| An increasing amount of information and communication technologies are being configured to determine the geographic location of individuals interacting in the digital enclosure. Through a comparison of case studies that utilize "location-based services," this thesis illustrates how the rise of networked communications is not the coming of a geographically disembodied network society but the ongoing conversion of individuals into self-disciplined consumers (and workers) and the increasing ability to use these openly monitored individuals to modify and sustain territorial spaces of power. This is accomplished through a process that I call virtual transduction, where the contested conversion of geographic information and place-based power is translated from virtual space to physical place, or vice versa. SENSEable City Laboratory, MoveOn.org and Stamen Design are analyzed in order to provide details about this conversion process as well as provide insights into the work of locating the mobile mob. |
