Smartphones as Locative Media

In his new book, Smartphones as Locative Media, Professor Jordan Frith begins charting the power of locative media in a near future where very few information services won’t be based on some kind of location data or connected to mobile broadband Internet. The book describes a variety of contexts where layers of information are being attached and drawn from landscapes in new and surprising ways with smartphones and computing cultures. Put more succinctly, the book examines how pocket computers not only change our means of remembering space, but increasingly impact “the time and place of the internet” (Frith, 2015, p. 2). The book begins by explaining how hard it is to analyze emerging media, especially given the constant churn of the mobile app ecosphere, and provides a brief overview of theories of place and space from the late twentieth century. Frith then presents a short, accessible history of how the Internet was at first considered “placeless” by providing a means for people to care less about the importance of place and put more effort into the possibilities of living in virtual places. Yet, as Frith deftly shows, with the adoption of smartphone technology, social networks, and rapid mobile network penetration, the virtual place of Internet has moved—to a hybrid space. Instead of drilling down into the design of applications, standards development, or infrastructures that support wireless communication with mobile broadband Internet, as many scholars of mobile ICTs tend towards, the book focuses on the practices of smartphone users (especially use of mobile apps and location-based social networking). Throughout the book, Frith presents a number of case studies ranging from the infrastructure of how locative media is generated by smartphones with mobile apps, to location based social networks like Foursquare and Dodgeball. Case studies feature “writing spaces” such as review platforms like Yelp or with tagged photo platforms like Flickr and Instagram. The central