ABSTRACT

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 circulate in our global media culture. Once relegated to the TV weather report, such images have become commonplace in news media, and form the backbone of world browsers like Google Earth. This proliferation is related to a combination of factors from the commercialization of the remote sensing industry to the gradual transformation of the Internet into a locationbased web 3.0.