#see power tuesdays: Mapping individual mobility and connectivity
Last week, I started thinking about the theoretical framing of our networked world, and how to map power in it.
For today’s #see power tuesdays, I invite you to watch a hypnotically beautiful clip from 2014 mapping the airspace over Europe/ UK in the course of a day (1440 x faster than in real time).
The numbers are staggering - 30,000 flights crossing European airspace every day (a quarter of them within UK controlled airspace). The overall distance flown by above mentioned aircraft is equal to 25 million nautical miles. That’s 998 times circling around the Earth … or 104 trips to the Moon and back.
Individual mobility is source and consequence of economic globalisation, which creates innumerable connections between territories near and far. Flight routes serve as a perfect example of connectography.
Such connectivity has created new forms of space and, with it, new usage of space. Think of city hubs routing air traffic, and especially of airports, and airplanes, which form novel, universally standardised constructions and conceptions of space around the world. They are a perfect example of Rem Koolhas’s post-modern junk space.
Such space, even though it connects people also reemphasizes borders and separations. Air travel is a way to exercise social control, it represents the possibility for states to segregate and filter individuals (before and upon departure and arrival, for example). It also acutely distinguishes between winners and losers of globalisation - between those who can, and those who cannot travel.