The Semantic Production of Space: Pervasive Computing and the Urban Landscape

Abstract

This paper suggests that as pervasive computing technologies have gained purchase in urban space they have also become more implicitly blended with everyday life and more contingent on information that is inductively compiled from Internet-based data services. It is argued that existing theorizations of the technologically mediated production of urban must engage with the increasingly implicit nature of informational transactions as well as the emergent semantic structuring of information. Drawing on examples of ongoing pervasive computing projects, implicit computing procedures are explored in relation to the mediation of everyday urban life. Literatures from computing science and geographical theory are brought into conversation in order to examine the consequences of a convergence between implicit pervasive technologies and the spaces of everyday life.

Invisibility through the interface: the social consequences of spatial search

“…These suggestions then map one's surroundings in a very specific way, giving visibility to one location above all others through the push notification. This type of predictive spatial search is referred to in Computer Science literature as 'semantic spatial search', and in the following paragraph, Kelsey (2014) discusses how future spatial recommendation engines will differ from applications like Yelp that require specific queries from users:…”