The Harvard Lab for Computer and Spatial Analysis was one of several sites in the early development of GIS where seminal innovations in the processing and display of geographically referenced data took place. An early area of concern at the lab were the mathematical and technical problems associated with the modelling of 'surfaces'. This term, 'surface', came to take on new and sometimes abstract meanings. The language used to describe 'surfaces' was rooted in tacit knowledge and more formal mathematics. The mixing of diOE erent forms of language, both verbal and written, allowed the passing of abstract and sometimes di cult meanings. It may be that universal history is the history of a handful of metaphors . .. It may be that universal history is the history of the diOE erent intonations given a handful of metaphors (Borges 1964, p. 189 and 192).
The current graphical rhetoric of advertising includes everything from images of the globe borrowed from the US space program (for example, Hewlett-Packard Corp. computer systems), to pseudotribal renderings of a very different sort [for example, Minute Maid's (The Coca Cola Co.) Fruitopia]. The use of these images are part of what Goldman calls the economy of ‘commodity signs’, where produced meanings are linked to commodities through the medium of the print or broadcast advertisement. The increased incorporation of global images in Western advertising presents an opportunity to analyze the ideological underpinning of the ‘new global economy’. The sheer volume of purchased advertising space places these often confusing images before our eyes at an increasing pace, producing meanings which tend to obfuscate and fetishize discourse related to globalism. A decoding of specific advertisements with the use of the Hewlett-Packard Corporation as a case study, juxtaposed against the real spatial practices of the company will reveal ruptures, contradictions, and incoherence in advertising messages which appropriate the symbolic power of global images.
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