One map to rule them all? Google Maps as digital technical object

Abstract

Since its launch in 2005, Google Maps has been at the forefront of redefining how mapping and positionality function in the context of a globalizing digital economy. It has become a key socio-technical ‘artefact’ helping to reconfigure the nexus between technology and spatial experience in the 21st century. In this essay, I will trace Google’s evolving strategy in the mapping space. I will argue that the evolution of Google Maps exemplifies way in which a contemporary digital platform ‘succeeds’ by becoming embedded as a foundational resource for a variety of other uses and services. At one level, this can be understood in terms of what Gillespie has conceptualized as the ‘politics of platforms’, contributing to the emergence of what has recently been dubbed ‘platform capitalism’. At a deeper level, I will argue that Google Maps exemplifies the complex dynamics of what Simondon calls ‘technical objects’ that always exist in relation to both an evolving technical system, and the other systems constituting a more or less integrated social milieu.