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The Live Outdoor Webcams and the Construction of Virtual Geography

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Knowledge, Technology & Policy

Abstract

The live outdoor webcam seems inseparable from the mid-1990s’ popular proliferation of the Internet. Combining a well-known medium, i.e. the photograph, with a new one, i.e. the Internet, the live outdoor webcam seems in the rear-view mirror to have contributed significantly to the popular perception of the Internet as a globally distended and thus “geographical” medium. Moreover, due to its role in the NASA Triana mission, the never-realised flagship of the Clinton–Gore administration’s Digital Earth project, the live webcam seemed to play an important part in the construction of what leading geographers coined a “virtual geography”—the geography of the Internet, and the networked geography—that sought to establish itself as a new field of study during the late 1990s. In order to substantiate for this interpretation, I would like in the first part of this article to identify a number of basic characteristics of the outdoor webcam and, in the second, to analyse and discuss two papers written by leading scholars in the field; papers which have been important in the assessment of the impact of the Internet and geographical information systems (GIS) before the scientific community as well as policy makers within technological innovation and the public sector.

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Notes

  1. http://www.webcam-index.com, observed January 4th, 2008.

  2. Obviously, webcams are usually deliberately directed towards something, but whereas webcams as such cannot be taken for a singular phenomena but a plural one, the theme of will is significantly weakened: Webcams may in principle be found everywhere and webcam observations may thus in a general sense be said to be accidental rather than deliberate.

  3. The coffee cam was available from the website located at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/coffee.html from 1991–2001. Accessed January 4th, 2008.

  4. David Spector’s UpperWestSideCam is no longer in operation.

  5. The Zermatt Bergbahnen’s Zermatt—Matterhorn webcam is located at http://bergbahnen.zermatt.ch/e/web-cam/. Accessed on January 4th 2008.

  6. However dull such kind of images may seem, I cannot help enjoying the beauty of their technological concept; a concept which is captured perfectly by a classic haiku by Basho: ‘In a way/It was fun/Not to see Mount Fuji/In foggy rain.’ (Basho 1966: 51)

  7. This web-site (http://www.sensorium.org/nightandday/) appears in ruins today as the sources and links have not been updated recently. Accessed on January 4th, 2008.

  8. Only recently, we were offered this spectacle again but from an even more distant position, namely from the Spirit and Opportunity missions to Mars.

  9. I have analysed this problem specifically in my analysis of some epistemological problems in cybernetic geography (Johansson 2000).

  10. Benedikt, the architect, emphasizes the spatial aspect of information but seems to imply a temporal aspect as well in as much as the spatio-material taking place of information would need a temporal dimension as well.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Design Research/The Danish Design School, Strandboulevarden 47, 2100, Copenhagen Ø, Denmark

    Troels Degn Johansson

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  1. Troels Degn Johansson
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Correspondence to Troels Degn Johansson.

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Johansson, T.D. The Live Outdoor Webcams and the Construction of Virtual Geography. Know Techn Pol 21, 181–189 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12130-008-9060-x

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