Landmarks: Navigating Spacetime and Digital Mobility

In this essay we will examine how we can conceptualize digital mobility as spatial navigation. Digital mobility occurs in media where the user navigates through space and actually becomes, simultaneously, creator, performer, and navigator of a spatial story. In this sense, the on-screen navigator simultaneously makes and reads space. We argue that in digital mobilities the user/player becomes simultaneously I-narrator, actor and agent of narrative. The user navigates through space and becomes, in fact, a digital pedestrian. Different from the (virtual) mobility of analogue moving-image media in that the interaction between user and space is much more fluid and the user becomes both actor and navigator, digital mobility is clearly central to the use of mobile screens, such as mobile phones, navigation devices, or portable game consoles in which case one carries the screen and interacts with it, while being on the move. Moreover, we also believe that digital mobility can be a central quality of certain digital practices during which users are not literally on the move but still have to navigate through, and control digital environments through spatial interaction. This can for example be the case when playing certain games or consulting Google Earth on a desktop computer.