Geocaching by Michael Anton (MA Dissertation)

7/31/2019 Geocaching by Michael Anton (MA Dissertation)

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G e o c a c h i n g

A d i s s e r t a t i o n b y M i c h a e l A n t o n


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Declaration

This dissertation has been prepared on the basis of my own work. Where other source

materials have been used they have been acknowledged using the Chicago reference

scheme.

This dissertation is 17,742 words long, excluding material in tables, appendices and

bibliography, but including quotations and references.

04/09/2008


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Abstract

This dissertation is about a high-tech treasure hunting game called geocaching. It explores

three key questions about the game concerning space and place, technology and movement

and the nature of play. Drawing on the work of Yi-fu Tuan, Edward Casey and Donna

Haraway this project tries to assess where geocaching can fit into geographic thought,

especially the more recent strands that seem concerned with the performative nature of the

world around us. The project does this in an attempt to create a greater understanding of

the more-than-representational elements of the active processes that make up

geocaching. By describing and analysing varied moments, events and encounters of

geocaching this project tries to highlight the importance of these elements in order to show

that the ways in which geocaching is played are just as important as the representations it

uses and creates.


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Table of Contents 1 Prelude ....................................................................................................................... 1

2 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 5

3 My Research.............................................................................................................. 8

4 Literature Review................................................................................................... 10

4.1 Space and Place .................................................................................................... 11

4.2 Movement and technology ................................................................................... 21

4.3 Play ....................................................................................................................... 27

5 Methodology........................................................................................................... 31

5.1 My Approach ........................................................................................................ 31

5.2 Project Outline ...................................................................................................... 34

5.3 Data Gathering ...................................................................................................... 35

5.3.1 Ethnography and Participant Observation ...................................................... 35

5.3.2 Auto-Ethnography.......................................................................................... 36

5.3.3 Mobile Informal Interviews ............................................................................ 37

5.3.4 Data Recording .............................................................................................. 38

5.4 Participant access and recruitment ....................................................................... 39

5.5 Ethical considerations ........................................................................................... 39

5.6 Limitations ............................................................................................................ 40

6 Preface...................................................................................................................... 41

6.1 Writing Geocaching ............................................................................................... 41

6.2 Styles and Fonts .................................................................................................... 43

7 Geocaching .............................................................................................................. 44

7.1 Finding my feet ..................................................................................................... 44

7.2 Dawn to Dusk ........................................................................................................ 50


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7.3 Hiding ................................................................................................................... 64

7.4 Meeting ................................................................................................................ 67

7.4.1 Place and Space ............................................................................................. 67

7.4.2 Movement and Technology ........................................................................... 70

7.4.3 Play ................................................................................................................ 74

7.5 Finding .................................................................................................................. 76

8 Conclusions.............................................................................................................. 77

8.1 Space and place .................................................................................................... 77

8.2 Technology and Mobility ....................................................................................... 79

8.3 Play ....................................................................................................................... 80

8.4 Further Work ........................................................................................................ 81

9 Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 82

10 Appendix .................................................................................................................. 88

10.1 Forum Post ........................................................................................................ 88

10.2 Dawn till Dusk Map............................................................................................ 89

10.3 Templates.......................................................................................................... 90

10.4 Logbook 1 (Northwood)..................................................................................... 91

10.5 Logbook 2 (Ruislip Lido) ..................................................................................... 92


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Table of Figures

Figure 1 (Ullman, 1941, p. 856) ........................................................................................... 11

Figure 2 (Castree, 2003, p. 174) ........................................................................................... 17

Figure 3 ............................................................................................................................... 34


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Chapter 1: Prelude

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1 Prelude

N5137.130 W024.224

...are the exact longitude and latitude coordinates Im standing at. I clutch hold of the small

rectangular box, turning it to consult its one large screen as I begin walking down the path

into the woods; I dont know where Im going, but itdoes. The screen shows a map of the

area Im in as well as two symbols, a large blue arrow that represents myself and a small

brown treasure chest that represents what Im looking for. As I move down the path so does

the arrow, as I turn right into some denser woodland so does the arrow and with every step

we both get closer to the treasure. I navigate with my eyes half on the screen and half on


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Chapter 1: Prelude

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the path, my pulse quickens as the gap between the two symbols closes, 200ft, 100ft, 50ft.

All of a sudden the machine speaks up and in a computerised voice tells me You have

arrived.

Only half an hour earlier Id been inside my house with the screen tethered to my laptop

whilst it downloaded those longitude and latitude coordinates from a webpage into the

screens small memory. Now here I was, exactly where it had been told to go.

Or not... I put the screen away in my coat pocket and start searching with my bare hands for

this treasure. I look under logs, in tree trunks, under some holly and after ten minutes of

getting dirt under my fingernails I find nothing. Cursing I consult the screen again, Im

supposedly 30ft out, so I start to pace around until Im entirely sure that Ive got that blue

arrow, myself, where Im/were supposed to be. Alert and excited I get down low again and


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Chapter 1: Prelude

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start searching through the undergrowth. A muffled noise breaks my concentration and I

take a quick look around to make sure no-one is observing my bizarre behaviour. I jump

when my hand touches the rough corner of something artificial and plastic. Thats it! I grab

hold and remove a small battered tupperware box proudly bearing the words Geocache

Contents Harmless Do Not Remove. A little giddy with childish excitement I prise open

the container and rifle through the assorted contents: toy figures, key rings, a bit of cable, a

model airplane kit and a small notebook and pen. The slightly disappointing contents do

little to dampen my pride, and I remove an item and replace it with a toy of my own. After

this I open the small notebook on the first blank page and I write down my name together

with a brief description of my journey. Its the newest addition to the 20 or so it already

contains. Finished with the notebook I carefully return all of the contents, seal the box and

then set it back in the space it originally occupied. Ive just found my first geocache.


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Chapter 1: Prelude

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Returning home I log onto the same website I was on just an hour ago and find a page that

displays the information for the box I found. Clicking a link that asks Found it? takes me to

a page with a space to detail my experience. Again I write a description of my little journey

to the geocache. I hit submit and my electronic message is added to the webpage and next

to my name a line of text that appears saying 1 Found where previously there was

nothing. I feel satisfied, but I cant resist having a quick look to see what I could find next...


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Chapter 2: Introduction

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2 Introduction

This dissertation is about a high-tech treasure hunting game called geocaching (Geocaching

- Homepage, 2008). The concept behind the game is simple, there are a large number of

treasure containers (or geocaches) hidden across the world and the aim is to find as many

of them as possible. This is carried out using a form of technologically-enhanced

exploration, the sort that was described in the prelude; it combines numerical geographic

coordinates, (found at the start of the prelude), a website that provides a searchable

database of geocaches and their coordinates (the source of the treasure-chest icon) and

most importantly a device to convert these numerical coordinates into comprehensible

directions (the screen I carried).

These devices form a small part of the American run Global Positioning System (or GPS)

formed in the 1970s under the name NAVSTAR. A number of the satellites that formed it still

orbit the earth today, broadcasting radio signals 12,500 miles above the planets surface in

such a way that at least 4 of them are visible at any one time from any point on the globe

(Spenser, Frizzelle, Page, & Vogler, 2003). This uniform availability means that any Global

Positioning System receiver (or GPSr) like the device can, with some simple triangulation

calculations and a clear view of the sky, work out its position on the earths surface to within

a few metres. However, this sort of accuracy has not always been available to ordinary users

of GPS, in fact up until the turn of new millennia most GPS users found their devices to be

inaccurate by at least 100 metres.


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These inaccuracies were not the fault the GPS receivers, nor were they caused by errors in

the satellite network, they were deliberately induced as part of what the US government

called Selective Availability (or SA) (Zumberge & Gendt, 2001). This system of intentional

signal degradation was designed to limit the full powers of GPS to the American Military

whilst still providing rudimentary access to civilian and commercial users (Spenser, Frizzelle,

Page, & Vogler, 2003). However, in 1996 American president Bill Clinton announced that the

USA was committed to the discontinuation of SA by the year 2006 and, only four years later,

on May the 2nd

, 2000 he terminated the Selective Availability scheme. In a speech that day

he acknowledged how:

Worldwide transportation safety, scientific, and commercial interests could best be served

by the discontinuation of SA[and that] this increase in accuracy will allow new GPS

applications to emerge and continue to enhance the lives of people around the world.

(Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, 2000)

It was, for a number of technologically minded people, a momentous occasion, indeed this

crucial moment in the history of cybercartography generated amateur curiosity and

ingenuity that lay the foundation for the subsequent developments of this decade.

(Finkelberg, 2007, p. 17).For example, on the very next day (3rd

May 2000), David Ulmer, an

American computer consultant and technology enthusiast, decided to test the new-found

accuracy of his GPSr and set out for a forest near Beaver Creek, Oregon. Once in the forest

he hid a large bucket containing a notepad, pencil and various trinkets in a deep hole(The

History of Geocaching, 2008). Before he left the forest he used his newly upgraded GPSr to


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ascertain the buckets exact longitude and latitude coordinates and later that day he logged

on to a website called google.groups where he posted the following:

Well, I did it, created the first stash hunt stash and here are the

coordinates:

N 45 17.460 W122 24.800

Lots of goodies for the finders. Look for a black plastic bucket

buried most of the way in the ground. Take some stuff, leave some

stuff! Record it all in the log book. Have Fun!

(sci.geo.satellite-nav, 2000)

Within three days, two people had used their GPSrs to find David Ulmers bucket. They both

signed the log book he had provided and replaced one of the original items with something

of their own. A month later Matt Teague, the buckets first finder, began calling the number

of hidden GPS located stashes that had spread across the USA by the name geocaches, the

name stuck. On 02/09/08 Matt Teague and another man named Jeremy Irish opened a

website called www.geocaching.com to catalogue David Ulmers bucket and the 75 other

geocaches that had since been hidden world-wide. Significant press coverage on American

news channel CNN and in The New York Times coupled with a wide array of enthusiastic

hiders and finders quickly turned the quirky experiment concerning GPS signals into a world-

wide phenomena and in the process the sport of geocaching was invented.


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Chapter 3: My Research

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3 My Research

On the 12th

of August, 2008 geocaching.com detailed 632,519 active geocaches, this

dissertation is about just a fraction of them. Consequently the research that makes up this

project is not designed to provide a complete review of geocaching, instead it presents a

detailed exploration and critical analysis of a small number of geocaching case-studies and

specific research questions in the hope that this will establish a framework on top of which

further research could be carried out.

In order to establish such a framework three basic assumptions have been made about

geocaching. These assumptions are that:

Geocaching occurs in places and spaces. Geocaching is technologically enhanced movement. Geocaching is played.

The validity of these assumption should be apparent from the introductory sections, place,

space, technology, movement, and play were all integral to David Ulmers first geocache and

still form the basis of geocaching today. Each and every geocache has a physical location in

space (the coordinates) and a hiding place, a technological device then directs the

movement of a geocacher to the geocache and then in order to play the game the

geocacher must find it. These three aspects of geocaching have directly led to the three

research questions that will form the basis of this project. They are as follows:


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Chapter 3: My Research

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Where are the spaces and places of geocaching and what is the relationshipbetween them?

How do forms of GPS technology alter movement and mobility and how does thiscreate the process of geocaching?

Why is geocaching played and how do people play geocaching?Before I begin to explore these questions I will do two things: First I will contextualise

geocaching within academic thought paying specific attention to geographic literature,

following this I will set out my research design and methodology providing justifications for

nature of my research as well as its textual form.


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Chapter 4: Literature Review

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4 Literature Review

The three thematic sections of this chapter each detail a different set of geographic

theories, concepts and debates that have influenced my work on geocaching. The three

parts that follow are presented in a descending order of scale and breathe of subject

matter, a structure that also mirrors the order of my research questions.

Beginning with my first question concerning the places and spaces of geocaching I outline a

number of differing conceptualisations of place and space whilst considering the tensions

between the two interrelated concepts and outlining a number of phases of geographic

thought on these issues. Following this and narrowing in general focus I consider the more

specific ways in which bodily mobility and modern technology have been theorised together

through the concepts of cyborgs and amplified realities. Finally I look jointly at the ideas of

space and place and technology and movement in order to explore the sorts of play that

geocaching has created.


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Chapter 4: Literature Review - Space and Place

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4.1 Space and Place

Written in the 1970s in reaction to the models of empty and disembodied space used by

spatial scientists in quantitative revolution of the 1960s (Cresswell, 2004) Yi-Fu Tuans

seminal work Space and Place boldly outlined a new humanistic geography that defined

place as a fundamental aspect of the human condition. Previous to this senses of place had

been used in the regional geographies of the 1950s as objectified and compartmentalised

building blocks to construct rigid understandings of the world (Gregory, 2000).

Geographical definitions of place had also been defined by the terms use in Christallers

Central Place Theory (CPT). In CPT place was defined as a node or focus within the a grid of

geometric space (Johnston, 2000). For example, in Figure 1 the term place is used to in a

geographic sense but in a form that uses place as filler for the more important geometric

spaces surrounding it.

Figure 1(Ullman, 1941, p. 856)


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Tuans conceptualisation of place was not an abstraction like Christaller or Ullmans, instead

Tuan identified place as a way of being and understanding the world around him.

Interestingly he came to such a position, not by rejecting the notion of abstract and empty

space, but by adding layers to it. In Space and Place Tuan described how space is

transformed into place as it acquires definition and meaning (Tuan, 1977, p. 136). In this

way Tuan conceptualised space as a universal, pre-cognitive entity that existed before

human attention was given to it. Once human attention was given to an area that occupied

a spot within this grid of empty geometric space a place was created. Using the Mississippi

river as an example, Tuan suggested that to begin with the small unknown pool that formed

the source of the mighty river merely occupied a point in space. However, once scientists

had concluded that this small inconspicuous pool was the original source of the river a great

deal of human attention was fostered onto the body of water thus transforming the space

occupied by a pool into the place of the rivers source (Tuan, 1977, p. 162).

Whilst the nature of human attention was certainly important to Tuans differentiations

between space and place, he also brought in the concepts of time and movement to further

clarify his stance. Talking generally about the role of time in human existence he stated that:

Human time is marked by stages as human movement in space is marked by pauses. Just as

time may be represented by an arrow, a circular orbit, or the path of a swinging pendulum,

so may movements in space; and each representation has its characteristic set of pauses or

places. (Tuan, 1977, p. 198)

For Tuan grids of space created the possibility of movement when there was time available

to do so and together space and time created the set-up for human life, with each human


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being moving from their point of birth to their point of death through a grid of space on a

path that followed the flow of time. However, Tuan was not proposing an empty and linear

existence that simply progressed from birth to death. Instead Tuan suggested that this

journey was not a continuous flow of movement or time, but in fact a series of stages and

pauses that were stitched together by such a flow. These pauses in time and space were

places, moments when human beings stopped in order to become concerned with what was

around them, thus Tuan defined place by its pausing and experiential nature.

The significance of human experience in the definition of place has been picked up by other

human geographers in a number of ways. Of particular interest for this project are the ways

in which geographers have dealt with the tensions between measured space (such as the

longitude and latitude coordinates of a geocache) and experienced place (such as the

process of finding a geocache). Casey, in his book Getting back into place wrestled with the

differences between the twin concepts of space and place by harnessing a metaphor of

nautical exploration, in it he suggested that:

To know your longitude at sea is not not yet to know your place there. However

important such knowledge is for navigational purposes, it yields only a world-point

expressed in abstract numbers...such a position is itself a cultural object. But precisely as a

posit, it is not an experiential object; no one...ever experiencedlongitude at sea. (Casey,

1993, p. 30)

Casey appeared to define place in similar terms to Tuan, both geographers asserted that a

place was defined by the unique nature of human experience, and both suggested that it

was through these experiences that place differentiated itself the from space. However,


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Caseys idea of place was subtly yet substantially different to Tuans. For Tuan place is an

organised world of meaning. It is essentially a static concept. If we see the world as a

process, constantly changing, we should not be able to develop any sense of place (Tuan,

1977, p. 179). Yet Casey contradicted this sentiment by suggesting that a place, despite its

frequently settled appearance, is an essay in experimental living within a changing culture.

(Casey, 1993, p. 31) For Casey the concept of a static place was a deception that came about

when the ties between culture and place were not acknowledged. For Casey place was

encultured as well as experienced, thus as cultural changes occurred so too did changes to

place. Caseys encultured place was as fluid and as dynamic as the active cultures within it.

This is not to suggest that Tuan ignored the role of culture, however, unlike Casey he

maintained that place existed before culture and suggested that place transcended the

cultural particularities and may therefore reflect[ the general human condition in a static

and universal way (Tuan, 1977, p. 5).

However, Caseys encultured place only led to questions about the properties of culture

itself. Indeed plenty of questions have already be asked about the conceptualisation of

culture used within the cultural turn of the nineties and some of the answers have been

rather dismissive of the term culture. For example Mitchell suggested that there is no such

(ontological) thing as culture. Rather, there is only a very powerful idea of culture.(Mitchell,

1995, p. 102). Unfortunately there is not room here to further delve into the contentious

nature of culture, but nevertheless it should be noted that defining place in terms of culture

does not explain place, instead it leads into another conceptual debate over a different

term.


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Further problems arise for these conceptualisations of place when their roots are examined;

in much the same way that Tuan and Casey radically redefined the concept of place from its

regional and scientific roots, the concept of space has seen a massive reconceptualisation

that has gone beyond the empty and geometric spaces that spawned Tuan and Caseys

experiential place. Crang and Thrift neatly sum up this change in stance during their

introduction to Thinking Space, Geographythey say has...[moved] away from a sense of

space as a practico-inert container of action towards space as a socially produced set of

manifolds(Crang & Thrift, 2000, p. 2). This shift is due (in part) to Henri Lefebvres seminal

work The Production of Space. In it Lefebvre rejected the mathematical or geometric

spaces Ive previous mentioned and replaced it with a (social) space that was (socially)

produced (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 26). This social space existed as, and was also socially

produced by, a conceptual triad that consisted of:

Representations of Space: The conceptualised and conceived space of scientists,planners and theorists.

Representational Space: The unspoken lived space of the everyday, it was alive, andexperienced in ways similar to experiential place.

Spatial Practises: The cohesive perceived space that conditioned spatial usage.(Lefebvre, 1991, p. 38)

These three aspects of space did not simply fit together like pieces of a jigsaw, instead they

were dialectically produced and re-produced with each consideration of space. Likewise

there was no simple way for place to be constructed from this triad, especially when what

had been previously defined as experiential place already seemed to be incorporated within


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Lefebvres representational space. Either place would need to be abandoned and left as a

component of space, or a radical new conceptualisation of place was needed.

Taking up this task Andrew Merrifield used Lefebvres triad to reconstruct the relationship

between space and place; To do this Merrifiled decided that if space is not a high level

abstract theorization separated from the more concrete, tactile domain of place then their

distinction must, therefore, be conceived by capturing how they melt into each other rather

than by reifying some spurious fissure (Merrifield, 1993, p. 520).In other words place and

space should no longer be understood as a binary but as a continuously produced whole,

one that seamlessly blends from socially produced space into a new sort place.

This new place was defined by two important themes, openness and connection.

Motivated in part by some of technological advances that I shall discuss shortly, Noel

Castree suggested that:

We must appreciate the openness of places; that is, we need what Massey (1994, p.51)

calls a global sense of the local. Its not just that more and more places are interlinked and

interdependent. Its also the intensity of these global connections that has increased...In

sum the world is no longer a mosaic of places... But places still undoubtedly exist. (Castree,

2003, p. 174)


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Chapter 4: Literature Review - S

The places that still did exist we

interconnections (Figure 2). Th

experiences but from a abunda

action and material. By removi

joins with social space could b

and action, neither were static

the world that dealt with the ra

The open and connected sense

of place that Tuan proposed, y

abstract and impersonal diagra

flows and connections are mad

A Geography of the Lifeworld a

An interaction of many time

groundstones of place ballet ar

ballet, space becomes place th

pace and Place

Figure 2(Castree, 2003, p. 174)

re seen by Castree as switching points or nod

se nodes were produced not by insular or

nce of interrelated and hyper-connected flow

g the concept of place from its bounded root

gin to be seen, both were produced through

or fixed and together they created a progressi

id spread of people, information and material

f place seems opposed to internal, experientia

t if the ideas of place ballet are introduced

ms of Castrees nodal places the humane na

apparent. David Seamon described place ball

s:

-space routines and body ballets rooted in

continual human activity and temporal contin

ough interpersonal, spatio-temporal sharing.

17

s in a map of

ono-cultural

of meaning,

its seamless

interrelation

ve reading of

ithin it.

l knowledges

to the rather

ure of these

t in his work

space The

uityIn place

Human parts


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create a larger place-whole. The meaning of the whole is normally expressed indirectly --

through day-to-day meetings and an implicit sense of participation. (Seamon, 1979)

For Seamon Place Ballets were flows and movement across space, but they were also the

embodied flows and actions of real, everyday people that came together over time to create

and sustain shared senses of place, not through what was materially there, but through

what was done and performed within them. They were experienced, but they were shared

and fluid in nature and relied on a multitude of actors to maintain the same time-space

routines and perform the same body ballets, such as boarding the same train each day,

until their actions became an integral part of the places they occurred within.

Another useful way of conceptualising place can be found in Michel de Certeaus strategies

and tactics. For de Certeau the workings of place could be understood by dividing it into two

distinct yet interrelated components. Strategies were the views and constructions of places

from those in power, they were made up from spatially regimented structures and were

defined through strategically produced knowledges. Strategies were also:

A mastery of places through sight...whence the eye can transform foreign forces into

objects that can be observed and measured, and thus control and include them within its

scope of vision. (Certeau, 1998, p. 35)

Thus strategies sought to visually consume their surroundings, labelling and researching

them until they were a component of themselves. Strategies flowed outwards defining and

bounding places until they become autonomous and natural.


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On the other hand tactics were a subversive form of action occurring within the strategic

spaces. A tactic was:

A calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus...The space of the tactic is

the space of the other. Thus it must play on and with a terrain imposed on it and organized

by the law of foreign power...It takes advantage of opportunities and depends on them,

being without any base where it could stockpile its winnings, build up its own position, and

plan raid. What it wins it cannot keep. (Certeau, 1998, p. 37)

Like place-ballet tactics existed through movement. However, place-ballet created senses of

place through repeated bodily movements and actions, whereas in a tactic these places

were already defined by the authoritative strategies. Place-Ballet then can be seen as a

middle ground between strategy and tactics, one that exists when repeated tactics

occurring within strategically defined place are somehow solidified, not into authoritative

strategies, but into experiential time-space routines of shared experience. In other words

Place-Ballets could be conceptualised as tactics that could keep the experiences that were

won, and connect and transform them into a meaningful sense of place. Places would then

be defined from within by a multitude of connected and shared instances of tactical

movement, not from above in a predetermined rigid form, but from the actors on the street

and their fluid, dynamic yet routine everyday actions.

The idea of open and connected place has lead some writers such as Relph and Auge to

question the placelessness and non-places of the world created by the homogenisation

caused by the flows interlinking places (Cresswell, 2004). However, to see place as just

connection and interrelation is simplifying the concept too greatly, what is needed is a


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definition that incorporates the open senses of place together with the personal

experiences that make it intimate and unique. Interestingly it isnt a geographer, but an art

writer and thinker of place called Lucy Lippard who provides such a cohesive definition. In

her work entitled The Lure of the Local she defined place as:

[The] latitudinal and longitudinal within the map of a persons life. It is temporal and

spatial, personal and political. A layered location replete with human histories and

memories, place has width as well as depth. It is about connections, what surrounds it, what

formed it, what happened there, what will happen there. (Lippard, 1997, p. 7)

Lippards place encapsulates both Tuans experiential aspects and Castrees connections to

form a hybrid place that is nostalgic and intimate, yet forward looking and connected.


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Chapter 4: Literature Review - Movement and technology

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4.2 Movement and technology

As previously stated, open & connected place has been conceptualised negatively as an

erosion and homogenisation of place. Part of this argument points blame at modern

technological innovation and suggests that:

The growth of global information networks, the wide-spread adoption of personal

computers and their related networks of everyday communication, along with pervasive

reach of digital technologies in general, have led to further spatial and temporal

dislocations...distance annihilated once and for all by the instantaneous delivery of

information. (Allon, 2004, p. 253)

In this way the integration of places into nodal networks of electronically mediated

communication removes the spatial and temporal divides that had once separated these

places into the mosaic Castree (2001) discussed. A consequence of this has been the

reduced importance of movement, for, if movement is made up from time (to spend on the

move) and space (distance to move across) (Cresswell, 2006, p. 4) and both are lacking in

modern places then movement is severely reduced in importance and relevance. Losing the

importance of movement is no trivial matter, indeed Seamons place ballets and Castree

nodes of place required movement to exist and Merleau-Ponty argues that bodily mobility is

the key to consciousness:

Consciousness is in the first place not a matter of I think that but of I can...Consciousness

is being towards the thing through the intermediary of the body. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962

quoted in (Cresswell, 1999, p. 177).


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In this way a human being is conscious of his/her own being because of their inherent

mobility and the manipulation of said mobility, through the body, onto the material world

beyond it. A modern world with a relative lack of space and time to move through would,

for Merleau-Ponty, be an empty world of near unconscious people.

Of particular interest to the writer Rebecca Solinit and to this project on geocaching in

general is the form of bodily movement we call walking; a process that Solinit paradoxically

describes as the most obvious and the most obscure thing in the world (Solnit, 2001, p. 1).

Even walking is under threat from the pace of technological connection, Solinit laments the

way in which:

The indeterminacy of a ramble, on which much may be discovered, is being replaced by

the determinate shortest distance to be traversed with all possible speed, as well as by

electronic transmissions that make real travel less necessary. (Solnit, 2001, p. 10)

Essentially her fear is of a technologisation of walking. One in which the supposed

wanderlust within human nature is stripped away and replaced by the cool efficiency of

machines. For Solinit aimless walking or rambling, despite its obvious appearances of being

meaning- (or aim-) less, is full of obscure, powerful and complex meanings, ones that are in

danger of being replaced by an in-human technological efficiency.

Walking though has not been consumed by the technologies that supposedly threaten it and

the world has not been replaced by a spaceless, distanceless web of instant-connections.

What has occurred instead is the compression of time and space and the renegotiation of

place that mirrors the advent of the railways in America during the 19th

century (Cresswell,


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2006) and the strolling flneur of the grand arcades of early-modern cities (Wilken, 2005).

Wilken argues that:

Rather than "liberate" us from place, these technologies arguably refocus the individual on

the fluctuating and fleeting experiences of place/s and their impact on the fabric of

everyday life. (Wilken, 2005)

One particular way in which recent technological innovation has helped refocus the walking

individual on place, rather than liberate them from it, is through the growth of ubiquitous,

reality amplifying computing machines. These machines are designed to fill niches in the

everyday lives of their users and enhance their abilities to perform tasks by enhancing their

knowledge and experience of the world without distracting from it.

Ubiquitous computing seeks to embed computers into our everyday lives in such ways as

to render them invisible and allow them to be taken for granted. (Galloway, 2004, p. 384)

Much like glasses or contact lenses, ubiquitous computing (or UC) is designed to be useful

whilst going un-noticed. Contact lenses are needed by their users to enhance their sight and

when they function correctly they do so in a near imperceptible way. Using this example the

original proponent of ubiquitous computing Mark Weiser argued that computers should be

designed to enhance the lives of their users without impacting on their everyday actions.

The end-point for UC was the creation of a mixed-reality in which computer technology

seamlessly interacted with people, places and environments and integrated the shifting

intensities or flows of the virtual and the actual (Galloway, 2004, p. 402).


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One way to conceptually deal with the flows created by UC is provided by feminist writer

Donna Haraway. In her Cyborg Manifesto she sets out a new way of thinking about

technology and the body that states that:

There is no fundamental, ontological separation in our formal knowledge of machine and

organism, of technical and organic. (Haraway, 1991, p. 178)

This differs to the idea of mixed reality because it occurs with reference to the body, not to

space. For Haraway a cyborg is the fleshy and organic body of a person, the technological

tools they use and the networks of connection that are created by this use. All three (body,

tool and surroundings) are so closely linked that separating them is seen as a false way of

deconstructing the world. Haraway even goes as far as to suggest that the modern, invisible

technologies we posses are in fact incompatible with people and instead must be

considered as cyborg to be understood:

Our best machines are made of sunshine; they are all light and clean because they are

nothing but signals, electromagnetic waves, a section of a spectrum, and these machines

are eminently portable, mobile...People are nowhere near so fluid, being both material and

opaque. Cyborgs are ether, quintessence. (Haraway, 1991)

Ethereal cyborgs are remarkably similar to the users of ubiquitous technologies, both are

hybrid blends of organic bodies and networked machine that come together to created

enhanced environments. The difference between the two comes, ironically enough, with

the more ubiquitous nature of Haraways cyborgs; UC is a specific sort of technology, one

that is still under development and only usable by those with access to certain types of high


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tech instruments, cyborgs on the other hand are literally everywhere, and result from all

human usage of the sort technology found in a post WWII environment (such as televisions

& telephones).

It is worth noting that despite the ubiquitous nature of Haraways cyborgs she does not

want to explain away all aspects of the world with one homogenous umbrella term like

cyborg, instead she is concerned with the skilful task of reconstructing the boundaries of

daily life, in partial connection with others, in communication with all of our parts so that a

hetroglossia be formed that finally shows a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we

have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves (Haraway, 1991, p. 181).To simplify,

we may all be cyborg, but we are not all the same.

Described out of context UC and cyborgs can seem place-less and space-less, after all UC is

designed to have an invisible place and occupy an hidden space whilst cyborgs are

described in universal and ideological terms with little care for the local places or the

situations in which these hybrid existences are experienced. However, by using ideas of

augmented and amplified realities the relationships between these technological concepts

and the places and spaces they are used in can begin to be explored.

The differences between augmented and amplified realities are subtle, both involve the use

of advanced computing systems and both rely on altering and enhancing physical objects

and places through technological means. However, augmented reality systems are systems,

in which computer-rendered properties are superimposed on the real world (Falk,

Redstrm, & Bjrk, 1999, p. 2) whereas to amplify reality is to enhance the publicly

available properties of a physical object, by means of using embedded computational


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resources (Falk, Redstrm, & Bjrk, 1999, p. 3). To expand on this, augmented realities

require a certain type of computer to be accessed, whilst amplified realities use pre-existing

computational components to increase the properties of reality. For example, a windscreen

of a car that signals to the driver changes in the road conditions is an augmented reality,

whereas an example a reality amplifying technology would be a road surface that alters

itself to inform those travelling of such conditions.


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Chapter 4: Literature Review - Play

27

4.3 Play

Ubiquitous technologies and amplified realities have a significant role in the potential ways

in which technology can interact and becomes part of the everyday world. However, this

project is not just about the everyday but about play. More specifically it is about the GPS

network and the GPSrs that enable the amplified and playful realities of geocaching to

occur.

Spaces of play are known as ludic spaces. Ludic space is the arena in which games take

place, the boundaries of it are as blurred as the idea of gaming itself, but can be broadly

defined as:

"The systems of experience incorporating concepts of game or game play and related

experiences... Ludic space also includes highly diverse non-computational game forms,

including simple table-top games, live-action and table-top role-playing games, reality

games and sports games. Hybrid forms include augmented-reality games and pervasive

games... (Lindley, 2005)

It is these hybrid ludic spaces that are particularly relevant to this project. Currently hybrid

ludic space refers to the use of augmented/amplified realities to create hybrid forms of

real/virtual play, however, this was not always the case. With reference to the Baumans

work Clarke & Doel describe how the flneurs ludic world was gradually transformed into a

managed playground, implying that once managed (perhaps even stratified) the ludic

spaces of the flneur were destroyed. The blame is pointed again towards the speed of

modernity and the ways in which it has appropriated the pleasures of flnerie, putting


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them into the service of consumerism (Clarke & Doel, 2004, p. 36). Thus consumerism can

be seen as the reason for the loss of ludic urban spaces and the transformations and

stratifications that have turn ludic spaces into spaces of consumption and capitalism.

However these spaces have not been totally lost, in fact they are beginning to be reclaimed

and (re-)transformed into strolling, roaming, playful and ludic spaces once again.

Interestingly such reclamation is coming from the tactical use of one of the most

elaborated forms of capitalism the satellite (Parks, 2005, p. 7). Specifically the network

NAVSTAR GPS that enables the activity of geocaching. Play of this sort can alter the

boundaries between numerous concepts:

On the border between virtual and real, dream world and physical encounter, play has the

ability to make these borders visible through engagement in un-intrusive everyday practices

that create a space of its own inhabited by... players and technology that might be hidden

behind a tangible surface of the surrounding world. (Lindtner, 2007, p. 4)

Linked up to the GPS players of geocaching are made part of a complex, invisible and

ubiquitous systems of satellites that are aiding in the creation of ludic space characterised

by the virtual/real betweeness of amplified realities. The items that are searched for in

geocaching are examples of amplified realities because, despite not strictly possessing

embedded computational resources (Falk, Redstrm, & Bjrk, 1999) they form integral

nodes in the digitally accessed networks of longitude and latitude. Likewise, they do not

form part of an augmented reality because although GPSrs are needed to find them,

geocaches still physically exist independently of this technology. The playful nature of

geocaching creates a hidden world behind the tangible surface of space and place, all of


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the components of geocaching exist within this tangible world, yet they need an instrument

to amplify them in order to reach their potential existence on the boundary between real

(the box itself) and virtual (the representations of the box on a GPSr screen).

This interface between real and virtual is of particular interest to one of the few social

theorists who has previously written on geocaching. Robin Willims piece entitled Walking

Through the Screen focuses on the ways in which the computed directions of GPS units are

understood and put into action through geocaching as a form of locomotion. Less focused

with the activity as a playful game Willim puts forward some very interesting ideas on the

ways in which the screen of GPSrs relate to the places they are experienced within:

The GPS-receivers are parts of a complex system, extremely hard to grasp entirely. When

we move around in our surroundings aided by GPS we are dependent on the

representations shown on the screen of our device. The interface of the screen is integrated

in the experience of place. Signs on the screen are compared, related to and coordinated

with perceptions from the physical landscape. The screen and the technology becomes a

kinetic surface which is incorporated in the experience and understanding of different

places. (Willim, 2008, p. 4)

For Willim the tensions between representation and experience are key to understanding

how geocaching alters bodily locomotion in ways that echo the tensions between abstract

space and experiential place. Indeed it seems to Willim as if the kinetic surface of a GPSr is

an interface that enables the user to interact with both abstract, regimented and strategic

space whilst being able to move tactically through experiential places, all of which is

wrapped within a connected technological network of invisible computers, hidden boxes


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and flows of bodily movement and electronic data. Willim also highlights the idea of

technological dependence; the GPSr is in charge of the movements of its users, who are also

dependant on the technological quirks of the GPS satellite network. Dourish suggests a

number of potential problems with this dependence in his paper on place, space and

technology such as the ways in which GPS satellite line-of-sight and Wi-Fi network signal

strength are thoroughly physical phenomena (Dourish, 2006) and that despite seeming

ubiquitous these signals can be lost and rendered inoperable by merely moving under dense

tree cover.

Indeed this dependence on GPS is a potential hazard for Willam and despite the new

spatialities of GPS and geocaching he worries that it may also numb us, make us

vulnerable. Already examples of this can be found, Polson and Caceres seem unenthusiastic

about geocaching arguing that rather than refocusing senses of place through new

technologically enhanced forms of movement geocaching:

Tend[s] to treat the environment as a stage for play rather than a potentially dynamic

agent with multiple features, histories, local stories etc. In Los Angles, the geocaching

community has gained a reputation of being geotrashers who have been famously accused

of using parks as arenas of play with little concern of the ecological impacts. (Polson &

Caceres, 2005)


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Chapter 5: Methodology - My Approach

31

5 Methodology

5.1 My Approach

Theories of technological innovation, like theories of everyday life, seem to maintain an

almost contradictory sense of consistency and coherency. Part of this stems from the

tendency to discuss new technologies as (representational) objects or artefacts, rather than

as (performative) practices, arrangements and ensembles . . . which permit certain objects

to materialize or solidify and not others (Mackenzie 2003, 3). (Galloway, 2004, p. 399)

Geocaching is an active, on-going process, a game with no clear end point or defined

structure. It is made up of technological objects and dumb containers, as well as on-line

databases and orbiting satellites, however, these components mean nothing to a geocacher

unless are used together at once. Geocaching must be performed with objects through

space, place and time, geocaching is not these objects in static isolation.

My research project is motivated by this sort of performative thinking, it understands that

there are representational objects in the world (a GPSr being an example of one), but it

focuses on how these objects are manipulated by users in order to create the act of

geocaching. This approach is taken in order to get to grips with the many fleeting moments

that make up geocaching and to begin to understand the places of geocaching on its own

mobile, active and on-going terms, rather than as a set of fixed, static and representational

points.


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It is by no means the first research project to attempt to understand the processes,

performances and events of its subject matter rather than the its objects and

representations. Indeed the importance of encounters and events formed an integral part of

David Seamons Life Worlds in which he suggests that by exploring the nature of

encounter [it] leads to a better understanding of how human beings attentively meet the

places, spaces and landscape that are their surrounds (Seamon, 1979).

More recently there has been a push in cultural geography to get to grips with

performances, events, affect and the controversially named non-representational aspects

of human interaction with space and place (Latham, 2003, p. 1902) (Nash, 2000). If we take

non-representational to be concerned with the ways in which subjects know the world

without knowing it, the inarticulate understanding or practical intelligibility of an

unformulated practical grasp of the world (Nash, 2000, p. 655), then the sorts of

articulated understandings that GPSrs bring to understandings of space (understandings

that negate inert practical intelligibility and replace it with a dependence on a

preformulated and computer constructed grasps of the world) would lie out of the remit of

ways in which non-representational theory can handle the performative presentations,

showings and manifestations of everyday life (Nash, 2000, p. 655).

Whilst this project will be informed by Nigel Thrifts non-representational theory and seem in

tune its approach will be more similar to Hayden Lorimers sense of being more-than-

representational. Lorimers point is that the:

Multifarious, open encounters in the realm of practice matter most... The focus falls on

how life takes shape and gains expression in shared experiences, everyday routines, fleeting


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encounters, embodied movements, precognitive triggers, practical skills, affective

intensities, enduring urges, unexceptional interactions and sensuous dispositions. Attention

to these kinds of expression, it is contended, offers an escape from the established

academic habit of striving to uncover meanings and values that apparently await our

discovery, interpretation, judgement and ultimate representation. In short, so much

ordinary action gives no advance notice of what it will become. Yet, it still makes critical

differences to our experiences of space and place. (Lorimer, 2005, p. 84)

With such a focus I hope to explore the ways in which the practise of geocaching effects

senses of space and place, is altered and transformed by seen and unseen technological

networks and is played and enjoyed by those who partake in it.


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Chapter 5: Methodology - Project Outline

34

5.2 Project Outline

This project covers 71 different geocaches that were visited over a five month period from

the 23/02/08 to the 31/07/08. Of these geocaches, 65 of them were found, 3 of them

werent, 2 of them were my hidden by myself and 1 of them was an event geocache. They

cover a polygonal area of roughly 300 miles square in the southeast of England as shown in

Figure 3 below.

Figure 3


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Chapter 5: Methodology - Data Gathering

35

5.3 Data Gathering

The methods used to answer my research questions are inductive. By this I mean that they

are designed to amass and gather numerous particulars about geocaching in order to

provide more general answers to research questions and create a framework for further

work on geocaching in geography (Lindsay, 1997, p. 7). More specifically this project

harnesses a mixed methods form of inductive investigation that integrates ethnography,

auto-ethnography and participant-observation with a hybrid form of mobile and informal

interviewing in order to record and analyses the various people, spaces, places, moments,

emotions, movements, thoughts, feelings, actions and objects that make up geocaching.

5.3.1 Ethnography and Participant Observation

Ethnography can be defined as the study of people in naturally occurring settings or

fields by methods of data collection which capture their ordinary activities, involving the

researcher participating directly in the setting, if not also the activities. (Brewer, 2000, p.

189)

In the simplest terms this project will be researched by geocaching. I will actively engage

with the activity in its naturally occurring settings by hiding and finding numerous

geocaches as well as joining and participating with the activities of other geocachers whilst

simultaneously observing the ways in which they/we geocache. The result will be a form of

participant-observation in which I will hold the middle ground between being an active

geocacher and being an observer of geocaching.


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This ethnographic process will help created situated knowledges through thick description,

fixed to the persona of the researcher, the location of research and the time-span of said

research (Taylor, 2002) that will be essential to comprehending the more-than-

representational aspects of geocaching and the effects it has on the use and experiences of

space, places and technologies. Ethnographic methods such as these also acknowledge that

the abstract viewpoint of the natural sciences are unobtainable, and that information

gathered through research is not a mirror onto the world, but the very way through which

it is constructed, understood and acted upon(Cook & Crang, 1995, p. 11).

My aim will be to present an ethnographic account that illustrates how geocaching is

constructed, understood and acted upon with reference to my research questions on

space/place, technology/movement and play. In order to achieve this aim a certain sort of

radically empirical ethnography will be used, one that is greatly inspired by Paul Stollers

work The Taste of Ethnographic Things. Stollers book is a call to ethnographers to embrace

the unseen aspects of the cultures they study and for them to write with a sense of radical

empiricism that treats all sensory experiences with equal importance and leaves behind

Eurocentric visualism (Stoller, 1989). Whilst Stollers text explores tastes, magics and

sounds I shall try to incorporate the equally unseen ideas of UC, cyborgs and GPS into my

ethnography so that the un-seen interpenetrates with the seen, the audible fuses with the

tactile and the boundaries of literary genres are blurred(Stoller, 1989, p. 153).

5.3.2 Auto-Ethnography

Authors use their own experiences in a culture reflexively to look more deeply at self-other

interactions. By writing themselves into their own work as major characters,


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autoethnographers have challenged accepted views about silent authorship, where the

researchers voice is not included in the presentation of findings. (Holt, 2003)

Elaborating on my own role as a researcher/geocacher I will incorporate elements of auto-

ethnography (Reed-Danahay, 1997) into my explorations of geocaching. The reasons for this

are twofold: First is my own desire to avoid presenting my project as a definitive or

objective view of geocaching, it is neither of these things and instead it will be presented

with respect to the subjective voice that my authorship, editing and material organisation

brings about. Secondly geocaching is at times a solitary activity, and whilst attempts have

been made to give various other geocachers a voice, it is my own experiences of geocaching

that are the most detailed and relevant.

5.3.3 Mobile Informal Interviews

Although technically a component of my participant-observation I want to specify my

reasons for wanting to conduct mobile interviews whilst engaging in geocaching. I am

inspired a great deal by Jon Andersons methodological article on using walking to inspire

senses of place and identify for research participants, in it he explains how:

[Talking whilst walking] can successfully tap into the non-mechanistic framework of the

mind and its interconnections with place to recall episodes and meanings buried in the

archaeology of knowledge... This practice of talking whilst walking is also useful as it

produces not a conventional interrogative encounter, but a collage of collaboration: an

unstructured dialogue where all actors participate in a conversational, geographical and

informational pathway creation. As a consequence, the knowledge produced is importantly


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different: atmospheres, emotions, reflections and beliefs can be accessed, as well as

intellects, rationales and ideologies. (Anderson, 2004, p. 260)

The knowledge produced by Andersons wandering, ambling interviews fits very well with

the more-then-representational encounters, experiential places and practised playing Ive

previously discussed. Further to this engaging in interviews on the move, rather than

distracting from the topic of discussion, would only further focus the flow of conversation if

the aim of the walk was to find a geocache. Thus I am proposing to direct parts of my

participant-observation into goal-orientated mobile interviews. However, care must be

taken to ensure that these interviews remain as informal a face-to-face encounter as

possible so that it appears almost like a natural conversation between people with an

established relationship(Brewer, 2000, p. 33) so as not interfere with the playful nature of

geocaching.

5.3.4 Data Recording

Data for this project was recorded in a number of ways. Ethnographic data was gathered

through a research diary which updated after every geocache find with impressions and

details of the trip. Photo and video recordings were also made of these trips where

practical. Further to this when engaging in mobile interviews a dictaphone was strapped to

a bag, creating a hands free way of recording the interview and enabling me to geocache

without restriction.


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Chapter 5: Methodology - Participant access and recruitment

39

5.4 Participant access and recruitment

For this project I will gather participants from three main sources:

1. Auto-ethnography and the study of friends and family who have accompanied mewhilst geocaching.

2. Through a request posted on the online geocaching forum.3. From bait geocaches containing an invitation to join my research project.

More traditional concepts of gate-keepers (those in a position of power within the

community with the ability to provide further access to participants) (Cook, 2005) and

snowballing (using pre-existing participants to gain more contacts) (Valentine, 2005) will

still be relevant to my research. However, I may end up creating my own gates in the form

of the bait geocaches, and snowballing may occur online as more people find my forum

post or read the logs for my geocaches.

5.5 Ethical considerations

Of primary importance to this project is ethical obligation I have to research participants. As

such all of my ethnography will be overt in nature. Simply, this means that I will, at all

times, let those I am ethnographically researching know that I am doing so. All recordings of

audio-data will be taken with the express permission of those being interviewed. In addition

to this research participants will be referred to by their publically available usernames as

specified on www.geocaching.com, not by their real names.


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Chapter 5: Methodology - Limitations

40

5.6 Limitations

As previously stated, this research is intended to create a framework on top of which a

larger more detailed study of geocaching could take place. Understandably as a Masters

dissertation this research is limited in a number of ways:

The time scale for this project is small, covering only a period of a few months, as aresult it will not be able to explore geocaching through the seasons or provide more

than a snapshot of geocaching in 2008.

Likewise the breadth of this study is also restricted to the areas I was able to travelto and thus centre around a small section of south-east England.

This project will focus on the physical processes of geocaching, and subsequentlythough it may involve discussion of the online and other spheres of the activity, it

will not focus on them.


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Chapter 6: Preface - Writing Geocaching

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6 Preface

6.1 Writing Geocaching

The results and analysis section of this dissertation are combined into an ethnographic

account of my research process. This account takes its stylistic inspiration from Stollers

radical empiricism and Dan Roses ethnographic manifesto that states:

The future of ethnography will be a polyphonic, heteroglossic, multigenre construction and

will include:

1. The authors voice and own emotional reactions.

2. Critical, theoretical, humanist mini essays...

3. The conversations, voices, attitudes, visual genres, gestures, reactions and concerns of

daily life of the people with whom the author participates, observes and lives will take form

as a narrative and discourse there will be a story line.

4. Poetics will also join the prose.

5. Pictures, photos and drawings will take up a new, more interior relation to the text not

to illustrate it, but to document in their own way what words do in their own way.

6. The junctures between analytics, fictive, poetic narrative and critical genres will be

marked clearly in the text. (Rose, 1990, p. 57)


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Chapter 6: Preface - Writing Geocaching

42

Thus my report will incorporate my own subjective progress as well as the voices, actions

and movements of the people that I engage with. Further to this there will be a number of

sections that pull away from the ethnographic narrative to tie the plot to theories and

concepts that have been previously discussed in this dissertation. Photographs and video

stills will also accompany the text. These images will be chronologically synchronised with

the text surrounding them however, they will not be overtly acknowledged or discussed

within it.

This analysis will expresses my own subjectivity through the use of a 1st

person present

tense narrative that is not without its drawbacks; it is argued that the artificiality with which

time is frozen within the present tense removes such events from context of the past,

providing a woefully incomplete view of society (Sanjek, 1991). I would argue that such a

freezing of the present serves to maintaining the fleeting and more-than-representational

elements that make up geocaching. The present tense also provides the opportunity to

expose the inter-subjectivity of the research within the field by neither tying his/her actions

to a past moment, now irretrievable, nor some future abstract, unobtainable, but to the

now felt within ethnographic process (Hastrup, 1992) (Davis, 1999).

These stylist choices are designed to try and provide an answer to the following question:

Is the encounter at the heart of fieldwork ultimately unspeakable? Impasses, silences and

aporias... These are the points at which language find its limits, where cultural geography,

having so keenly theorized representation, comes upon matters that mark the end of

representation: things, events, encounters, emotions and more that are unspeakable,

unwriteable and, of course, unrepresentable. (Laurier & Philo, 2006, p. 353)


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Chapter 6: Preface - Styles and Fonts

43

By closely combining ethnographic narratives, together with interview data, photography

and video recording I hope to get closer to the things, events, encounters, emotions that

make up each instance of geocaching.

6.2 Styles and Fonts

In order to clearly mark the differences between the voices in my results section I will use

numerous fonts and styles. Text describing personally gathered ethnographic data such as

my own movements, thoughts and interactions will be shown in this standard Calibri font.

Mini essays that provide a more objective considerations of the research will be shown in

this bold font and quotes from research participants will be shown through dotted boxes.

Finally geocache coordinates will be shown in courier new.


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Chapter 7: Geocaching - Finding my feet

44

7 Geocaching

Ive found one geocache so far, I own a GPSr and I use it to find hidden boxes around the

country, so I guess that makes me a geocacher. Obviously though I need to find more, in fact

I want to find more and I want other people to experience it with me.

The section that follows details a number of geocaching vignettes that occurred during

my initial forays into the activity. Mirroring the activity of geocaching each vignette

provides a map and a set of coordinates, following this is a small personal description of

the journey taken to the geocache, then at the end of each trip is small cache of

information analysing how this journey may fit into broader themes.

7.1 Finding my feet

N5135.769 W025.586

...is where my and I sister stand, a

geocache is about a hundred metres in

front of us according the GPSr I hold in

my hands. Were eager to find it but

between us and it is a train-line. One

that is invisible to the satellites and my

screen but not to us standing, forlorn,

at the fence separating us from our


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goal. Of course were on the wrong side of the tracks. Its really frustrating, I feel tricked by

the gadget, theres so little space between us and it, but its such a long way away.

There seem to be some incompatibilities present here between the spaces that the GPRs

represents and the lived spaces that I need to move through. The barrier between myself

and my goal is present only in lived space, the representation of space present on the

GPSr omits the train line. This sense of jarring frustration at the mismatched senses of

space highlights the delicate nature of map based GPSrs (by this I mean the graphical

interface provided by the GPSr that shows my location as a symbol on a dynamically

scaled map, see page 1 for an example). Whilst the GPSr is still providing me with accurate

coordinates the technology is interpreting and representing them in an inaccurate way.

My position on the map is updated in near real time but the map is a static unchanging

representation that lacks up-to-date contextual detail.

Another way to look at this would be to classify the representational space of the GPSr as

a strategic view from above, one that maps out the earths surface according to the

parametres of the makers of the

device and my actions as an

unsuccessful attempt at tactical

movement through it.

N5137.564 W025.497

...is on the very edge of Moor Park golf

course and practically underneath a

humming electricity pylon. I watch as


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my Mum pulls out a white ice-cream tub from a hollow tree stump. The walk here was easy,

straight accross an empty field to a small wooded areas, but we struggled once we got there

spending twenty minutes or so looking in completly the wrong place. We had help though,

every geocache comes with a hint and Id written it down on a scrap of paper, it read:

Inside the bottom part of the oak tree alongside the ditch

that borders the fairway.

Moving a little closer to the fairway, and keeping our eyes peeled for a hollow oak tree it

became obvious where it was. It felt a little a little bit like cheating, but if we hadnt wed

still be over by the wrong tree and we might have never found it. This doesnt make it any

less of a find, does it?


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Geocaching is, as I have already discussed, a treasure-hunting game that is played in order

to gather finds. There are no strict rules dictating the ways in which it can be played

apart from the self-policing notion that the log book must be signed to prove the

geocache was actually found. Certainly this instance of geocaching falls in these

boundaries, yet despite the hint being provided by the official website there are feelings

of cheating or cheapening the geocaching experience.

N5137.333 W024.090

...isnt where this geocache is, Im sure.

Even though those coordinates are exactly

where the GPSr reckons we are. Weve

been looking for about half an hour now.

Im not sure how much I trust the machine

though, if we go under any really dense

tree cover it loses all but one bar of

reception. Maybe were nowhere near it,

maybe were lost, maybe it got us lost. Were traipsing through brambles and stinging

nettles, looking under every log that fits the description given in the hint, but we find

nothing. We go home a little gutted and I register my first ever DNF.

Just as there are no defined rules in geocaching, there are no strict winners or losers in the

game. The closest sense of losing that geocaching has is a DNF or a Did Not Find log. This

is where a geocachers registers that, although they attempted to find a geocache, they

could not locate it. In this case I try to blame the GPSr machinery, and whilst tree cover


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does certainly effect GPS signal, this feeling may be more to absolve my own lack of

geocaching skill than a true failure of technology. Regardless it is clear that in this case

there are difficulties that clearly separate any sort of cyborg hybrid identity and reform it

as broken machine and lost person.

N5136.664 W026.139

...is in the middle of a small park, just

down the road from where Ive lived

for the past twelve years. Ive never

been here before, though I must have

driven past it hundreds of times, and

honestly I dont think I ever would

have set for in this place if it wasnt for

the geocache pulling me in. Me and

Emma walk off the beaten track and into a clearing surrounded by trees, were only minutes

from the high street and half a mile from my house, but it still feels like an adventure to the

middle of the country-side.

The space of this small park has always been spatially present, Ive acknowledged it in

other forms of spatial navigation (e.g. driving past it), however only through the action of

geocaching has it become a place I have been to, rather than a space I have moved past.

My experience of this place may have been initialised by the spatial coordinates used by

my GPSr to direct me there, but it is my personal experience of this event that now

defines my knowledge of this place.


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I think Im starting to get the hang of geocaching, you need to use the GPS, but not totally

depend on it, its temperamental and can only ever guide you quite close to the geocache

before you have to rely on intuition to find the it. The places of geocaching seem to be

similar too, obviously they are all at different spatial points, but so far these have all been

within wooded and secluded areas with hollow trees and logs providing hiding spot. What I

need to do is branch out a bit and see how other people geocache.

My first attempt to gather research participants was via the online forum attached to

www.geocaching.com. In the UK section of the message board I posted an entry stating

my research proposal, aims and a request for interested participants to contact me via

email (See Appendix 10.1). Eleven people responded with emails and forum posts

highlighting their willingness to participate in the research process. Unfortunately their

geographic spread was very wide and I did not have the resources to include them all but

one email in particular caught my attention; it was an invitation to join a whole group of

geocachers who were planning on walking an eighteen mile route around Maidensgrove

in an attempt to find over fifty geocaches between the hours of 11pm and 9am, I couldnt

turn it down (See Appendix 10.2 for a map).


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Chapter 7: Geocaching - Dawn to Dusk

50

7.2 Dawn to Dusk

N5135.702 W 058.459

...is the Five Horseshoes pub and Im

currently standing outside of it, feeling a

stomach churning mix of excitement and

apprehension about the whole thing. Im

not really sure quite what Im getting

myself into...

I enter the pub, its small cramped and

full of men in walking gear. I think Im in

the right place. I introduce myself to the person by the door and ask whether or not this is

the geocaching meet-up. It is. We talk a little before a slightly awkward silence descends. I

break it by confessing that Im not a real geocacher, but a fake whos here to do research.

It causes a bit of a stir, some people seem interested in what Im doing, some are dismissive

of the fact that Im out here researching what theyre doing for fun. Someone else lets me

know that Ive certainly jumped in at the deep end, this is going to be one long stint of

geocaching. I get a drink and join in with various conversations about geocaches others have

found, some of them certainly sound more exciting than then ones Ive been used to. Some

are hidden up trees, under bridges, the sides of mountains, suddenly I feel a bit inadequate

with my ten easily found caches.


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Its getting close to 11pm so we drink up and people begin to migrate outside, fitting head

torches and turning on a array of GPSrs. SimplyPaul is the guy who organised the meet up,

he stands out with his bright yellow florescent jacket. He gets everyone together for a group

photo and a head count, theres twenty two of us in total and after briefly outlining the

route (18 miles in three expanding circuits) were off!

Theres a constant crunching of footsteps and spatter of conversation as we walk down a

small country road patchily lit up by circles of torch light. Its so dark that Im not entirely

sure who Im talking to, but I ask about the logistics of so many people all geocaching at

once and Im told that, basically, its done for us, with so many experts here tonight we

wont have any trouble finding these caches (people seem to be dropping the geo-).


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Theres a strange sense of camaraderie as we make our way to the first geocache of the

night. I dont know anyones real name and Ive only known these people for an hour or so

but the fact that were all out here together in the middle of the night walking through the

woods to find hidden boxes tickles some sense of childish excitement in me. We find our

first geocache in a bit of a blur, theres a sort of puzzle to work out, but someone knows the

answers, so we skip some steps and go straight to where the geocache is hidden. Without

much of a search someone gets hold of it and signs the book The D2D Team. I find it a

little odd that no one even suggests taking something out to replace, it seems that these

sorts of geocachers only want to find and sign, the geocaches contents arent that

important.

Next we head into the woods, we walk in single file down a narrow path and once it opens

up we huddle together torches shining at SimplyPauls luminous jacket. Were looking for

firetacks, he says, theyre tiny little pushpins with a reflective cats eye at the end. We spread

out on the hunt. Someone finds one and shouts, all beams illuminate a tiny pinprick of light

in the bark of a tree twenty or so metres away. We follow them, like breadcrumbs until we

hit a tree with two dots of light. Supposedly that means the geocache is hidden there...

7/31/2019 Geoca

Geocaching by Michael Anton (MA Dissertation)

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