Deep Mapping the Media City

Forerunners: Ideas First

by Shannon Mattern

Going beyond current scholarship on the “media city” and the “smart city,” Shannon Mattern argues that our global cities have been mediated and intelligent for millennia. Deep Mapping the Media City advocates for urban media archaeology, a multisensory approach to investigating the material history of networked cities. Mattern explores the material assemblages and infrastructures that have shaped the media city by taking archaeology literally—using techniques like excavation and mapping to discover the modern city’s roots in time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Technology

62 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 15, 2015

Reviews

[Robert Tate Morrison]

I don’t remember

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

not exactly what I was expecting, more of a proposal for the ideas rather than sharing actual techniques currently in process. Still interesting, more to learn.

[Roger Whitson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like Mattern's approach to understanding the city as having a tangled temporal infrastructure. Her theoretical bridge between media archaeology, urban mapping, archaeological practice, and literary mapping projects is really fascinating -- and I appreciate the way her research gracefully intersects with her pedagogy. She has no problem talking about how students can appreciate the multiple histories of urban space. One aspect I'd like to see more of -- although this is an incomplete project -- is an encounter with the non-human elements of cities. How can we speak of, to reference a recent work by Jussi Parikka, the geology of cities? How are cities inhabited by non-human actors, and how do these actors trace multiple prehistoric routes through the "modern" city? Such focus might be particularly productive if combined with the amazing work Mattern is doing with deep mapping, which really changes how we might understand media archaeology. All in all a really fascinating read, and I look forward to the full project.

[David Carrasquillo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although I agree with the several techniques to map every layer of data, from historical (human) to infrastructural (physical) and with most of the methodology proposed, it's disappointing that even when talking about making data more human, still, the author sounds like a fucking robot built by and for MIT propaganda. Maybe I'm just a hater.

[Nic Jay]

Great short thought piece about how media influences mapping