Digital Nearby as"Heterotopia":A Study Based on Three Digital Maps
The"real nearby"is increasingly deeply shifting to the"digital nearby,"which is technologically supported by the"digital map."From Michel Foucault's"heterotopia"perspective,this article takes the"nearby"feature of three digital-map applications-the Baidu Map,the AMAP,and the Tencent Map-as the research object,and uses the empirical data collected mainly by methods of app walkthrough and black-box testing,in order to outline the"heterotopian"shape of the nearby constructed by them.With a complex set of techniques,such as specific architectures,data formats,interface system,platform rules,and even interoperability between platforms,digital mapping technology constructs"nearby"from an abstract discourse of distinguishing"far"from"near"into a visualized and information-based hybrid space.This new type of nearby presents a unique time-space order both of the coexistence of"local"and"fluid"and of the interweaving of"temporary"and"eternal."The digital nearby as heterotopia not only becomes an important field in which to struggle for the visibility resource of"locations,"but it uses the media logics of classification,disembedding,and collectivization to compensate and even reconstruct the process and shape of the interaction between people and the real nearby.
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