Among the things we grappled with while developing this project was how to use smartphone technology to enhance rather than replace a user’s experience of physical space. The intention of many apps is to bring the world to the user, rather than the other way around. The tendency of such apps is to de-spatialize or trans-spatialize the user, allowing her to review, survey, or experience spaces without moving. To put this in terms that Paul Virilio might appreciate, this is the tendency of an app—or mobile media in general—toward a spatio-temporal totalitarianism. “If in preindustrial eras the low speeds of various vehicles structured and geometrized the social landscape,” Virilio writes in Bunker Archaeology, “since the acquisition of high speeds… it is here, and not over there [emphasis added], that the critical is from now on played out.” To encourage mobility, exploration, and discovery, to insist on the “here-ness” of spatial media, we designed the app to allow users to listen to audio tags only by physically encountering the tagged spaces. For Bike Box, there is no content without negotiating physical space. In addition, we designed the app so that there can be no overlap of audio tags. Rather, a participant who adds a tag “owns” a 30 meter sphere of space. Among other things, this encourages a centrifugal or expansive relationship to space, propelling participants ever onward and outward toward unexplored and “unclaimed” territories.

The meaning of the term “space” is a complex one. On the one hand, one can argue that Bike Box opens a new space for communication, broadcast and social struggle, and on the other hand, this space may only be the virtual space of capitalism created for the purpose of being colonized. Geo-locative space is absolute space, as David Harvey puts it in his book Spaces of Global Capitalism: “[absolute space] is fixed and we record or plan events within its frame…. Socially this is the space of private property and other bounded territorial designations.”

Yet Bike Box uses a space that is still somewhat open, not yet occupied or regulated by the industry or the state. For example, we did not submit our application to the App Store and were able to distribute it via the iPhone configuration tool without Apple’s benediction. Mobile technology is still in its infancy and it is still possible to utilize this emerging technology as a  “temporary autonomous zone.”

Another tendency we hoped to work against is the notion of an app as a private and intimate experience. Though users could listen to audio through headphones, we encouraged them to borrow one of the bikes we had equipped with speakers. The bikes served as broadcasting units, allowing riders to share their listening experience with friends and passersby. The speakers allowed the audio content to extend into the space. For the few moments the audio tag plays through the speaker, it becomes spatialized—no longer just a response to or gloss on the tagged space, but a part of the experience of that space.

The performative acts inherent in participating in a mobile game or interacting with a portable networked computer in public space is a rich area for research. This research could include such genres as flash mobs or even public cell phone use. Should we begin looking at this expression as a type of performance? It’s obvious that ubiquitous computing, mobile media, and invisible technologies like GPS and radio-frequency identification (RFID) are undermining concepts of public space and changing our notions of privacy. By utilizing high-powered speakers, Bike Box emphasized this extension into public space.

The advent of a new technology usually presents the possibility to repackage old media. This way, businesses can sell the same idea in a different package. The profit-motive aside, it behooves us to consider what new forms of communication and community are possible as a result of technologies such as smartphones and the availability of location-aware data. The new web standard (HTML-5) incorporates geolocation, meaning that it will be easier to target specific users in terms of their location. In conceiving Bike Box, we were interested in poetic responses to locations, be they field recordings, fictional narratives or interpretive audio. Participants were therefore enabled to contribute whatever audio they wished. The content we culled was more diverse than we had imagined it could be. For all participants it seemed important that the audio be either produced locally or by a local person. As geolocation becomes attached to identification, the concept of a local acquires new meaning and becomes an important ingredient in cultural narratives.

GeoAPI’s website boasts services like reverse geocoding (or translating latitude and longitude coordinates into words, like names of towns and intersections), searching for places of interest, mapping and annotation capabilities, and a “writable private layer” that allows tech developers to perform various “geo queries” (ie “which burger joints in Madison, WI has Germaine checked into?”; or “where do all the bike messengers in San Fransisco hang out?”). In short, the product can help locative media developers, and consequently other locative media users, track your whereabouts more efficiently. These services could also be harnessed for place-based recommendation systems, or identifying patterns of activity.  Judging by reactions from competitors, once Twitter fully integrates GeoAPI the locative media industry, and the mobile tweet: “Eating lunch downtown, then going to the movies”, might never be the same again.

Though Twitter has yet to fully integrate GeoAPI or other geocoding software, it might be useful to take a look at the emerging “place race” now, and what some of the major players have to offer. It’s difficult to say exactly how Twitter will further introduce location into it’s service. But judging by the recent merger of mobile social network services and locative media, we might begin to imagine how the combination of 140 characters and “place” might change the way we tweet.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I think “where” does matter in social media and everyday life. I’m also very interested to see how developers implement something like GeoAPI, and the information produced and gathered through its various services. However, “where” can definitely be overdone, or done. . . creepy. The flak Google has recently received concerning Google Buzz and privacy issues, might have overshadowed the flak Google is concurrently receiving regarding Google Latitude and privacy issues. Additionally, Foursquare founders were recently prompted to give a public statement in reaction to concerns and controversy surrounding Please Rob Me,  a parody site which re-presents tweets and Foursquare check-ins as evidence that a user is not at home.

While privacy and surveillance have definitely been main concerns, there’s still something completely intriguing about displaying and playing with location, especially the location within which you currently reside. Ads and websites for various locative media services like CitySense, EveryBlock, and Foursquare all emphasize discovery of your neighborhood, your city, and connecting with friends within your hometown. These applications seem to render the city as a layered space full of encounters waiting to be had, hidden treasures, secret hot spots, and “you should have been there” gatherings that even the urban resident needs help finding. In a sense, living like a local merges with seeing like a tourist. Yet, these mobile applications invest the user with an augmented visual capital, and the illusion of an omniscient gaze over the city and its exchanges. By alerting you to the location of your “friends” or other people with similar traits, a suggested route of travel or particular image of the city might be offered — one that extends the way a person is “at home” while moving through urban space.

There’s a further tension between exploration and familiarization in some mobile locative media projects as well. The promotional descriptions and gaming aspects of these projects encourage the user to explore the unfamiliar, but simultaneously reward participants for repetition. In Foursquare for example, points are awarded for traveling across distance, but the status of “mayor” for frequenting the same place over and over again. In either case, there seems to be a promise of comfort through connection. The “ambient awareness” of your position, and other peoples’ position within the city, might not only render urban space more manageable, but keep your social network in tow in a very tangible way. The potential for physical accessibility of your social network, coupled with the “social proprioception” that Clive Thompson notes Twitter has capitalized on already, will deem them leaders of the place race. However, the problem might be that sensing where your social limbs are (especially the ones you connect with on Twitter), is only useful when it’s just a sense.