For fun and profit: the limits and possibilities of Google-Maps-based geoweb applications

Abstract

Software developers who create geographic web applications are a new kind of mapmaker producing new kinds of maps. They typically use private web-mapping services, such as Google Maps, without training in cartography or geographic information systems. How do software developers become mapmaking subjects producing geographic knowledges in the context of corporate mapping services? I argue that geoweb developers' subject positions and geographic knowledges are produced through the social relations of geoweb technology. Specifically, two culturally derived technical codes, playful fun and profit-seeking, are enormously influential in defining the subject positions and knowledges of geoweb applications. Utilizing both textual and in-person research, I analyze the social formation of third-party geoweb applications based on Google Maps, the social, technological limits that application developers work within, and the possibilities for developers in that context. Most developers and their knowledges stick with the technology's social codes, but a few create applications that transgress their contextual limits, opening further new possibilities for mapping, subject formation, and geographic knowledge on the web.

Posthuman Agency in the Digitally Mediated City: Exteriorization, Individuation, Reinvention

“…If urban "digital mapping technologies and the digital landscapes they produce guide and code subjects towards specific experiences" (Boulton and Zook 2013, 439), then their geographical analysis must be properly posthumanist. Geographers need to grasp not only that digital technologies have the "power to produce real, lived spaces and places through digital means" (Dalton 2015(Dalton , 1032) but also that, while the human as its supplement is no longer, the posthuman is very much alive. Geographers must therefore reconfigure their understanding of digitally mediated cities and acknowledge both the reinventiveness and the diversity of urban posthuman agency.…”

One map to rule them all? Google Maps as digital technical object

“…There is a striking contrast, for instance, between Google's willingness to let users 'play' by making 'mash-ups', and the strict enforcement it applies not only to protecting its source code but the geographic data generated on its platform. As Dalton (2015Dalton ( : 1040 This asymmetry of data use reveals the changing nature of 'technical objects' in a digital milieu. Unlike industrial technical objects, where the key issue was capacity to access and use the object (such as a video or a car), the digital platform is notionally 'free' to its users.…”

“…Google Maps has become one of the basic platforms on which a host of other software operations are now built (Thatcher, 2014). Google’s structural dominance in the maps sector increasingly creates challenges for others, from small businesses that are left vulnerable to changes and updates in map data and terms of service (Dalton, 2015, p. 1042) to larger competitors such as Apple, Microsoft and ride-hire platforms such as Uber and Lyft. Most vitally for Google, the embedding of the Maps platform not only gives Google growing revenue from sites that make commercial use of its services but also access to huge volumes of user data.…”

Dynamic Mashup Performance Comparison Using Open Application Programming Interface of Geoweb Map Platforms Available in Korea

“…Besides the performance improvement of OGC WMS, there have been several studies related to the performance of general Geoweb services. (22)(23)(24)(25) Zhang (25) proposed a mainmemory-based quad tree to efficiently support dynamic geospatial window queries. He used the quad tree to improve the performance of window queries on the Geoweb services.…”

“…Thus, they proposed a cloud computing implementation for the scalability and performance improvement of a Geoweb server. Dalton (24) analyzed the social and technological limits and possibilities of third-party Geoweb applications based on web services such as Google Maps. In recent years, Geoweb 2.0 technology and standards have transformed a simple Geoweb server into a Geoweb platform. The Geoweb platform enables the creation of new knowledge and applications through the mashup of user data and geospatial data.…”