In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five probing questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to Eric Gordon, co-author of Net Locality: Why Location Matters in a Networked World.
Although Gordon, who is Boston-based, was able to co-author a book with Adriana de Souza e Silva, who was Copenhagen-based (she currently lives in Raleigh, NC), he argues that the geography of how we interact is, if anything, growing in importance. Gordon also assesses the significance of location-based services such as GPS devices or location-based social networks such as FourSquare.
1) You argue that location-aware technologies–such as GPS systems and cell-phone applications– can make us feel more grounded in our physical surroundings. But can’t those same technologies take away from our sense of groundedness by directing our attention to the devices themselves?
That is exactly the point – they CAN make us feel more grounded. There is nothing innate about the social consequences of technologies. It is too often assumed that mobile technologies are diametrically opposed to local connections and places. Our book makes the argument that location matters. In it, we argue that there are emerging practices with technology that have considerable implications on local community and local places.
Sure, the devices we use to enter the web can be distracting. Like any interface, they can take our attention away from the content of the communication. When we struggle to navigate a website, we become acutely aware of the computer.
But interfaces can also focus attention. An augmented reality tool like Layar requires users to consider where they are and with whom to share their location. When users use their phone’s camera to access information in the environment, the device becomes the impetus, not the barrier, to social interaction and for taking notice of the environment.
2) You acknowledge that location-based social networks can cultivate feelings of paranoia and mistrust. Couldn’t this make people less likely to interact?
Yes. There is lots of potential for paranoia and mistrust when it comes to location-based social networks, but this is not specific to LBSN. Think about the reaction to Facebook when the company changed its privacy settings. Just as it opens up vast potential for social organization and connection, LBSN also introduces all sorts of reasons to be paranoid. Interestingly, though, the paranoia is not specific or targeted. As the privacy scholar Daniel Solove puts it about online communication more generally, the fears of surveillance are not Orwellian-they’re more Kafka-esque. Everyone is watching everyone else and no one really knows why. All we know is that it’s creepy. In our book, we acknowledge that and discuss the legitimate risks. However, we also take the position that the social affordances of these technologies and their emerging social practices are often overlooked and undervalued.
3) If location-based social networks are global in reach, can’t they potentially undermine the uniqueness of any given local culture?
Net locality is descriptive of a set of emerging practices with location-based technologies. In many cases, local communities are using location awareness to interact with each other and expand local influence. Consider the use of a system like Engage Omaha. This site, developed by Mind Mixer, is intended to get residents of Omaha sharing ideas and collaborating to make their city better. It marries hyper-local knowledge with the amplification of digital networks. Or consider the game platform that my lab has developed, Community PlanIt, which seeks to turn local planning into an interactive and fun experience. These systems are emblematic of the positive features of net locality, where the local retains uniqueness and extends outward. On the other hand, it is easy to imagine how the same technological infrastructure can be directed the other way. Our goal in this book is simply to understand location as a tool – one that is being wielded for different purposes and motivated by different goals.
4) Your answer implies that everybody has access to smart phones and other location-based technologies. But only a third of Americans own a smart phone.
Net locality is not limited to smart phone use. Smart phones are one way of accessing and using location information, but, as we discuss in the book, it is happening on desktop interfaces as well. Also, the number of smart phones in the United States is growing quite rapidly. According to Nielsen, at the end of 2008, only 14 percent of wireless subscribers were using smart phones. That figure has more than doubled. As these devices along with data plans get cheaper, this will become the dominant mode of accessing the Internet.
5) Websites such as EngageOmaha and Community PlanIt allow users to submit ideas to improve their communities, but is the sharing of ideas enough to create a vital sense of community or change anything in real life?
The sharing of ideas is, in itself, not enough to create a sense of community. But people build community when they work together to solve problems. The innovation in community technology is not the machination of human processes, but the amplification of human processes through machines.
The challenge of design is not just in computer interfaces but in physical interfaces, including meeting rooms and street corners-any place where people interact with one another and share experiences. The myth of the killer app is just that, a myth.
Again, I just want to be clear, net locality is not descriptive of technologies only. It also represents changing perceptions of spaces, of what it means to be local, and of the possibilities of engaging in local life.
Buy the book: Skylight Books, Powell’s, Amazon
*Photo courtesy of IrishEyes.