The Future of Digital Space by Emma Fraser
Emma Fraser has published an article titled "The future of digital space: Gaming, virtual reality, and metaversal thinking" in Dialogues in Human Geography. Emma's research focuses on digital video games, media cultures, and representations of the city, including digital space and place; the imagined ruins of video games, and post-apocalyptic visions of the end of the city. She also researches urban decay and regeneration, using Frankfurt School critical theory to critique city branding and urban exploration practices, and the role of play and media in urban experience.
Emma has published work across sociology, media studies, cultural theory, and geography, including solo and co-authored pieces in Information, Communication, and Society.
From the Abstract:
The accelerated post-Covid expansion of online worlds presents an unprecedented move of people into real-time interactive digital spaces. What does this change mean for the future of geography as a discipline? At this critical juncture, there is potential to rethink the position of the digital in geographical thought and praxis – to move beyond apparently common-sense categorizations of real and virtual, representation and reality. This commentary considers the implications of the contemporary push toward ‘metaversal’ thinking for geographical theory as well as the significance of virtual world-making for geographical theorizations of digital space and place. I suggest that key thinkers on space and media geographies must be re-evaluated and applied to this new wave of digital development. What is the significance of recent debates around emerging spaces like the metaverse, augmented reality, and virtual reality, understood not as happenings with distinct real and virtual counterparts, but as geographical – spatial – phenomena?