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A man is walking down Michigan Avenue in Chicago. He shares a sidewalk
with crowds of anonymous people. He sees skyscrapers and signage
extending to the horizon. There is a lot going on – people talking, walking,
playing, fighting, screaming, driving, and smiling. He sees a coffee shop
that excites his interest. He pulls out his phone and checks into a locationbased
social network (LBSN). The application makes note of his location
and registers his first stop of the day. He touches the ‘‘tips’’ tab on the
application and looks at what other people have said about nearby locations
and discovers that many have complained about its unfriendly service and
high prices. While doing that, he gets notified that someone in his social
network just checked into another coffee shop down the street. He walks
over there to meet her.
The city for this man does not end with the visibly observable. It contains
annotations and connections, information and orientations from a network
of people and devices that extend well beyond what is in front of him. And
he is not alone. It is difficult to find a mobile phone these days that is only a
phone. Most phones send text messages, access the web, run applications,
and include a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver so that it can be
located in the physical world. We used to talk about the World Wide Web as
an interconnected information space set aside from the world we live in, but
the world we live in and the web can no longer be so easily separated.
The first book to provide an introduction to the new theory of Net Locality and the profound effect on individuals and societies when everything is located or locatable.
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Describes net locality as an emerging form of location awareness central to all aspects of digital media, from mobile phones, to Google Maps, to location-based social networks and games, such as Foursquare and facebook.
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Warns of the threats these technologies, such as data surveillance, present to our sense of privacy, while also outlining the opportunities for pro-social developments.
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Provides a theory of the web in the context of the history of emerging technologies, from GeoCities to GPS, Wi-Fi, Wiki Me, and Google Android.
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