Location-Based Environments and Technologies

Introduction

Location-based services (LBS) and location-based environments (LBE) exist at the intersection of three separate technologies: information and communication technology (ICT), geographic information systems (GIS) with spatial databases and the Internet (Steiniger et al., 2006). Location-based technologies – such as mobile phones, mobile networks and global positioning systems (GPS) – can be employed in order to deliver information that is relevant to one's location or to use one's location as an information resource. Users can, then, interact with these location-based environments (LBE) for social (e.g. checking in to a restaurant), educational (e.g. exploring a science-based augmented reality world) or informational (e.g. checking the traffic on Google Maps) purposes. With continually evolving advances in mobile technology, users do not merely use their device in a specific location; rather, location, as Gordon and de Souza e Silva argue, sets the ‘conditions for interaction and provides the context from which information is interpreted and used’ (Gordon and de Souza e Silva, 2011: 11).

In a fiction piece from Wired Magazine, Bruce Sterling (2007) writes from the perspective of a ‘hyperlocal’ blogger – an ‘early-adapter webceleb in the hyperlocal biz’ – in the year 2017. He breaks down the definition of hyperlocal for his readers: ‘Hyper, as in linked and local, as in location’. All of the databases of this ‘new Web’, he explains, are ‘stuffed with geographic coordinates. Real positions. Real distances’. In this hyperlocal future, corporations have ‘used their skills and capital to weld the virtual world firmly to the actual world’. ‘Hyperlocality’, he writes, ‘is transforming our lives at every scale: bodyware, roomware, streetware, cityware, nationware, and global ware’. In 2017, bodyware, for instance, is the stuff carried in pockets and bags that broadcasts its location to nearby devices; roomware maintains rooms, the sensors that control temperature and remotes that control locks; streetware is his ‘mobile's navigator, [Page 388]plus social tags, ad filters, and all those black-and-white barcode blotches painted on walls like graffiti’.

Today, we witness the early predecessors of Sterling's hyperlocal future: smartphone applications such as FourSquare, SCVNGR and Facebook Places have earned popularity by allowing users to ‘check-in’ to their current location, share information, stories and even participate in location-specific activities; food trucks broadcast their location via Twitter and consumers seek them out; applications such as Yelp and Urbanspoon determine nearby restaurants based on a user's location; photos uploaded to Flickr and Google Photos can be geotagged and mapped by location; computer chips in key fobs can even communicate with billboards for personalized advertisements (Scholz, 2011). In a more nuanced view of location, popular applications for smartphones use the accelerometer, for instance, to wake a user as the phone senses a certain degree of movement in the morning; IP addresses are tracked and provide location-based advertisements; and power consumption can be monitored and altered by mobile devices. Location-based services (LBS) as a whole are forecast to increase their overall profits from $515 million in 2007 to $13.3 billion in 2013 – making them the fastest-growing Web technology sector (ABI Research, 2009 as cited in Gordon and de Souza e Silva, 2011: 9).

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