This is part of a series of posts highlighting the Theorizing the Web conference, April 14th, 2012 at the University of Maryland (inside the D.C. beltway). See the conference website for information as well as event registration.

This panel consists of four presentations that exhibit a theoretically rich range of approaches to understanding theory of mobile technologies in contemporary contexts. Jason Farman’s “The Materiality of the Mobile Internet: An Object-Oriented Approach to Mobile Networks” uses the path of a single mobile phone signal to illustrate the importance of considering both human and non-humannodes in digital networks. Katy Pearce’s “Is your Web everyone’s Web? Theorizing the web through the lens of the device divide” considers the social implications of accessing the Internet via mobile vs. traditional interfaces. In doing so, she casts a much-needed theoretical spotlight on a notion many of us grasp intuitively: that the quality of one’s online experience depends critically on the device(s) used to get online. Along similar lines, David Banks’ “Finding it ‘Otherwise’: Culturally and Geographically Situating The Practice of Texting” takes a sociotechnical approach to mobile phoneuse in Ghana, discovering how residents use their phones to move about their world. In a laudable instance of research informing real-world practice, data from the project will inform the deployment of a regional condom distribution network. Finally, Jim Thatcher’s “MobileGeo-Spatial Devices: a theoretical approach to the GeoWeb” critically interrogates the mediation of geographical knowledge-gathering through mobile devices. Applying a critical Marxist understanding oftechnology, he develops a radical reading of ostensibly innocuous “apps” that may serve to reinforce offline inequalities.

[Paper titles and abstracts after the jump.]

Jason Farman – (@farman) – “The Materiality of the Mobile Internet: An Object-Oriented Approach to Mobile Networks”

In contrast to the study of human social networks and location-awareness through mobile devices, this paper seeks to trace the flows of mobile information through the vibrant materiality of their networked infrastructures. At the core of this inquiry is the question: who is the audience for mobile information? By approaching this question through the lens of performance studies, phenomenology, and object-oriented ontology, I wrest the terms “audience” and “user” away from a human-centered approach to argue that mobile networks address the various nodes within the network, one of which is human.

This paper draws from a primary example that, for me, became emblematic of the object-oriented approach to mobile networks. In October of 2011, I visited one of the major internet hubs on the East Coast: the Equinix internet peering center in Ashburn, Virginia. When I first arrived to the data center, I “checked-in” to the building using the locative social network, Foursquare, on my cellphone, which was connected to the internet over a 3G network. After I checked in, I was curious about the path that the cell signals took in order to locate me, access the data on the internet, and return that data to my phone. The pathways that this information flow took were quite fascinating: the 3G signal on my phone connected to the nearest cell tower. At this site, the signal ran down the antenna to connect with the fiber optic infrastructure of the internet, which then came racing straight back to my location at the internet data center. Here, in the building in which I was standing, the request prompted by my mobile device accessed Foursquare’s database housed in the Equinix facility. The signal was then sent back out to the towers and eventually back to my mobile phone. Within this circuitous path of information — which ultimately defines “mobility” — the “ephemeral” data of the mobile internet is seen as profoundly grounded on the material infrastructure of the network. Within the pathways of information in this network, I was only one node in the network. Here, the “audience” of the information cannot be restricted to human agents since many of the requests and exchanges happened at a level that did not directly address me in any way.

In this paper, the embodiment of information flows through these various audience members is studied through N. Katherine Hayles’ work on information materiality, Jane Bennett’s work on vibrant matter, and Ian Bogost’s work on object-oriented phenomenology. Ultimately, this paper argues for a practice of location-awareness that presents spatial objects and bodies as actors that produce space and are produced by that space.

Katy Pearce – (@katypearce) – “Is your Web everyone’s Web? Theorizing the web through the lens of the device divide”

Much of the theorizing of the web is conducted by those of us (selves included) for whom the “web” is always on, and is available through multiple devices. This certainly influences our theorizing. The device divide – the differences in personal computer and mobile phone-based Internet access – has important implications for social exclusion being reaffirmed through technology use. Using a study of Internet users with different device access abilities, we look at the ways that users engage with the Internet (which sometimes includes the Web but often does not). Moreover, looking at the contributions of both demographic characteristics and primary Internet access device to the activities that people engage with is a novel way to explore digital inequalities.

Jim Thatcher – (@alogicalfallacy) – “Mobile Geo-Spatial Devices: a theoretical approach to the GeoWeb”

The use of mobile geospatial devices radically alters human experience as design, technology, and socio-political life coalesce in new ways. Programmed applications influence how human beings move through space. Through repetitive use, these applications influence what and how end users come to know their environment and other humans. Microsoft’s recent patent for GPS technology that automatically routes end-users away from neighborhoods deemed “unsafe” suggests this radical shift: A private corporation, using private decision making algorithms and data, is now able to effectively select what areas of a city are rendered visible and invisible. Consumption and communication patterns across space are now open to virtual “red-lining” in the name of private definitions of “safe” and “optimal” routes. As mobile spatial applications extend human awareness beyond the body and through programmatically defined spaces, they influence the epistemic limits of end-user knowledge. Through an always-mediated, always-calculated technological process, users “come to know” places without physical presence as social and political life become constituted in code.

While much work in geography and cognate fields has focused on the body in space and the body as it interacts with technology, very little has asked what happens when a human extends their sensory apparatus through the technological flow of data in order to physically navigate through systems of modern capitalism. Studies of the GeoWeb remain predominantly instrumental and discrete, focusing on specific technological forms and leaving un-thought the question of what radical potentials are opened as humans gain the near instant ability to know the location of oneself and others? Further, and perhaps more importantly, what potentials for action and experience are foreclosed in this mediated environment of calculation?

This talk addresses the gap in literature through an examination of older theoretical approaches to the relationship between individual and society as mediated through technology. A theoretical orientation that roots the GeoWeb in embodied relations between actors within a critical Marxist understanding of technology is developed. This comprehensive approach directly engages the relationship between capitalist modernity and geospatial communication and navigation technologies. As code has become ubiquitous, it has also disappeared from critical consideration. The talk presents a theoretical framework for the rigorous understanding of the shifting relationships between individual, state, and technology.

David Banks – (@da_banks) – “Finding it ‘Otherwise’: Culturally and Geographically Situating The Practice of Texting”

Social constructionists and actor network theorists consistently claim that assemblages of technosocial systems are historically contingent or otherwise –to varying degrees- arbitrary. In other words, things could have been another way. The main criticisms of this these programs have been a lack of critical focus on power distribution and the influence of institutions. Rebuttals focus on the “seamless web” of social action that provides no clear beginning or referent for analysis. We must be satisfied with identifying the salient characteristics of relevant actants and working outward analytically, and forward historically. I contend that the statement “it could have been otherwise” belies a lack of sufficient comparative analysis. There are cases where it was, in fact, otherwise and from this comparative analysis we can find a basis for talking about power.

Over the course of two weeks I conducted over two-dozen interviews with patients, caretakers, administrators, and pharmacists in and around a government hospital in the city of Kumasi in central Ghana. My goal was to set up a text messaging system that helped Ghanaians find pharmacies that sold condoms. In the course of asking questions about privacy, frequency of phone use, navigating urban environments, and contraception, I also learned something about the culturally situated nature of large sociotechnical systems.

Mobile phone technology plays a much different role in Ghanaians lives than in Americans. Investigating these differences tell us something about the power relations embedded in western and non-western cell networks. The cell phone plays a much different role in Ghanaians lives than in Americans. In Ghana, the cell phone takes the place of the home phone and internet-enabled computer. (A tendency that we are only just now seeing in America.) In this comparative analysis, we can parse out meaningful relationships between sociotechnical networks and draw conclusions about what makes networks useful and powerful.