Chapter 5
Zeroing in
Overhead imagery, infrastructure ruins, and datalands in Afghanistan and Iraq
To “zero in” means to aim directly at a target, to direct one’s attention to; focus on; concentrate on; to converge on; or close in on.1 Zeroing in is an apt metaphor for the way citizen-viewers are positioned in relation to world events since they increasingly view them from the perspectives of militarized aerial and orbital machines. Such a claim is, of course, not new, and scholars such as Paul Virilio, Kevin Robins, and Jody Berland among others have explored how such aerial and orbital perspectives structure particular ways of engaging with the world.2 What is new, however, is the frequency with which such overhead images now ...
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