In an attempt to help make humans into more efficient and effective information processors, the e... more In an attempt to help make humans into more efficient and effective information processors, the engineers of mobile communication systems and devices have turned to touch as an alternative pathway for the transmission of communicative messages. This article traces the goal of using touch as a way to speed up communication from the 1950s experiments with military systems for haptic communication to the launch of the AppleWatch in 2015. Using these two technological milieus as bookends for analyzing the co-constitutive relationship between tactility and temporality, we argue that the ever-accelerating pace of human communication – as seen in the attempts at reducing the latency between sender and receiver through haptic communication – produces bodies that are always on and attentive. Ultimately, the disciplining of time and touch is aimed at the production of neoliberal bodies and information subjects whose skin is utilized as an open channel for attention, communication, and labor. However, as we show by examining the persistence of phantom vibrations and the stalled development of Immersion Corporation’s Instinctive Alerts Framework for wearables, the repeated failures of users to properly recognize and differentiate between machine generated haptic sensations suggest that this attempted transformation of touch into a communicative sense has persistently fallen short of its disciplining aims.
A Networked Self and Platforms, Stories, Connections, 2018
The ways spatial stories are communicated come through a range of media, from statues to plaques,... more The ways spatial stories are communicated come through a range of media, from statues to plaques, from graffiti to billboards, and from public screens to individual mobile devices. This chapter explores how space is produced through storytelling media in the digital age, as technologies such as mobile devices work alongside previous media forms to tell varied and wide-ranging stories of a location’s meaning. In order to create work that affords for spatial polyvocality—for the many voices and stories to be told at a site through mobile technologies—designers must contend with a range of considerations such medium specificity, content creation, participant motivation, materiality of the space and device, as well as the temporal aspects of mobile storytelling. This chapter thus seeks to combine a theoretical analysis of spatial production through narrative with the applied media studies approach to knowledge-through-practice.
In the late-1890s, five cities in the United States set up miles of tubing that would send canist... more In the late-1890s, five cities in the United States set up miles of tubing that would send canisters filled with mail sailing from post office to post office, pushed through the length of tube by compressed air. These letters could arrive within the hour and were delivered throughout the day regardless of the constraints of weather or traffic on the streets above. Anticipating our contemporary uses of text messages, the pneumatic mail services offered people the ability to stay in touch throughout the day, coordinating plans or exchanging love notes through an infrastructure that was a key part of defining modern American society. The tubes and the pneumatic mail delivery went defunct in the 1950s; yet, years later, in the early-2000s, a New York entrepreneur came across the archives of these old tube systems and decided to run fiber optic cable from building to building through the now-obsolete tubes. Comparing how these two technologies – pneumatic tubes and fiber optic cables for the Internet – created an imagination of the instantaneous in their respective times, I explore the powerful allure of the instantaneous and how such ideas open up an exploration of the relationship between proximity and everyday temporality as the pace of communications are affected by the desire for ever-accelerating technologies for communication.
Drawn from a lecture given to Adriana de Souza e Silva's graduate seminar, gathered in her edited... more Drawn from a lecture given to Adriana de Souza e Silva's graduate seminar, gathered in her edited volume Dialogues on Mobile Communication
What is the status of objects in the digital age? How do you archive and maintain something like ... more What is the status of objects in the digital age? How do you archive and maintain something like a mobile app? Repair groups, fixer movements, and maintenance advocates continually contend with the limited life designed into the technologies we use. One such area is software obsolescence. Here, there is a materialist shift in defining the object of repair: it is not simply the physical object that needs repair or maintenance, but the physical object in its relationship with the perpetual software update. In the digital age, while the object is often conflated with the content it conveys, we are discovering that those two elements do not coincide as the digital object falls under the auspices of planned obsolescence.
Interception troubles the traditional spatial metaphors for surveillance. As such, the material r... more Interception troubles the traditional spatial metaphors for surveillance. As such, the material realities of surveillance-via-interception are often unknown to those being watched. This article thus traces the relationship between these two things: the spatial arrangements of “surveillance from the middle” and the ways these arrangements veil the materialities of interception and surveillance.
Starting in 1816 and through the Victorian era, kaleidoscopes were as distracting to the people i... more Starting in 1816 and through the Victorian era, kaleidoscopes were as distracting to the people in the UK as our mobile phones are now. This article traces the history of technological distraction and disconnection back to the rise of the kaleidoscope, which was in the hands of everyone from children to the elderly; from professors to pastors and was seen on nearly every public street in the UK where it was first invented. How this beloved device went from adult obsession to throwaway juvenilia turns out to be a long, strange journey, one that has profound implications for the mobile devices you are carrying right now.
Foundations of Mobile Media Studies: Essential Texts on the Formation of a Field, 2016
A bibliography of some of the most influential scholarly writings about mobile media. Published i... more A bibliography of some of the most influential scholarly writings about mobile media. Published in my edited volume, Foundations of Mobile Media Studies: Essential Texts on the Formation of a Field.
In his performance art piece, 0.00 Navigation, Simon Faithfull uses a GPS receiver to walk the en... more In his performance art piece, 0.00 Navigation, Simon Faithfull uses a GPS receiver to walk the entirety of the Prime Meridian, staying ‘faithful’ to this longitude regardless of what gets in his way. Faithfull is filmed from behind as he navigates across waist-deep canals, over fences, and through strangers’ houses. In my analysis of 0.00 Navigation and similar locative media artworks such as CoMob and Telepresent, I argue that these projects importantly highlight the relationship between the human body and objects (both tangible and virtual). Drawing on a phenomenological approach, this article focuses on the role that objects play in the embodied practices of locative media artists. This analysis is also concerned with how objects themselves are embodied agents, serving as audience for one another. These objects – including the GPS receiver, video camera that tapes his journey, YouTube, and even the Prime Meridian itself – serve as ethical others, as vibrant materialities. As such, this article offers an analysis of objects in locative art that affords them a space of transcendence in the ways that they are able to exceed the embodied frame of reference of the artist and human audience members.
The rise of mobile media – which are now the most pervasive digital technologies on the planet – ... more The rise of mobile media – which are now the most pervasive digital technologies on the planet – has caused a reexamination of our spatial practices of everyday life. One vital element of the production of space is the ways we use media to tell the social stories of a place and, ultimately, orient our bodies toward (or against) the narratives of these locations. Positioning mobile media and location-aware technologies among the long history of site-specific storytelling, this article looks at a range of mobile story projects that offer insights into the social practices of embodiment, identity, and community in the digital age. These storytelling projects demonstrate ways of recuperating the materiality and infrastructure of digital media; they highlight the importance of location and proximity for contemporary computing culture; and they offer important examinations into the ways in which media ecologies address certain bodies while excluding others.
In an attempt to help make humans into more efficient and effective information processors, the e... more In an attempt to help make humans into more efficient and effective information processors, the engineers of mobile communication systems and devices have turned to touch as an alternative pathway for the transmission of communicative messages. This article traces the goal of using touch as a way to speed up communication from the 1950s experiments with military systems for haptic communication to the launch of the AppleWatch in 2015. Using these two technological milieus as bookends for analyzing the co-constitutive relationship between tactility and temporality, we argue that the ever-accelerating pace of human communication – as seen in the attempts at reducing the latency between sender and receiver through haptic communication – produces bodies that are always on and attentive. Ultimately, the disciplining of time and touch is aimed at the production of neoliberal bodies and information subjects whose skin is utilized as an open channel for attention, communication, and labor. However, as we show by examining the persistence of phantom vibrations and the stalled development of Immersion Corporation’s Instinctive Alerts Framework for wearables, the repeated failures of users to properly recognize and differentiate between machine generated haptic sensations suggest that this attempted transformation of touch into a communicative sense has persistently fallen short of its disciplining aims.
A Networked Self and Platforms, Stories, Connections, 2018
The ways spatial stories are communicated come through a range of media, from statues to plaques,... more The ways spatial stories are communicated come through a range of media, from statues to plaques, from graffiti to billboards, and from public screens to individual mobile devices. This chapter explores how space is produced through storytelling media in the digital age, as technologies such as mobile devices work alongside previous media forms to tell varied and wide-ranging stories of a location’s meaning. In order to create work that affords for spatial polyvocality—for the many voices and stories to be told at a site through mobile technologies—designers must contend with a range of considerations such medium specificity, content creation, participant motivation, materiality of the space and device, as well as the temporal aspects of mobile storytelling. This chapter thus seeks to combine a theoretical analysis of spatial production through narrative with the applied media studies approach to knowledge-through-practice.
In the late-1890s, five cities in the United States set up miles of tubing that would send canist... more In the late-1890s, five cities in the United States set up miles of tubing that would send canisters filled with mail sailing from post office to post office, pushed through the length of tube by compressed air. These letters could arrive within the hour and were delivered throughout the day regardless of the constraints of weather or traffic on the streets above. Anticipating our contemporary uses of text messages, the pneumatic mail services offered people the ability to stay in touch throughout the day, coordinating plans or exchanging love notes through an infrastructure that was a key part of defining modern American society. The tubes and the pneumatic mail delivery went defunct in the 1950s; yet, years later, in the early-2000s, a New York entrepreneur came across the archives of these old tube systems and decided to run fiber optic cable from building to building through the now-obsolete tubes. Comparing how these two technologies – pneumatic tubes and fiber optic cables for the Internet – created an imagination of the instantaneous in their respective times, I explore the powerful allure of the instantaneous and how such ideas open up an exploration of the relationship between proximity and everyday temporality as the pace of communications are affected by the desire for ever-accelerating technologies for communication.
Drawn from a lecture given to Adriana de Souza e Silva's graduate seminar, gathered in her edited... more Drawn from a lecture given to Adriana de Souza e Silva's graduate seminar, gathered in her edited volume Dialogues on Mobile Communication
What is the status of objects in the digital age? How do you archive and maintain something like ... more What is the status of objects in the digital age? How do you archive and maintain something like a mobile app? Repair groups, fixer movements, and maintenance advocates continually contend with the limited life designed into the technologies we use. One such area is software obsolescence. Here, there is a materialist shift in defining the object of repair: it is not simply the physical object that needs repair or maintenance, but the physical object in its relationship with the perpetual software update. In the digital age, while the object is often conflated with the content it conveys, we are discovering that those two elements do not coincide as the digital object falls under the auspices of planned obsolescence.
Interception troubles the traditional spatial metaphors for surveillance. As such, the material r... more Interception troubles the traditional spatial metaphors for surveillance. As such, the material realities of surveillance-via-interception are often unknown to those being watched. This article thus traces the relationship between these two things: the spatial arrangements of “surveillance from the middle” and the ways these arrangements veil the materialities of interception and surveillance.
Starting in 1816 and through the Victorian era, kaleidoscopes were as distracting to the people i... more Starting in 1816 and through the Victorian era, kaleidoscopes were as distracting to the people in the UK as our mobile phones are now. This article traces the history of technological distraction and disconnection back to the rise of the kaleidoscope, which was in the hands of everyone from children to the elderly; from professors to pastors and was seen on nearly every public street in the UK where it was first invented. How this beloved device went from adult obsession to throwaway juvenilia turns out to be a long, strange journey, one that has profound implications for the mobile devices you are carrying right now.
Foundations of Mobile Media Studies: Essential Texts on the Formation of a Field, 2016
A bibliography of some of the most influential scholarly writings about mobile media. Published i... more A bibliography of some of the most influential scholarly writings about mobile media. Published in my edited volume, Foundations of Mobile Media Studies: Essential Texts on the Formation of a Field.
In his performance art piece, 0.00 Navigation, Simon Faithfull uses a GPS receiver to walk the en... more In his performance art piece, 0.00 Navigation, Simon Faithfull uses a GPS receiver to walk the entirety of the Prime Meridian, staying ‘faithful’ to this longitude regardless of what gets in his way. Faithfull is filmed from behind as he navigates across waist-deep canals, over fences, and through strangers’ houses. In my analysis of 0.00 Navigation and similar locative media artworks such as CoMob and Telepresent, I argue that these projects importantly highlight the relationship between the human body and objects (both tangible and virtual). Drawing on a phenomenological approach, this article focuses on the role that objects play in the embodied practices of locative media artists. This analysis is also concerned with how objects themselves are embodied agents, serving as audience for one another. These objects – including the GPS receiver, video camera that tapes his journey, YouTube, and even the Prime Meridian itself – serve as ethical others, as vibrant materialities. As such, this article offers an analysis of objects in locative art that affords them a space of transcendence in the ways that they are able to exceed the embodied frame of reference of the artist and human audience members.
The rise of mobile media – which are now the most pervasive digital technologies on the planet – ... more The rise of mobile media – which are now the most pervasive digital technologies on the planet – has caused a reexamination of our spatial practices of everyday life. One vital element of the production of space is the ways we use media to tell the social stories of a place and, ultimately, orient our bodies toward (or against) the narratives of these locations. Positioning mobile media and location-aware technologies among the long history of site-specific storytelling, this article looks at a range of mobile story projects that offer insights into the social practices of embodiment, identity, and community in the digital age. These storytelling projects demonstrate ways of recuperating the materiality and infrastructure of digital media; they highlight the importance of location and proximity for contemporary computing culture; and they offer important examinations into the ways in which media ecologies address certain bodies while excluding others.
Foundations of Mobile Media Studies gathers some of the most important texts in this emerging fie... more Foundations of Mobile Media Studies gathers some of the most important texts in this emerging field, offering readers key approaches to understanding our moment and our media. The impact of mobile media is far reaching and this book discusses topics such as human intimacy, social space, political uprisings, labor, mobile phones in the developing world, gender, the mobile device’s impact on reading, mobile television, and mobile photography, among others. This carefully curated collection will serve as the central text to introduce this field to anyone eager to understand the rise of mobile technology, its impact on our relationships, and how these media have transformed the ways we understand the world around us.
In an attempt to help make humans into more efficient and effective information processors, the e... more In an attempt to help make humans into more efficient and effective information processors, the engineers of mobile communication systems and devices have turned to touch as an alternative pathway for the transmission of communicative messages. This article traces the goal of using touch as a way to speed up communication from the 1950s experiments with military systems for haptic communication to the launch of the Apple Watch in 2015. Using these two technological milieus as bookends for analyzing the co-constitutive relationship between tactility and temporality, we argue that the ever-accelerating pace of human communication – as seen in the attempts at reducing the latency between sender and receiver through haptic communication – produces bodies that are always on and attentive. Ultimately, the disciplining of time and touch is aimed at the production of neoliberal bodies and information subjects whose skin is utilized as an open channel for attention, communication, and labor. However, as we show by examining the persistence of phantom vibrations and the stalled development of Immersion Corporation’s Instinctive Alerts Framework for wearables, the repeated failures of users to properly recognize and differentiate between machine-generated haptic sensations suggest that this attempted transformation of touch into a communicative sense has persistently fallen short of its disciplining aims.
Uploads
Papers
latency between sender and receiver through haptic communication – produces bodies that are always on and attentive. Ultimately, the disciplining of time and touch is aimed at the production of neoliberal bodies and information subjects whose skin is utilized as an open channel for attention, communication, and labor. However, as we show by examining the persistence of phantom vibrations and the stalled development of Immersion Corporation’s Instinctive Alerts Framework for
wearables, the repeated failures of users to properly recognize and differentiate between machine generated haptic sensations suggest that this attempted transformation of touch into a communicative sense has persistently fallen short of its disciplining aims.
ways that they are able to exceed the embodied frame of reference of the artist and human audience members.
latency between sender and receiver through haptic communication – produces bodies that are always on and attentive. Ultimately, the disciplining of time and touch is aimed at the production of neoliberal bodies and information subjects whose skin is utilized as an open channel for attention, communication, and labor. However, as we show by examining the persistence of phantom vibrations and the stalled development of Immersion Corporation’s Instinctive Alerts Framework for
wearables, the repeated failures of users to properly recognize and differentiate between machine generated haptic sensations suggest that this attempted transformation of touch into a communicative sense has persistently fallen short of its disciplining aims.
ways that they are able to exceed the embodied frame of reference of the artist and human audience members.