Virtual Geographies

The term virtual geography originated during the 1990s. Broadly, it refers to geographic aspects of information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially the Internet, as well as related geographies of the social, cultural, and political spheres. It is an example of a heterogeneous assemblage of material and symbolic relations.

Early commentators on virtuality tended to differentiate it from physical spaces. Not only was it new or unprecedented, but unlike physical space it also was globalized, decentered, immediate, and placeless. Although writers were divided on whether virtual spaces were liberatory or surveillant, democratizing or repressive, and enabling or unequal, many of them agreed that virtual spaces were fostering a digital era of globalization. Whereas some emphasized an inherently negative logic (citing increased corporatization and surveillant characteristics), others celebrated the ability of virtual spaces to foster community or found links between democratic achievement and Internet access. Manuel Castells epitomized this work by arguing that virtual geographies were made up of “spaces of flows” rather than places. This led other writers to speculate that an old idea in geography, time–space compression or convergence, signaled the “death of distance.”

These approaches were criticized on two grounds. First, they tend to homogenize and essentialize virtual spaces. Rather than understanding virtual spaces as separate from physical spaces, critics emphasized the mutual relations between virtual spaces and material spaces. Virtual spaces (or “cyberspace”) were produced by sociopolitical conditions of material spaces, and it was also realized that there was a simultaneous impact on our material geographies by the virtual. This “coconstruction” of virtual space and physical space is now a dominant understanding of cyberspace. Second, it was argued that virtual spaces were not placeless or decentered; rather, they had a distinct geography.

Virtual geographies include not only the Internet but also cellular and wireless technologies, video monitoring systems, and the associated social practices (e.g., discussion groups, blogging, online commerce, voting, online mapping, and geographic information systems [GIS] services). These complex assemblages of material-discursive objects have precluded commentators from easily defining their field of study. Nevertheless, those interested in virtuality and geography have pursued several themes of study.