| This dissertation is a socio-historical investigation of satellite imaging technology from its development for Cold War military reconnaissance through its contemporary commercial and public use, especially in forms such as Google Earth. Designed through historical relationships between government and industry, my research argues that the commercialization of contemporary satellite imaging technology has resulted in a new form of techno-visual authority. Specifically, claims that it contributes to democratic transparency are attributed to corporations, and operate alongside a discourse of risk that legitimates securitization through new forms of surveillance, alongside an attribution of truth and accuracy to datasets produced as images. This is constituted within a new political economy of `big data' in which technologies are used to reduce social practices to comparable data forms linked to location, resulting in a standardized spatial logic that erases difference and complexity. I argue that rather than increasing transparency, such data visualizations presented as true representations of reality have normalized a constructed visual subjectivity where an overhead point of view is privileged over the human experience on the ground, and social practices are traced as data exchanges. |
