The Mobile City

Tag: mobility

  • Telecom, transport, and (unequal) time-space compression

    One of the oldest terms to think about the influence of both transport and communication technologies on the experience of time and space is “time-space compression”. This notion expresses the sense that the experience of time passing by is accelerated while the importance of distance diminished. Geographer David Harvey made the term famous, although it…

  • Mobile media ‘optimizing’ physical mobility

    (image source: Vabellon) Clearly, the mobile phone is used to ‘optimize time’ – at least, this idea of “making the most of NOW” is one of the strong rhetorics about mobile media: to do something useful with in-between moments that is ‘lost time’ otherwise. Increasingly, is seems mobile media are being deployed to optimize spatial…

  • PICNIC ’08: The Visible City session

    Wednesday Sept. 24 I went to one of the sessions at PICNIC ’08 called “The Visible City”. This session was about ways of visualizing mobility patterns in the city. From the announcement: What if an entire city could be visible from above, like we see it from an airplane? Not simply buildings and squares, but…

  • Mobile phone access for Cubans: the ‘mobile’ as rhetorical force

    Another interesting item: The BBC reports that Cubans get access to mobile phones, as Raul Castro lifts the ban on possessing them: Cubans are to be allowed unrestricted access to mobile phones for the first time, in the latest reform announced under new President Raul Castro. … Some Cubans already own mobile phones, but they…