位置媒介基础设施化的技术政治反思——从中国布局“高精地图”谈起

Rethinking the Technopolitics of the Infrastructuralization of the Locative Media:From China's Layout of“High Definition Map”

随着移动定位技术、移动通信技术、GIS技术等媒介技术的发展与成熟,提供位置服务功能的位置媒介逐渐成为社会生产生活的基础设施型媒介。尽管传播学领域已经出现基础设施转向,但关于位置媒介的研究多集中于用户视角,鲜少聚焦行业侧的技术开发与市场布局过程。基于此,本文以风靡当下的“高精地图”为引子,从技术政治视角考察位置媒介“基础设施化”的权力关系运作特征,进而反思当下关于数字化未来的浪漫化想象。从“高精地图”的深层技术架构与权力网络可见,中国位置媒介的基础设施化从根本上是一场开展于大国相争、巨头角逐之竞技场的技术实践,其嵌于产业链条交织、基础设施互构、多元主体互动的复杂社会技术系统;这一技术实践非但未将社会引向开源、开放的新世界,反而在以数据为核心的技术设计、生产、推广、应用乃至流行过程中呈现出与“去中心化”相悖的集中化、精细化、科层化特征。

With the development of mobile location technology,mobile communication technology,GIS technology,and other media technologies,locative media,which provide location-based services,have gradually become infrastructural media for social production and life.Although there has been an infrastructure shift in the field of communication,research on locative media has focused on the user perspective,with relatively few studies concentrating on the technology development and market layout process on the industry side.Based on this,this paper takes the popular“High Definition Map”as an introduction to examine the characteristics of the power relation in the“infrastructuralization”of locative media from a techno-political perspective and then rethinks the current romanticized imagination about the digital future.From the deep technical structure and power network of the“High Definition Map”,it can be concluded that the infrastructuralization of locative media in China is fundamentally a technical practice carried out in the arena of competition between major powers and giants,embedded in a complex socio-technical system of interwoven industrial chains,interconstructed infrastructures,and interaction among multiple subjects.Instead of leading society to a new world of open source and openness,this technical practice presents the characteristics of centralization,refinement,and bureaucracy that contradict“decentralization”in the processes of technology design,production,promotion,application,and even popularization with data as the core.