Mobile communication and new sense of places: a critique of spatialization in cyberculture

Abstract

The underlying idea of this paper can be expressed as follows: informational mobile technologies have enabled new means of communication and sociability based on what I call “informational territories”. What is at stake here is to question some visions about the relationship between informational technologies and place, territory, community and mobility. I will argue that, under the label of “locative media”, new mobile technologies are creating new forms of territorialization (control, surveillance, tracking) and new meanings of space, place, and territory, contradicting the theory of “non-place” or “no sense of place”. Moreover, this impels us to argue the ideas of anomie and isolation with the emergence of new forms of sociability and community created by location-based services.