Virtual Geographies is the first detailed study to offer a working definition of cyberpunk within the postmodern force field. Cyberpunk emerges as a new generic cluster within science fiction, one that has spawned many offspring in such domains as film, music, and feminism. Its central features are its adherence to a version of virtual space and a deconstructivist, punk attitude towards (high) culture, modernity, the human body and technology, from computers to prosthetics.The main proponents of cyberpunk are analyzed in depth along with the virtual landscapes they have created - William Gibson’s Cyberspace, Pat Cadigan’s Mindscapes and Neal Stephenson’s Metaverse. Virtual reality is examined closely in all its aspects, from the characteristic narrative constructions employed to the esthetic implications of the ‘virtual sublime’ and its postmodern potential as a discursive mode.With its interdisciplinary approach Virtual Geographies opens up fresh perspectives for scholars interested in the interaction between popular culture and mainstream literature. At the same time, the science fiction fan will be taken beyond the conventional boundaries of the genre into such revitalizing domains as postmodern architecture and literature, and into cutting-edge aspects of science and social thought.

This book examines the interrelationship between telecommunications and tourism in shaping the nature of space, place and the urban at the end of the twentieth century. They discuss how these agents are instrumental in the production of homogenous world-spaces, and how htese, in turn, presuppose new kinds of political and cultural identity. Virtual Geographies explores how new communication technologies are being used to produce new geographies and new types of space. Leading contributors from a wide range of disciplines including geography, sociology, philosophy and literature: * investigate how visions of cyberspace have been constructed * offer a critical assessment of the status of virtual environments and geographies * explore how virtual environments reshape the way we think and write about the world. This book sets recent technological developments in a historical and geographical perspective to offer a clearer view of the new vistas ahead.

This book examines the interrelationship between telecommunications and tourism in shaping the nature of space, place and the urban at the end of the twentieth century. They discuss how these agents are instrumental in the production of homogenous world-spaces, and how htese, in turn, presuppose new kinds of political and cultural identity. Virtual Geographies explores how new communication technologies are being used to produce new geographies and new types of space. Leading contributors from a wide range of disciplines including geography, sociology, philosophy and literature: * investigate how visions of cyberspace have been constructed * offer a critical assessment of the status of virtual environments and geographies * explore how virtual environments reshape the way we think and write about the world. This book sets recent technological developments in a historical and geographical perspective to offer a clearer view of the new vistas ahead.

Over the past decade, digital geographies has emerged as a dynamic area of scholarly enquiry, critically examining how the digital has reshaped the geography of our world. Bringing together authors working at the cutting-edge of the field, and grounding abstract ideas in case studies, this Research Agenda looks at the ways in which technology has altered all aspects of society, culture and the environment.

This textbook presents a fully up-to-date, synoptic and critical overview of how digital devices, logics, methods, etc are transforming geography.

Virtual Reality in Geography covers "through the window" VR systems, "fully immersive" VR systems, and hybrids of the two types. The authors examine the Virtual Reality Modeling Language approach and explore its deficiencies when applied to real geographic environments. This is a totally unique book covers all the major uses and methods of virtual reality used by geographers. The authors have produced a CDROM that comes with the book of virtual reality images that will be a fascinating companion to the text. This book will be of great interest to geographers, computer scientists and all those interested in multimedia and computer graphics.

“Digital culture” reflects the ways in which the ubiquity and increasing use of digital devices and infrastructures is changing the arenas of human experience, creating new cultural realities. Whereas much of the existing literature on digital culture addresses the topic through a sociological, anthropological, or media theoretic lens, this book focuses on its geographic aspects. The first section, “infrastructures and networked practices” highlights the integration of digital technologies into everyday practices in very different historical and geographical contexts—ranging from local lifeworlds, urban environments, web cartographies up to global geopolitics. The second section on “subjectivities and identities” shows how digital technology use possesses the capacity to alter the subjective, perceptive, and affective engagement with the spatial world. Finally, “politics and inequalities” investigates the social and spatial disparities concerning digital technology and its use. This book draws attention to the deep interconnectedness of the cultural, digital, and spatial aspects of everyday practices by referring to a broad range of empirical examples taken from tourism, banking, mobility, and health. Scholars in human geography, anthropology, media and communication studies, and history will find this research indispensable reading. It addresses both young and seasoned researchers as well as advanced students in the aforementioned disciplines. The wealth of examples also makes this publication helpful in academic teaching.

"The author's capacity to grasp and interpret these [world media] events is astounding, and her ability to provide insights into a world where unbounded information is circling the earth with the speed of light is startling." -- Choice "... a wide-ranging, quirky and dextrous mix of description, theory and analysis, that documents the perils of the global telecommunications network... " -- Times Literary Supplement "... this is a stimulating, even moving, book, dense with ideas and with many quotable lines." -- The New Statesman "Wark is one of the most original and interesting cultural critics writing today." -- Lawrence Grossberg McKenzie Wark writes about the experience of everyday life under the impact of increasingly global media vectors. We no longer have roots, we have aerials. We no longer have origins, we have terminals.

Introducing Human Geographies is the leading guide to human geography for undergraduate students, explaining new thinking on essential topics and discussing exciting developments in the field. This new edition has been thoroughly revised and updated and coverage is extended with new sections devoted to biogeographies, cartographies, mobilities, non-representational geographies, population geographies, public geographies and securities. Presented in three parts with 60 contributions written by expert international researchers, this text addresses the central ideas through which human geographers understand and shape their subject. Part I: Foundations engages students with key ideas that define human geography’s subject matter and approaches, through critical analyses of dualisms such as local-global, society-space and human-nonhuman. Part II: Themes explores human geography’s main sub-disciplines, with sections devoted to biogeographies, cartographies, cultural geographies, development geographies, economic geographies, environmental geographies, historical geographies, political geographies, population geographies, social geographies, urban and rural geographies. Finally, Part III: Horizons assesses the latest research in innovative areas, from mobilities and securities to non-representational geographies. This comprehensive, stimulating and cutting edge introduction to the field is richly illustrated throughout with full colour figures, maps and photos. These are available to download on the companion website, located at www.routledge.com/9781444135350.

This book examines the changing digital geographies of the Anthropocene. It analyses how technologies are providing new opportunities for communication and connection, while simultaneously deepening existing problems associated with isolation, global inequity and environmental harm. By offering a reading of digital technologies as ‘more-than-real’, the author argues that the productive and destructive possibilities of digital geographies are changing important aspects of human and non-human worlds. Like the more-than-human notion and how it emphasises interconnections of humans and non-humans in the world, the more-than-real inverts the diminishing that accompanies use of the terms ‘virtual’ and ‘immaterial’ as applied to digital spaces. Digital geographies are fluid, amorphous spaces made of contradictory possibilities in this Anthropocene moment. By sharing experiences of people involved in trying to improve digital geographies, this book offers stories of hope and possibility alongside stories of grief and despair. The more-than-real concept can help us understand such work – by feminists, digital rights activists, disability rights activists, environmentalists and more. Drawing on case studies from around the world, this book will appeal to academics, university students, and activists who are keen to learn from other people’s efforts to change digital geographies, and who also seek to remake digital geographies.