MSCH-M503 Media Theories _Final Paper (Fall 2021)

Reading into Jason's Farman Oeuvre:

Mobile Technology, Social Networks, and Locative Media

In this paper, I am going to discuss four works by Jason Farman:

(a) Mobile Interface Theory: Embodied Space and Locative Media (book), 2nd edition (2020), (b) Mapping the digital empire: Google Earth and the process of postmodern cartography (2010), (c) Infrastructures of mobile social media (2015), and (d) Invisible and Instantaneous: Geographies of media infrastructure from pneumatic tubes to fiber optics (2018).

Point:

1. He is interested in understanding how people make sense out of digital media, especially when it comes to questions of geography and space.

2. There are two issues as to whether people can actually become embodied interactors, rather than disembodied voyeurs. The first is the problem of accessibility in a somewhat technological aspect. I realize that the difference in the level of network technology development can also be another variable. Literally, it is an information inequality, information gap, and information capitalism.

3. Farman is trying to offer a critique of some of the utopian thinking around maps and mapmaking o show that it is not inherently democratic or good for society.

4. Sometimes, new things will never be accepted because they are out of sync with the culture of the moment - or there are social or economic forces that discourage them.