part in the marketplace. In other words, the process is interactive with respect to selling and buying.

Self-service prosumption refers to the increasing use of self-service kiosks and online processes that enable a person to access goods or services autonomously. Here, individuals do the labour that was formerly done by others. For example, using an ATM machine to withdraw money rather than using a clerk in a bank, or buying a train ticket using a self-service kiosk rather than from a ticket agent, or using a self-service check-out rather one that is staffed. This transfer saves the supplier significant staffing costs, for example, a grocery store generally aims for one cashier to oversee four self-service registers, thus reducing staffing need by 75 percent whilst serving the same number of purchasers (Dean 2008). In some cases, such as checking oneself onto a flight either online or at a self-service kiosk, failure to act as a prosumer can lead to punitive penalties – for example, failure to self check-in online with RyanAir, Europe’s largest carrier, results in a €40 additional fee.

These six forms of prosumption are significantly altering the relations between producer and consumer, leading to efficiencies and savings for producers and empowering (or encumbering) consumers. Over time, these forms of prosumption – and one assumes new forms as new technologies and innovations are rolled out – will be become increasingly common. That is not to say, however, that such a rollout will be a simple process. As Walker and Johnson (2006, cited in Dean 2008) note, there are several factors that influence the extent to which people are prepared to become prosumers including:

• personal capacity (ability and self-belief that they can use the prosumption technology successfully);
• perceived risk (extent to which a user believes the technology is reliable and personal information is secure);
• relative advantage (extent to which prosumption is believed to be more convenient, faster, efficient, and productive than the traditional mode of consumption); and
• preference for personal contact (the degree to which the consumer prefers human interaction over interaction with technology).

As Dean (2008: 228) reports, these factors in turn are affected by a person’s:

• optimism (the belief that technology offers increased control, flexibility and efficiency in daily life),
• innovativeness (the degree to which the consumer is a pioneer and thought leader),
• discomfort (perceiving a lack of control over technology); and
• insecurity (a distrust of technology and skepticism of its ability to work properly).

What this means is that people will vary in the extent to which they embrace the practices of prosumption, and that any company who adopts such a model of delivery will inevitably be circumscribing its market until unsure and sceptical consumers become convinced of its merits (or they are forced to do so by the company offering no alternatives) or gain access to suitable technology such as a home PC. In both cases, age and class are important factors given their relationship to educational competence and likelihood of convenient access. In other words, prosumption will be subject to the same digital divides that have dogged internet adoption and usage.

Anyway, I’m sure that text will mutate a little with some further reflection and editing, but the concept seems to have some utility. I’ve no idea at the minute how the notion of prosumption will pan out with respect to publishing beyond readers being able to post reviews on retail website such as Amazon, or take part in online forums about books, or write comments in relation to blogs like this, but it’ll be interesting to see the ways and extent to which readers move from being consumers to prosumers of books.

Andrejevic, M. (2007). iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas

Dean, D.H. (2008) Shopper age and the use of self-service technologies. Managing Service Quality, 18(3): 225-238

Ritzer, G. (no date) Production, Consumption … Prosumption? http://www.georgeritzer.com/docs/The%20Short%20Life%20and%20Imminent%20Death%20of.pdf

Walker, R.H. and Johnson, L.W. (2006), “Why consumers use and do not use technology-enabled services”, Journal of Services Marketing 20(2): 125-35.