Territories of the City and the Self

This chapter develops a contemporary media historical account of consumer end-use of locative media service, Foursquare. It focuses on the period just prior to the splitting of Foursquare into two separate consumer facing apps (Foursquare City Guide and Swarm), when Foursquare still functioned as a single, check in driven, locative mobile social networking service. Combining original research from 2013–2014, with the now extensive international literature on Foursquare end use, this chapter examines the myriad of ways that people have engaged with this pioneering locative media app. The chapter is structured around an exploration of two sets of interrelated issues. First, it draws on Lee Humphreys’ (2012) tripartite notion of “coordinating, cataloguing, and connecting,” to trace how urban spaces and places are explored, catalogued, and communicated through end user engagement with Foursquare. Second, it draws out how these communicative practices involving the Foursquare service are entwined with processes of individual identity construction and performance.

Conclusion

The Conclusion revisits the terrain the book has covered, providing recapitulations of the arguments of each of the three parts of the book and the chapters contained within them. The argument of this Conclusion is that, while locative media having shifted significantly over the course of the past decade or so, location, locative media, and location data capture remain central concerns, both in the present and within and for new technological developments. It is, for instance, central to visions of “smart” or “networked” cities, and of depth-sensing vision capture technologies. Location is also crucial to recent developments in mapping and indoor mapping, autonomous vehicle development, environmental sensing, the internet of things, machine learning, and distributed ledger technologies.

Location Data Extraction and Retention

This chapter examines two separate case studies that pertain to the acquisition and retention of various forms of geocoded data extracted from locative media devices and associated infrastructure at scale, and where the political economic interests of governments and corporations are in tension. The first of these case studies examines the controversies that flowed from revelations that Google had been gathering Wi-Fi data as part of its international Street View operations. The second focuses on the US National Security Agency (NSA) and its far-reaching surveillance program, as revealed through the Edward Snowden papers. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the impacts of corporate and corporate-state data extraction and retention, and the legacies of the two specific cases under examination.

Locative Media Arts and Political Aesthetics

Chapter 4 explores the vital role that locative media art plays in illuminating tensions associated with contemporary technologically mediated culture, with this art serving as criticism, as an enactment of a subtle political aesthetics. Taking up these themes, this chapter explores three specific projects—Blast Theory’s You Get Me; Josh Begley’s Metadata+ iOS smartphone application; and Julian Oliver’s Border Bumping. These projects have been selected for the ways that they utilize different location technologies; for the critical issues they raise; and, for the opportunities they present for thinking through aesthetics and its relationship to politics.

The Business of Maps

This chapter builds on prior work on the political economy of location-based services to examine the business of mobile maps, asking the following questions: Who controls maps data? What are these data? Where do these data come from? What is their quality? What does it take to build new mobile maps? What are the motivations for wanting to build new maps? And what are the business and revenue models associated with these maps? The focus of this chapter is an examination of the efforts of one of Google’s key rival firms—Apple—and its struggles to build mapping capacity of its own at sufficient quality to be able to lessen (if not entirely break from) its reliance on Google. Apple presents an interesting case in that, as is well known, it is a major player in other areas of the mobile location services ecosystem, yet took industry pundits by surprise when it announced Apple Maps in 2012.

Location Services Ecosystems

What precisely is meant by location-based services (as opposed to locative media, more narrowly defined)? And, how might one give shape to and begin to discuss location-based services as an industry? Taking an ecosystems approach, the aims of this chapter are to highlight the diversity of the location-based services ecosystem; give form and shape to this ecosystem; describe some of the constituent “species” (the key corporate players that occupy this ecosystem); detail the ways that the different parts of this ecosystem work together; and detail how the mobile location ecosystem intersects and interacts with a range of other (often much larger) interconnected ecosystems.

Introduction

This Introduction provides an overview of the general terrain of the book as a whole. It examines definitional complications associated with the phrase “locative media”; traces the origins of this term within locative media arts; gives an overview of a number of major technological developments that fueled wider uptake and broader public embrace of mobile location-based services; acknowledges that determining the whereabouts of mobile (cell) phone users has a longer history that predates smartphones; and outlines three major evolutions to mobile location-sensitive social networking. The Introduction also reflects on a number of limitations to the present study, and summarizes the book’s structure and contents.

Mobile Social Networking and Locational Privacy

This chapter, the final chapter of the book, looks in detail at privacy. Privacy is an elusive and fraught but still very important concept. It remains of pressing concern for those with a stake in social, mobile, and locative media, whether that be end-users, companies, or regulators. The chapter is structured in three sections. The first critically engages with the established and rapidly expanding body of work on privacy, tracing the development of this term over time, and why privacy remains of enduring concern in relation to locative media and location data. The second examines how privacy implications and impacts are negotiated by consumers. And the third considers attempts to develop conceptual models of privacy that account for the reality of fast-moving traffic in decontextualized spatial big data.

Location Integration and Data Markets

This chapter explores the still-evolving business and revenue models and geolocation data capture efforts of two commercial businesses now central to the contemporary settlement of locative media: Foursquare and Facebook. In Foursquare’s case, it underwent a quite dramatic series of transformations, evolving from a check-in based mobile social networking service, to a search and recommendation service, and now also serving as a firm offering location intelligence related enterprise services. In Facebook’s case, it set about further strengthening its grip on social media data markets by adding geolocation functionalities and geodata capture capabilities to its social networking operations. These two case studies provide a rich composite picture of the business ecologies of locational information. The aim in selecting these cases is to develop a clearer understanding of how both firms accrue location data and how they extract location value—that is, how this information is shared, harvested, valued, reused, and commodified.

App Entanglements

This chapter gives consideration to how use of any one location-sensitive mobile application routinely occurs alongside and intermingled with the use of a wide array of other applications that also include various forms of location functionality. The argument of this chapter is that understanding the complexities driving these end-user choices of application selection and interaction is crucial if one is to more fully grasp the ties that bind platforms, political economies, and publics, and if one is to critically respond to key policy considerations, such as the privacy impacts and implications of location-based services.