Post–Mass Media Functions, Locative Media, and Informational Territories: New Ways of Thinking About Territory, Place, and Mobility in Contemporary Society

Abstract

The basic underlying idea of this article can be put as follows: informational mobile technologies have enabled new means of communication and sociability based on what I call “post-mass media functions” and “informational territories.” What is at stake here is to question some visions about the relationship between informational and network technologies and place, territory, community, and mobility. I’ll argue here that new mobile technologies, under the label of “locative media,” are creating new “territorialization” (control, surveillance, tracking), convergences between physical and informational mobilities, new meanings of space, place, and location, and against the idea of anomie and isolation, new forms of sociability. To elucidate this hypothesis I will briefly examine social and communication practices with “locative media” projects in for main areas: “electronic urban annotations,” “mapping and geo-localization,” “location-based mobile games,” and “flash and smart mobs.” These projects put in evidence new understanding of territory, place, temporality, maps, mobility, and community.