IrelandAfterNAMA’s own Rob Kitchin has won two major book awards for his book ‘Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life‘, co-authored with Martin Dodge, and published by MIT Press. The American Library Association has awarded the book ‘CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2011’. The Association of American Geographers have awarded the book the 2011 ‘AAG Meridian Book Award for the Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography’. The Meridian Award recognizes one book, from across the whole discipline, that ‘makes an unusually important contribution to advancing the science and art of geography’.
In selecting the book, the AAG committee wrote: “We feel it pushed the envelope as it explained the linkages between software and human behavior in a spatial context. This book articulates how space and software have become so intertwined that they constitute one another in our lives. It is one of the rare books that link critical social theories with technology and philosophy. Using everyday spaces, it demonstrates how such spaces are transformed by code and how new spaces of interactions are recreated. It is the type of book that can interface with many different disciplines. It is one of the few geography books taking the technology and the potential in reconstituting space seriously.”
The Meridian Award will be presented to Prof Kitchin on February 28, 2012 in the Trianon Ballroom of the New York Hilton in Manhattan, at the AAG’s annual conference to be attended by over 8,000 geographers.
Kitchin, R. and Dodge, M. (2011) Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 978-0-262-04248-2
Ireland after NAMA 
February 2, 2012 at 1:57 pm
Mark, I assume this is your doing, trying to shame me into going to collect the award no doubt. I’ll take a look at flight costs, but no promises.
February 2, 2012 at 6:06 pm
I’m innocent – honestly!
Really though – you should go!!!
Great work and a shot in the arm for us all. To think the best book of the year in the discipline came from NUIM is quite something. Upwards and onwards.
February 4, 2012 at 9:59 am
Congratulations Rob, well done.
Just out of interest when did you take out Irish citizenship ?
Irene, Mervyn and G/dad Hanslow
February 2, 2012 at 2:52 pm
Congratulations, Rob! I’m in awe..
February 2, 2012 at 8:27 pm
Congratulations, Prof Kitchin.
Of course, you must go and collect the award!
Having just read the MIT Press blurb, can I ask to what extent you deal with what Frances Cairncross called “The Death of Distance” (in a 1997 book of the that title)?
Living as we do on an island (like the Japanese, New Zealanders, Icelandics, Taiwanese, Australians etc), have you and your co-author considered that aspect of space being “reduced” by code?
i
February 2, 2012 at 10:08 pm
Thanks for the note, Donal. Kind of feels odd commenting on this post, but anyway. We don’t really deal with Cairncross’ arguments in this book to any great degree. It’s not about the ICTs per se, but the ways in which software is being embedded into everyday objects and systems, and the effects that has on everyday life. In a couple of previous books *Cyberspace, 1998; Mapping Cyberspace, 2000) we’ve critiqued Cairncross’ work – basically, ICT does induce space-time compression, but it does not destroy distance (nor community, or any number of other things the Internet was predicted to annihiliate). Place and geography still matter to culture, society, politics, economy, etc., although their spatial relations are undoubtedly reshaped by digital technologies.
February 3, 2012 at 5:04 pm
Congratulations Rob, well done.