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The Layering of (E)motion
Advances in satellite technologies over the past ten to twenty years have also facilitated an ideology of topographical and human ‘‘cleanliness.’’ Apart from providing unobstructed views, satellite technologies also accumulate previously unattainable data through various means and modes of acquisition. Satellite remote sensing, however, no longer utilizes simple photographic (meaning purely visual) lenses to capture views of the earth’s surface. The first American satellites, in operation by the National Space and Aeronautics Administration (NASA) 1960, did operationalize rudimentary television-type cameras to photograph the rotation and surface of the earth. Due to the limitations imposed by the cloud cover that obscures the earth’s surface, later satellites used multisensorial technologies such as ‘‘the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer, a High Resolution Infrared Sounder, . . . a Stratospheric Sounder Unit, a Microwave Sounder Unit, a Data Collection System, and a Space Environment Monitor’’ (Mapworld 1996,49).While recent satellite technologies offer ground resolution anywhere from eight to thirty meters, drawn from radiation emissions from the earth’s surface (Martin 1991, 20), the widespread use of global positioning systems have perhaps more than any other previous technology introduced a near perfect device for pinpointing and mapping any point on the earth’s surface. The empirical claims of such systems offer a much stronger cleaning solution for the muddied data terrain.
Born of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD),[3] GPS facilitates an exactitude in geographical mapping that was previously unimagined in the history of technology. With a hand-held computer, an individual can at any time draw on twenty-four radio- emanating GPS satellites positioned some 19,100 kilometers above the earth’s surface to obtain their precise longitude and latitude coordinates (Mapworld 1996). Available in the United States for approximately $150, according to the U.S.-based GIS corporation MapInfo, ‘‘GPS Technology is ideal for real-time tracking such as fleet management and 911 response, and for field data collection such as rural addressing. Many municipalities now gather this information from a combination of tax maps, aerial photographs, and odometer readings. GPS greatly simplifies this task because it is now possible to plot precise positions and input them directly into a computer to create a real-time database’’ (Mapworld 1996, 16).Drawing on everyday, networked consumer-solicitation technologies, GPS, and other remote sensing technologies (from surveillance planes to satellite imaging), computer programs such as GIS thus attempt to account for changes in both the physical and psychographic worlds. The layering of such processes in the form of maps is moreover in constant motion, informed and updated by the ever-changing human condition (new addresses, roads, housing projects, and so on). Once geocoded, the emotive investments of the populace—the likes, dislikes, and desires of demographic groups—can be located, capitalized on, in the case of incorrect data ‘‘cleansed,’’ or most important forecasted in space. In comparing this process of layering (e)motion (in the form of a diagram map) with ‘‘hinged-flap’’ maps that are laid over top each other, Phil Parent and Larry Konty (1992, 26) conclude that the ‘‘concept of showing spatial and temporal change by overlays is a crucial underpinning of GIS.’’[3]Russia has a similar system with twenty-two satellites (‘‘Glonass Nears Full Operation’’ 1995).
