The algorithmic fix: Location intelligence, placemaking, and predictable futures

Abstract

With this article, I introduce the ‘algorithmic fix’ as a framework to analyze contemporary placemaking practices. I discuss how algorithmic practices of placemaking govern and control mobilities. I theorize such practices as the ‘algorithmic fix’, where location determination technologies, data practices, and machine learning algorithms are used together to ‘get a fix on’ our whereabouts with the aim of sorting and classifying both people and places. Through a case study of location intelligence, I demonstrate how these digital placemaking practices do not only control and prevent physical mobilities – they are designed to fix who we are and whom we may become with the aim of creating a predictable future. I focus on geo-profiling, geo-fencing, and predictive policing as three key aspects of location intelligence to present a discussion of how ‘algorithmic fix’ as a framework can provide valuable insights to analyzing contemporary placemaking practices.

Geofence Warrants, Geospatial Innovation, and Implications for Data Privacy

“…Fixity and control are integral to the design of digital technologies and the corporate business models behind targeted advertising, which motivates the need for completed datasets. The algorithms, machine learning techniques, and the platforms are designed to fix users as a finite entity from both an ontological perspective and a geographical perspective (Özkul, 2021). If the system can maintain the user within specific categories and coerce the user to act within physical and virtual boundaries, the system can best predict future action which can be monetized through the processes of targeted advertising (see also Deleuze (1992) and his concept societies of control.)…”

Doing Mobile Media and Communication scholarship in different keys: Sounding out structure and integration in the field

“…Another budding area of scholarship can be characterized as mobile psychology. Whereas the inception of the field was heavily shaped by sociologists (e.g., Castells, Fortunati, Katz, Licoppe, and Ling), there has been a more recent surge in research and theory on the psychology of MMC (Reinecke et al, 2018; Ross & Bayer, 2021; Vanden Abeele & Nguyen, 2022), resulting in discernable themes that might be treated as notes within a key (Ross & Campbell, 2021). Looking further out on the horizon, there is a rising interest in applications and a small-but-growing collection of scholarship that may presently be forming into the sub-area of app studies, with its own organizing questions about the socio-technical landscape of this emerging media form (e.g., Goggin, 2021; Miller & Matviyenko, 2014).…”