---
title: "Geoscape"
description: "Bratton's addition to Appadurai's \"-scapes\": \"a contested terrain of contested terrains,\" the territory of territories formed when incommensurable cosmograms (Google Earth, a caliphate-to-come, a state's map, an AR game's factions) co-occupy the same physical site without a shared master plane."
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/geoscape"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/geoscape"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Geoscape

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/geoscape), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

Bratton's addition to Appadurai's "-scapes": "a contested terrain of contested terrains," the territory of territories formed when incommensurable cosmograms (Google Earth, a caliphate-to-come, a state's map, an AR game's factions) co-occupy the same physical site without a shared master plane. Geoscapes are "entered into and so made real by their occupation," not arenas that precede politics. Because interfaces are image-instruments that effect what they depict, each regime's reductive world-picture becomes truer with use, and the grinding of incompatible pictures — "Google Earth fit inside the conceptual jihadi map" — is, for Bratton, the actual engine of geopolitical design and a bulwark against consensus sovereignty of last instance.

## Appears in

- [The Stack](https://antikythera.wiki/work/book/the-stack) (2016-02-19)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._