Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Who and Where: Affordances of Personalization and Locativity

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Wiring the Streets, Surfing the Square

Part of the book series: The Urban Book Series ((UBS))

  • 458 Accesses

Abstract

In investigating the theme of WORLDEDNESS, this chapter interrogates the ways in which our bodies and their technological extensions embed us in the shared world. Within a trend towards personalization of the devices and services of digital technologies, we use these devices and services in different ways to manifest ourselves in the world (the public sphere) before others and manage our public image and our web of connections to others. We become nodes in a broad distributed sentient cyborg sensorial network that overlays public space. Locative affordances of digital technologies link this virtual network to physical places, supporting both the commodification of location and the formation of “digital counterpublics.”

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 159.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    E2E or “end-to-end” refers to the network organizational principle in which application software and processing is embedded at the end-points or nodes connected by the network, with the network infrastructure itself primarily serving the purpose of connecting these end points.

  2. 2.

    Gowalla was acquired in 2012 by Facebook, which shut it down as a platform and integrated aspects of its locational and content-sharing services into their own platform.

  3. 3.

    Baudelaire was writing of the particular case of nineteenth-century Paris.

References

  • Ampanavos S, Markaki M (2014) Digital cities: towards a new identity of public space. Proceedings of the Mediated City conference. Ravensbourne; Woodbury University, National Technical University of Athens, London, 01–03 April 2014

    Google Scholar 

  • Bar F, Pisani F, Weber M (2007) Mobile technology appropriation in a distant mirror: baroque infiltration, creolization and cannibalism. In: Telefónica F (ed) Seminario sobre desarrollo económico, desarrollo social y comunicaciones móviles en América Latina. Buenos Aires, Fundación Telefónica

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnes JS (2003) Known by the network: the emergence of location-based mobile commerce. In: Lim E-P, Siau S (eds) Advances in mobile commerce technologies. Idea Group, Hershey, pp 171–189

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Baudelaire C (1964 [1863]) The painter of modern life. Da Capo Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauman Z (2000) Liquid modernity. Polity Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Bellavista P, Kupper A, Helal S (2008) Location-based services: back to the future. Proceedings of IEEE Pervasive Computing, p. 85–89

    Google Scholar 

  • Benkler Y (2006) The wealth of networks: how social production transforms markets and freedom. Yale University Press, New Haven

    Google Scholar 

  • Berry C, Kim SY, Spiegel L (eds) (2010) Electronic elsewhere: media, technology, and the experience of social space. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis

    Google Scholar 

  • Borden I (2001) Skateboarding, space and the city: architecture and the body. Bloomsbury, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd J (2005) The only gadget you’ll ever need. New Scientist, 5: 28

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd DM, Ellison NB (2007) Social network sites: definition, history, and scholarship. J Comput Mediat Commun 13(1):210–230

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brand S (1994) How buildings learn: what happens after they’re built. Viking, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Chouliaraki L (2012) The ironic spectator: solidarity in the age of post-humanitarianism. Polity Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Cook JR (2014) Public space, meet cyberspace: the rise of digital technology has changed the way we use public squares, parks and streets. Zócalo website https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2014/09/02/public-space-meet-cyberspace/ideas/up-for-discussion/. Accessed 11 Aug 2018

  • Coyne R (2010) The tuning of place: social spaces and pervasive digital media. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cross K (2016) Memory, guardianship and witnessing amateur in the emergence of citizen journalism. In: Baker M, Blaagaard BB (eds) Citizen media and public spaces (critical perspectives on citizen media). Routledge, Abbingdon, pp 225–238

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Danto A (1983) The transfiguration of the commonplace. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • De Souza e Silva A (2006) Re-conceptualizing the mobile phone – from telephone to collective interfaces. Aust J Emerg Technol Soc 4(2):108–127

    Google Scholar 

  • de Souza e Silva A, Frith J (2015) Location-based mobile games: interfaces to urban spaces. In: Frissen V, Lammes S, de Lange M, de Mul J, Raessen J (eds) Playful identities: the ludification of digital media cultures. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, pp 169–180

    Google Scholar 

  • Deleuze G (2004) Desert islands and other texts 1953–1974. Semiotext(e), Los Angeles

    Google Scholar 

  • Du Gay P, Hall S, Janes L, Mackay H, Negus K (1997) Doing cultural studies: the story of the Sony Walkman. Sage, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Ejsing-Duun S (2016) Participatory urbanism: making the stranger familiar and the familiar strange. In: Baker M, Blaagaard BB (eds) Citizen media and public spaces (critical perspectives on citizen media). Routledge, Abbingdon

    Google Scholar 

  • Elias N (2001) The society of individuals. Continuum, New York and London

    Google Scholar 

  • Evans L, Saker M (2017) Location-based social media: space, time and identity. Palgrave Macmillan, London

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Frith J (2012) Location-based social networks and mobility patterns: an empirical examination of how foursquare use affects where people go. Pan American Mobilities Network, Raleigh

    Google Scholar 

  • Fry T (2017) Re-making cities: an introduction to urban metrofitting. Bloomsbury Academic, London

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Fujimoto K (2005) The third-stage paradigm: territory machines from the girl’s pager revolution to mobile aesthetics. In: Itō M, Okabe D, Matsuda M (eds) Personal, portable, pedestrian: mobile phones in Japanese life. MIT Press, Cambriege

    Google Scholar 

  • Geyer F (ed) (1996) Alienation, ethnicity and postmodernism. Greenwood, Westport

    Google Scholar 

  • Glazkov K, Shmeleva E (2015) The formats of struggle for the city in new media (cases of the ‘local blogs’ project and mobile application ‘ingress the game’). In: Willis KS, Phillips M, Aurigi A (eds) Reflecting on social smart cities. Plymouth University, Plymouth, pp 208–222

    Google Scholar 

  • Glenn JC (1993) The post-information age: new horizons for business and education. Business Horizons 36:44–49

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodman D, Chant C (eds) (1999) European cities and technology. Routledge, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Gordon E, de Souza e Silva A (2011) Net-locality: why location matters in a networked world. Wiley Blackwell, Malden

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Graham S (ed) (2004) The cybercities reader. Routledge, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Grundy C, Howland K (2014) ‘Games in the park’: stories and GPS based fun to encourage interaction with nature. In: Proceedings of the 2nd Fascinate Conference. Thoughtful Technology & Beautiful Interfaces, Falmouth University, Cornwall UK, 27–31 August 2014

    Google Scholar 

  • Gumpert G, Drucker S (2004) Plato’s Cave: Public Space Transformed. Paper presented at the open space conference, Edinburgh. 27–29 October

    Google Scholar 

  • Habuchi I (2005) Accelerating reflexivity. In: Ito M, Okabe D, Matsuda M (eds) Personal, portable, pedestrian: mobile phones in Japanese life. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 165–182

    Google Scholar 

  • Hampton KN, Sessions Goulet L, Albanesius G (2015) Change in the social life of urban public spaces: the rise of mobile phones and women, and the decline of aloneness over thirty years. Urban Stud 52(8):1489–1504

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harvey M (2017) Melissa Harvey on Dr Boswell’s talk ‘the Holocaust and public space: from the physical to the digital’. University of Leeds Website. https://arts.leeds.ac.uk/sas/2017/07/11/melissa-harvey-on-dr-boswells-talk-the-holocaust-and-public-space-from-the-physical-to-the-digital/. Accessed 17 Apr 2019

  • Hayles NK (1999) How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Headmap (2004) Headmap: location aware devices (the headmap manifesto). www.technoccult.com/library/headmap.pdf. Accessed 26 June 2017

  • Hemment D (2004) The locative dystopia. http://www.makeworlds.org/node/76. Accessed 8 July 2017

  • Hjorth L (2008) Being real in the mobile reel. Convergence 14:91–104

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huffaker C (2016) There are fewer Pokémon Go locations in black neighborhoods, but why? Belleville News Democrat, 14 July 2016. https://www.bnd.com/news/nation-world/national/article89562297.html. Accessed 21 Aug 2018

  • Huizinga J (1955) Homo ludens: a study of the play-element in culture. Beacon Press, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Humphreys L (2010) Mobile social networks and urban public space. New Media Soc 12(5):763–778

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Itō M, Okabe D (2005) Technosocial situations: emergent structurings of mobile email use. In: Itō M, Okabe D, Matsuda M (eds) Personal, portable, pedestrian: mobile phones in Japanese life. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 257–273

    Google Scholar 

  • Itō M, Okabe D, Matsuda M (eds) (2005) Personal, portable, pedestrian: mobile phones in Japanese life. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 165–182

    Google Scholar 

  • Itō M, Okabe D, Anderson K (2010) Portable objects in three global cities: the personalization of urban places. In: Ling R, Campbell SW (eds) The reconstruction of space and time: mobile communication practices. Transaction Publishers, Piscataway, pp 67–88

    Google Scholar 

  • Iveson K (2016) Pokémon GO and public space. Cities and Citizenship (blog). http://citiesandcitizenship.blogspot.com/2016/08/pokemon-go-and-public-space.html. Accessed 6 Sept 2019

  • Katz JE, Aakbus M (eds) (2002) Perpetual contact: mobile communication, private talk, public performance (paperback). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Keogh B (2016) Pokémon go and the politics of digital gaming in public. Overland online journal. https://overland.org.au/2016/07/pokemon-go-and-the-politics-of-digital-gaming-in-public. Accessed 14 July 2016

  • Kopomaa T (2000) Speaking mobile: the city in your pocket. YTK’s electronic publications. http://www.hut.fi/Yksikot/YTK/julkaisu/mobile.html. Accessed 4 Nov 2017

  • Licoppe C, Inada Y (2006) Emergent uses of a multiplayer location-aware mobile game: the interactional consequences of mediated encounters. Mobilities 1(1):39–61

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lynch P (2016) 21st century Nolli: how Pokémon GO and augmented reality could shape our cities. Arch Daily. https://www.archdaily.com/791694/21st-century-nolli-how-pokemon-go-and-augmented-reality-could-shape-our-cities. Accessed 25 Apr 2018

  • Lyon D (2001) Surveillance society: monitoring everyday life. Open University Press, Philadelphia

    Google Scholar 

  • Massey D (1993) Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place. In: Bird J, Curtis B, Putnam T, Tickner L (eds) Mapping the futures: local cultures, global change. Routledge, London, pp 59–69

    Google Scholar 

  • Matsuda M (ed) (2005) Mobile communication and selective sociality (eds.). MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Maturana H, Varela FJ (1980) Autopoeisis and cognition: the realization of the living. Reidel, Boston

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mc Donough T (ed) (2004) Guy Debord and the Situationist international: texts and documents. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • McCullough M (2006) On the urbanism of locative media [media and the city]. Places 18(2):26–29

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore K (2015) Playing with portals: rethinking urban play. In: Torner E, Waldron EL, Trammell A (eds) Analog game studies, vol 2. ETC Press, Pittsburgh

    Google Scholar 

  • Morozov E (2014) To save everything, click here: the folly of technological solutionism. Hachette, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Negroponte N (1995) Being digital. Hodder & Stoughton, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Persson P, Fagerberg P (2002) GeoNotes: a real-use study of a public location-aware community system. SICS Tech Rep T2002:27

    Google Scholar 

  • Peterson A (2016) Holocaust Museum to visitors: please stop catching Pokémon here. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/07/12/holocaust-museum-to-visitors-please-stop-catching-pokemon-here/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3baca293ef82. Accessed 1 Aug 2018

  • Richardson I (2005) Mobile technosoma: some phenomenological reflections on itinerant media devices. Fibreculture 6. http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue6/issue6_richardson_print.html. Accessed 4 Mar 2019

  • Rokeby D (2001) Neighborhood markup language. Proposal. http://proboscis.org.uk/prps/artists/proposals/David_Rokeby/Rokeby_PRPS_Proposal.pdf. Accessed 4 Nov 2017

  • Rubinstein D, Sluis K (2008) A life more photographic. Photo-Dermatology 1(1):9–28

    Google Scholar 

  • Russell A, Ito M, Richmond T, Tuters M (2008) Culture: media convergence and networked participation. In: Varnelis K (ed) Networked publics. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Sennett R (1976) The fall of public man. Alfred A. Knopf, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Shklovski I, Vertesi J, Troshynski E, Dourish P (2009) The commodification of location: dynamics of power in location-based systems. Paper presented at UbiComp 2009, Orlando, 30 Sep – 3 Oct, 2009

    Google Scholar 

  • Simmel G (1975 [1903]) The metropolis and mental life. In: Wolff KH (ed) The sociology of Georg Simmel. Free Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Spohrer JC (1999) Information in places. IBM Syst J 38(4):602–628

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Townsend AM (2000) Life in the real-time city: mobile telephones and urban metabolism. J Urban Technol 7(2):25–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Turkle S (2011) Alone together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Urry J (2007) Mobilities. Polity, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Varnelis K, Friedberg A (2008) Place: the networking of public space. In: Varnelis K (ed) Networked publics. Annenberg Center for Communication, University of Southern California, Los Angeles

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Wachter S (2012) The digital city: challenges for the future (trans: Waine O), Metropolitics. http://www.metropolitiques.eu/The-digital-city-challengesfor.html. Accessed 22 July 2019

  • Wellman B, Quan-Haase A, Boase J, Chen W, Hampton K, de Diaz II, Miyata K (2003) The social affordances of the internet for networked individualism. Journal of Comp Med Commun 8(3). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol8/issue3/wellman.html. Accessed 2 Oct 2018

  • Whitaker R (1999) The end of privacy: how total surveillance is becoming a reality. The New Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Wood D, Graham S (2005) Permeable: boundaries in the software-sorted society: surveillance and the differentiation of mobility. In: Sheller M, Urry J (eds) Mobile technologies of the city. Routledge, London, pp 177–191

    Google Scholar 

  • Zook MA, Graham M (2007) Mapping DigiPlace: geocoded internet data and the representation of place. Environ Plan B 34:466–482

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

    Timothy Jachna

Authors
  1. Timothy Jachna
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Jachna, T. (2021). Who and Where: Affordances of Personalization and Locativity. In: Wiring the Streets, Surfing the Square. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66672-9_9

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66672-9_9

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-66671-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-66672-9

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation