Amazon.co.uk Review
The study of cyberspace crosses intellectual and academic boundaries, encompassing geography, cartography, sociology, studies of culture, communications, even literary theory and cognitive psychology. Researcher and computer technician Martin Dodge and geographer Rob Kitchin have put their collective experience together to produce a volume (and matching Web site: www.MappingCyberspace.com) examining how visually to represent this new space in which we now spend so much of our time.
Other writers--William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and Pat Cadigan, to name but a few--have explored this subject in a speculative, fictional way, but this is largely tough, academic stuff, everything from mapping techniques to "the spatial cognition of cyberspace" with a little critical theory thrown in for bad measure.
The two started with Dodge's Web site www.cybergeography.org/atlas and meant to create a coffee-table book, but found it "mutated into a book concerned solely with the spatialities and geometries of cyberspace" and then to it's present, somewhat dry form.
It shows. You can't help feeling the book would have benefited from fewer words and more pictures; the authors have obviously read Tufte's Envisioning Information but could apply his insights better. Nevertheless, it's a good introduction to an activity so challenging one source calls it "more formidable than that faced by the sea captains of the past". --Liz Bailey
Review
This is an excellent, innovative and thought-provoking book. It does a valuable service to the discipline of geography by demonstrating most effectively that even in Cyberspace, Geography still matters Andy Gillespie, University of NewcastleThis book displays enormous work and a depth of knowledge that will be invaluable to the researcher, student and the interested lay-reader Mike Crang, University of Durham...a bold undertaking that contributes significantly to geography's understanding of the multiple facets of cyberspace... Francis Harvey, University of Kentucky'Mapping Cyberspace is an important pioneering work. The authors have performed a valuable service and have produced an essential reference for anyone seriously interested in the spatial, social, economic and cultural implications of telecommunications infrastructure and cyberspace.' -
William J Mitchell, Environment and Planning'The book provides a clear and broad introduction to major theoretical. Methodical, and empirical issues related to cyberspace research. Mapping Cyberspace is a critical first stop for any researcher interested in contributing new knowledge in this exciting emerging field.' -
Joshua Lepawsky, University of Kentucky for Cultural Geographies
