places, situations and connections

8/8/2019 Places, Situations and Connections

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/places-situations-and-connections 1/18

Copyright © 2008 by Katharine Willis

Appears in: Willis, K (2008). Spaces, Settings and Connections in Aurigi, A., De Cindio, F.(Eds) Augmented Urban Spaces: Articulating the Physical and Electronic City. UK: Ashgate Press.

Places, Situations and Connections

Katharine S. Willis

Introduction

I then shouted into M (the mouthpiece) the following sentence:

'Mr. Watson--come here--I want to see you.'

To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said.’.1

The first words communicated using the medium of the telephone reveal the

inherently social nature of communication technology (Bell, 1876, 40-41). In Graham

Bell’s first successful call enabling communication between two people in separate

locations his opening instruction was to ask the person at the other end of the line to

come to where he was. This underlines the way of understanding the world so very often

requires visual presence to authenticate social experience. In so many aspects of our

everyday life we tend to ‘believe it when we see it’. Our visual experience of the physical

environment we inhabit therefore guides a great deal of how we perceive, remember and

act in the world. Our spatial perception is also to a great extent influenced by the visual

features and characteristics of physical space. In the 1960’s the urban planner Kevin

Lynch underlined the extent to which we essentially visually perceive and categorise the

world in his seminal work, The Image of the City (Lynch 1960). In this study he

established that individuals construct mental imagery about the space in which they

move, which he proposed was broken down into a series of five key elements; landmarks,

edges, districts, paths and nodes. He termed the qualities of a city which make it

understandable to any citizen as its ‘image-ability’, again underlining the effect of the

visual form of the city on perception and memory of physical space.

The emergence of communication technologies has fundamentally affected the

nature of visual presence in everyday life. As a consequence the physical design and

characteristics of the built world have been affected by the possibilities of remote and

ubiquitous communication. As far back as the introduction of the telephone, evidence can

be found of how technology had a significant impact on the structure and social use of the

city. According to the work of de Sola Pool and his co-authors in The Social Impact of theTelephone ( de Sola Pool 1977), the telephone contributed considerably to urban

decentralisation and mass migration to suburbia, and also helped to create the specific

architectural forms of the skyscraper and skyline (Gottmann in de Sola Pool 1977, 310).

1 Alexander Graham Bell's notebook entry of March 10, 1876, in which he describes the first successful

experiment with the telephone.





The telephone is documented as the main factor which allowed geographical separation

between office work and other stages of business it administered, such as warehousing,

production and shipping (Gottmann in de Sola Pool 1977, 309). But the telephone wasand still is a fixed wire technology; it has to start somewhere and end somewhere with

wires in-between. As we move into the twenty-first century we are experiencing a growth

in a whole range of new communication technologies which enable not just wireless but

also mobile communication. Mobile phones, wireless internet, Bluetooth, GPS and all

their associated applications enable the oft repeated ideal of communication ‘any time,

any place’. We no longer need to be sat at a computer in an office building to send an

email, or hold a wired receiver to make a phone call. Consequently a number of authors

have highlighted how the predominant visuo-spatial way of understanding of the city is

being fundamentally affected by such technologies which have very little visual presence,

and enable us to be anywhere and everywhere. Graham (Graham et al. 1986, 50)

highlighted the fact that:

Given this visual pre-occupation , it is easy to diagnose the virtual invisibility of telecommunication in cities as

a key reason for the curious neglect of telecommunications issues in cities .

Batty (Batty, 1990, 128) further noted that:

cities are becoming invisible to us in certain important ways.

and in another paper set out a research agenda which would look at a series of methodsfor enabling a visualisation of these nodes and networks (Hodge et al. 2000) which has

been addressed by Dodge and Kitchin (Dodge et al. 2000) in their work on describing the

features of what they term cyberspace. Townsend (Townsend 2000) and others have alsohighlighted how the temporal quality of wireless and mobile networks reconfigure thespatial and visual qualities of the city, and so should cause us to question the nature of

city infrastructures and how we plan out cities and physical and social sites of activity.This chapter will investigate how we perceive and act in the city, and how this

affected by the presence of mobile and wireless technologies. In particular it will focuson the notion of public space in the city, and how these spaces can be occupied when

citizens experience them through practices that are not necessarily visual or spatial in theterms that we traditionally accept urban experience. It will draw on a case study of the

presence and social impact of a wireless network in an urban setting, and then conclude by proposing a series of ways in which we may need to adapt out notion of urban public

space to better enable us to enact our experience of the city whilst inhabiting places andmoving between flows.

Places

In addition to our visual memories and experiences we also experience space as setof social settings and places which have come to have meaning for us. Despite the visual

dominance of many elements that make up our idea of the city, our behaviour in spaceand memories of past events also categorise and organize our actions. In addition to the





structures of spatial separation and constraints are understood. Space is typicallyconceived as having some form of definable extent, which enables it to be sub-divided in

a range of ways into units with particular properties. Out of such concepts arisesociological frameworks such as territory, neighbourhood and even personal space.

Presence If we take the case of individuals, then any experience of space is framed

by a subjective awareness that they have a physical or bodily presence. In many cases thisawareness is formed through perception, and vision tends to dominate. In the context of

any activity this awareness is constantly measured, evaluated and updated, in processessuch as orientation and navigation.

Linkage Although this is implicit in the previous descriptions, the concept of

linkage or relation is inherent in space. For example, an effect in space, such as light andshadow, is felt universally; light doesn’t just fall on one side of an object, but illuminates

all sides in a proportional manner. Objects or people in space are understood as beingeither more or less connected, a factor which is realised in a diverse range of ways; such

as ideas of scale, social networks or even economics.

Temporality In three-dimensional space, time is seen as the fourth dimension. Spacecan simultaneously be understood as a fundamentally stable environment, undergoinglittle change (e.g. buildings), or conversely a changeful state in almost constant flux (e.g.

a journey).

Situations

The Euclidean notion of space is just one part of a complex jigsaw of how we

understand the city. Places are also understood as sites of social activity, and this is

particularly true for urban public space. These are places without fixed patterns of use,

and as such offer possibilities for more than one social activity. Social interactions andactivities are dependent on settings or situations which are guided by the physical setting

(Goffmann 1969, 20). Interestingly many of the relationships which structure or socialworld are not analogous, but operate on network type structures consisting of string and

weak ties, which are primarily relational in nature. This means they do not exist asentities in themselves, but only exist in context of the link to other entities in the network.

In many ways these social networks have much closer structural form to the way inwhich we understand communication technologies than the space in which they take

place. If we think about a building in Euclidean terms, it is an enclosed space with a particular function. But if we look at it in terms of its social structure it can be seen as a

complex series of loosely and strongly connected links and nodes making up a social

network, which even have the possibility for total disconnection from all other nodes. For

instance a place such as a church or a classroom is physically designed and socially

designated to support a radial topology of communication (see Fig 1.1), with uni-

directional links from one person to many, whereas a cafe topology (see Fig 1.2) consists

of clusters of highly interconnected nodes (the tables) which are loosely associated to





form a large network (the cafe), with optional one-way (eavesdropping) links (Adams

1998, 91).

Fig 1.1 Church network topology Fig 1.2 Café network topology

[Insert Fig. 1.2– portrait] [Insert Fig. 1.2– portrait]

The social use of a space is similarly temporarily fluid. A church may appear to visually

be a church building with fixed walls, but for the people that visit it, it may be a place to

pray privately, a place to congregate with a group, or a place to mourn on a one-off

occasion. All these ways of occupying the space are valid, and they do not conflict. This

implies that despite the relatively rigid notions of Euclidean space by which we perceive a

church building we are far more flexible in accepting the church as a place of many

simultaneous and even conflicting social settings.The way we communicate with others is therefore influenced both by the physical

location and also the patterns of behaviour that occur in the location; two conditions

which are fundamentally interlinked and dependent on one another. In this manner our actions in space can be considered as situated in that they are guided by a rich andcomplex background of social relations and behaviours. Communications technologies in

urban settings further enable multiple social realities to occur in one place, since they can be understood as overriding the boundaries and definitions of situations supported by

physical settings. Since ‘where’ you are no longer defines ‘who’ you are, new mediaeliminates a traditional dimension of civic legibility (Mitchell 1995, 101). The underlying

dichotomy of public versus private in public space is rendered more fluid by new mobileand wireless technologies, which in turn imply a fundamental transformation in the

norms of public action and conduct. The same physical space may be caught within thedomain of two different social occasions.

Connections

Mobile and wireless media have specialized infrastructures, and as thesetechnologies emerge in the city, they become overlaid with existing urban infrastructures.

The individual’s image of the city, which they use to navigate and orientate themselveswithin urban space, is no longer confined to physical elements and configurations. The

proliferation of wireless internet or WiFi nodes in urban environments is creating a densecommunications infrastructure, which re-draws existing spatial thresholds and territories.





The nodes, which are essentially black box transmitters operating on the frequency of 802.11b standard create a region of access of between forty-five metres indoors and

ninety metres outdoors. Due to the extent of this region, or territory, wireless access tothe node can be available well beyond the physical borders and thresholds that

traditionally delineate the boundary between private and public space. The informationflow ignores the material thresholds of walls and doors and extends beyond traditional

materially bounded notions of space. The nature of the frameworks in which nodes areunderstood by urban citizens can be further investigated through the practical ways in

which they are identified. In order to instantiate a node in a location it must be named or labeled with a tag. Despite the fact that both the hardware and signals from such nodes

have a very distinct spatial extent and position node names rarely any bear relation to thestatic physical location. Instead the names of nodes predominantly reference either the

modem hardware which enables access to the node or the name of the network, both partsof the technology infrastructure Since, in terms of territory, it is convention that space is

claimed by the act of naming it this further emphasizes the extent to which the nodes arenot primarily considered in spatial terms. Indeed the very vagueness of the word node

indicates the loss of a language for naming environmental value (Sennett in Carter et al.1993, 319). The identity of the node is not perceived as delineating spatial territory or

having temporal qualities, whether physical or digital. WiFi nodes are understood morealong the metaphor of a switch, which simply establish and break linkages, and as suchthey equate with access to information flow.

The infrastructure of mobile and communications offer significant issues for theway in which urban space is perceived and constructed. Thus, physical infrastructures

which have traditionally been viewed as the dominant form in the city as a spatialconstruction, are being re-mapped through the ubiquity of communications networks.

This highlights the importance of understanding how physical space can better integratewith the layer of digital nodes and networks. Over a number of years some researchers

have approached this problem by been looking at ways of visualizing these networks;such as the work of Carlo Ratti (Ratti et al 2005) with real-time mobile phone networks

and the Equator Project with the mapping of wifi nodes and GPS availability (Dix et al.2005). These go some way to giving people in physical space an understanding of where

the spatial presence of wireless and mobile networks overlay the space. But on another level these mappings use false metaphors, and in trying to reduce complexity create

instead oversimplified models of how these technologies exist in the physical world.Quite simply these technologies do not occupy space in the same sense that we have

come to perceive metric space. They exist as ethereal flows of information, which change

temporally and are affected by our physical world with the consequence that signalstrength and thus availability can disappear as quickly as it becomes available. Suchcharacteristics cannot be imagined or visualized in the visual terms which we understand

the world around us. In attempting to better integrate these technologies into our physicalworld there will need to be a shift in both frameworks; the physical structure and layout

of the built world will need to be designed around the features of these technologies, andthe technologies themselves will need to be adapted so that their presence in space can be

better utilized.





These technologies reconfigure Euclidean spatial frameworks framed aroundspatial proximity and bounded-ness, in a manner which is fundamentally different from

the PC internet (Ito 2005). Thus, the previously defined aspects of the 'real world' whichcan be exploited as part of a spatial model, need to be informed by the aspects of the

affordances of mobile and wireless technologies, and can be summarised as follows:

Separation Displacement in layered media spaces is not confined to the physical properties of ‘real world’ objects, but also extends to include the specific ranges

of technologies. For instance Bluetooth, enables interaction within a radius of approximately ten metres, whereas WiFi nodes offer access within a range of up to one

hundred meters. As such the definition of interaction in a space of communication flowsis structured around spatial nodes of opportunity.

Bounded-ness Regions are not only defined by spatial extents, but also by

patterns of informational or social access. Consequently, collectively defining boundaries becomes part of the pattern of communication; for example the common practice of

asking for and reporting location at the beginning of a mobile phone call. Boundaries arestill an omni-present characteristic of space, but moving in and out of bounded zones can

occur much like the flicking of a switch, rather than involving some form of graduatedchange.

Presence Technologies create a form of shared background space, not basedon physical presence. Presence becomes more ambiguous, since previous reliance on the

visual to orientate and structure awareness in space is augmented with non-visual presence in technological networked spaces. For instance, a form of co-location becomes

possible, where interaction can occur in represented models of the ‘real world’, whilstsimultaneously being physically present in the real-world. One of the consequences of

this is that actual physical co-presence; or the ‘flesh meet’ (Ito 2005) is elevated to ahigher level of importance.

Linkage The concept of linkage is intensified, and in many ways more

subtle and differentiated levels of connectivity frame interaction. Action in network typestructures is characterised by a whole array of weak and strong links. Networked

infrastructures start to dominate over physical spaces.

Temporality Interactions occur in a ‘real time’, which is de-sequenced and

person centred rather than a global time. Stability and permanence are comprehended as particular qualities of the ‘real world’, and fluidity and change are valued. As such time becomes more malleable and capable of division into non-linear segments.

The nature of mobile and wireless communication is still fairly unfamiliar, and the

quality of moving physically while keeping the networking connection to everything wedo is a realm of then human adventure, on which we know little (Castells, 2004: 87).

Therefore spatializing these communication technologies and reconnecting them to





spatial settings requires new views on the inter-connectedness of location and behavior.

Spatial Presence of Wireless Nodes: A Case Study

In order to better understand how wireless networks can affect spatial settings a

case study was undertaken of an urban space to investigate the nature of the spatial presence of wireless networks. The study was undertaken in a defined one kilometer

square area in South East London called Deptford. The area studied roughly covers aneighbourhood which is home to a number of community based and public arts centres,

including theatres and community centres as well as public amenities such as swimming pools, schools and parks. It also has a vibrant street culture, with a twice-weekly street

market, and has a lively multi-cultural local population. However the main reason thearea was chosen for this study is that Deptford is also home to a community-led public

wireless network mesh; called 'Boundless'. Established during 2004, Boundless aims tosupport community development of free local internet access, inter-linking residential,

business, educational, cultural and digital media communities. In studying of the area of Deptford that hosts the wireless network, this project seeks to address how the perception

and use of public space is affected by the presence of these networks in public space. Thestudy is split into two distinct stages; the first being an investigation of the spatial

configuration of the network of wireless nodes and how this affects the social and spatialcharacteristics of public space. The second stage of the study focuses on a single public

wireless node, and how individuals perceive the spatial presence of this technology in itscorresponding spatial setting.

Locating the Wireless Nodes in Public SpaceThe first stage of the project involved using a series of mapping techniques to

establish the actual location and density of the pattern of wireless nodes. An importantfactor to consider in studying the presence of such networks is the almost complete lack

of any kind of overview mapping or viewable representation of the location andavailability of these networks. Individual wireless access points are advertised locally at

distinct locations, but the network of nodes is nowhere present to be seen as a whole. Asecond consideration is the temporal nature of the technology. Depending on a whole

number of conditions (including weather and network capacity) the signal strength andavailability can vary widely. This is despite the fact that the black box emitting the

wireless signal has not changed in any way. This means that a pattern of nodes detectedon one day may differ from those detected on another day. For this reason the detection

was undertaken on a series of three occasions to validate the data. In the approximately

one kilometer square area considered the detection process was carried out using a

method similar to that known as wardriving2. However in this case the wifi nodes weredetected whilst walking around the area on foot, rather than by driving, so as to ensure all

accessible public space was mapped.The first outcome to note about the study is the large number of wifi nodes

detected. Over five hundred and eighty-nine public and encrypted nodes were found. The

2 Wardriving is the practice of detecting and mapping wireless access points.





nodes were not spread evenly, but tended to show patterns of clustering based on buildingoccupancy and use. In the most densely covered locations, there was a density of up to

one wifi node per square metre (see Fig 1.3).

Fig 1.3 Density of public and encrypted wifi nodes[Insert Fig. 1.4– portrait]

Of this total of one hundred and nineteen nodes were public or open, or approximately

twenty per cent of the total (see Fig 1.4). Thirty-one of the public nodes were those whichwere part of the Boundless wireless network and a further fourteen were sited in

community centres or public amenities such as schools. The remaining seventy-four can be identified as nodes located in private residences which have been either deliberately or

unknowingly left open by their owners. This means that sixty per cent of the open nodesare not part of any organizational framework, and thus their availability can be

considered as conditional on the control of individual persons who may or may not havealtruistic intentions. Ten per cent of the public nodes are hosted by centres or

organisations that already offer public physical space; theatres, arts organisations, visitor centres and even public houses. Importantly these nodes tend to be located in places

where the facilities make it practically possible to access the wifi (such as a warm placeto sit and a power supply). They are also literally integrated into an existing social

structure and physical location, with the associated guarantee of technical dependabilityand a degree of social interaction arising out of link to the relevant organization. For

comparison purposes, the characteristics of the public space for the area studied is

illustrated in Fig 1.5.





Fig. 1. 4 Density of public wifi nodes[Insert Fig. 1.5– portrait]

Fig 1.5 Characteristics of public space in area studied[Insert Fig. 1.5– portrait]

Aside from these community nodes, the remaining public nodes are often located in

private spaces such as houses or offices. The consequence of this is that although the wifiaccess may spill out into open public space such as streets and parks, it is not primarily

intended to be used in these locations. In fact one of the marked characteristics of thelocation of the nodes in this study is that none co-inside with any form of green open

space. The traditional function of green open space as offering a place to spend sparetime and for entertainment is thus never coincidental with the opportunity to access the





wireless internet for leisure or relaxation purposes. Obviously this is not an intentionalquality, but the location of the nodes means that wifi access is often correlated with busy

and functional public spaces.The main street running through the centre of the studied area is home to twelve

(ten per cent) of the public nodes, giving opportunities for the many shops along thestreet to link their commercial activities in physical space with online access. But there is

not one example of crossover between these on and offline worlds either in the streetspace or any other site within the area studies. This highlights just one example of the

predominant paradigm of the wifi coverage in the area studied; that there is almost nomeshing of the use and activities occurring in the urban public space and the

corresponding location of public wireless access points. Aside from a comparativelysmall number of exceptions, the somewhat surprising outcome of this study is that the

two worlds operate in almost independent spatial and social spaces.

Perception of a Single Wireless Node in Public Space The second stage of the study seeks to understand in more detail the nature of

perception of the spatial presence of a single WiFi node. Wireless access are structuredaround nodes which are the point at which a person actually accesses the network, and

are literally devices that have a physical location. Yet in terms of their presence in spacethey may be viewed through an interface which shows the presence of all availablenodes, but are rarely present in the sense that they can be seen with the eye. Most often

they are concealed within the physical structure of the building, or a merely suchanonymous devices in terms of visual appearance that they are not noticed. Yet on order

for us to act ‘sense-ably’ in urban public space it is often useful to be able to literally finda node. So, how do people act in the presence of wireless networks in public space if they

do not base their action on what they can see? The study was conducted in the café spaceof the Albany Theatre, a community centre and theatre located in the heart of the

Deptford area. The café space is indoors and situated close to the entrance to the building,and has an adjacent outdoor courtyard. The wireless network is available throughout the

café space, but actually offers access to the internet in a wider area than that confined tothe physical walls and boundaries of the building, so that it also extends out into the street

space to the front of the building and the courtyard to the rear (see Fig 1.6).





Fig. 1. 6 actual spatial presence of a public wifi node

[Insert Fig. 1.6– portrait]

Over a period of three days the usage of the café public internet was observed, andvisitors who accessed the internet using a laptop where questioned as to how they

perceived the presence of the availability of the wireless internet. Fourteen people whereinterviewed and asked to draw a shape indicating the extent of the wireless internet

availability on a scaled plan drawing of the building. The results (fig 1.7) indicated that people have in general a poor understanding of how the wireless technology is present in

the space.

Fig 1.7 perception of spatial presence of a public wifi node[Insert Fig. 1.7– portrait]

Almost all the participants described availability of wireless access as being

confined within the physical territory of the indoor café space. Only two participantsindicated the actual condition that the wireless access extended to cover an area not

confined to the physical boundaries of the space. For instance one participant reported:

‘well I know you can get access out in the foyer, but there’s nowhere to sit out there so it’s not usable’.





Other participants readily acknowledged that they didn’t know where the wireless signal

reached to and had simply based their perception on the limits of their experience, so thatone person explained that:

‘I know I can get it here because that’s where I always sit, but I don’t know about whether you can get

access over there’

whereas another participant commented:

‘you can maybe get access out in the courtyard, but I’ve never tried’

When asked to show the location of the router on the plan none of the participants

interviewed could estimate its position, apart from one person who was noticed it beingmoved from the ceiling space by the in-house technician.

The interesting outcome of participants response to the study was that they saw thetechnology not in terms of where it could reach to in space and possibilities it offered on

its own terms. Instead they perceived the technology as having presence only where theycould access it, in the sense that it was usable to them. A second aspect of the usage of

the wireless network in the Albany is that the flow of people through the space is slow.Instead of people spending a few minutes spent checking some piece of information

online and then returning to a task in the local area the actual pattern of behaviour isalmost the opposite. According to usage statistics from wireless traffic, ninety percent of

users are regular users making regular and often daily visits. In this way the space is notfrequented by people dipping into the world of digital information before continuing on

their journey, but rather as a work space or home-from-home offering the added benefit

of the social interaction offered in a public space.

Imagining the spaces of the wireless city

(separation) If we consider the way in which we view public space it has a visibleappearance with salient features that structure it; there are landmarks, visually familiar

places, open viewpoints, and closed spaces. These visuo-spatial properties of public spaceenable and frame patterns of behaviour and activity. For example we tend to meet people

at commonly recognizable landmarks; below a clock or on a street corner, and we relax inspaces which often have a physical openness. But as demonstrated in the study of the

perception of the spatial presence of a wireless node, wireless technologies are not visiblestructures in public space. The presence of networks in public space exists in a manner

more similar to our concepts of a social network. Our notion of the social network of friends, relations and acquaintances exists as a highly developed framework in the mind

of an individual, not as a visuo-spatial mental image, but instead as a network of possiblerelations connected through threads of weak and strong ties. Thus we see these

technologies as connection points with opportunities for accessing information. A personis thus perceived as being separated from another only by a switch to a network

connection, not a physical distance in space.(linkage) Public space has at its heart the notion of equal access. This used to refer





to literal physical and social access; an equality between individuals to be present and acta common space. But mobile and wireless technologies reconfigure this concept of access

in the sense that access also becomes access to the technology.(boundedness)In all the dreams of wireless worlds, there still remains a

frustratingly practical issue of needing a power supply to operate the laptop or mobiledevice delivering the wireless information. Additionally most people choosing to access a

wireless service will use a laptop, which is fairly impractical to work on for more than afew minutes when there is nowhere to sit or no table on which to place the laptop itself.

Even despite the large number of unencrypted wireless nodes it is not really possible tomove seamlessly between them. Moving between points of connection still has

boundaries and concentrated centres, with transition spaces between. This is for tworeasons; firstly most available wireless access technology does not allow for seamless

switching between available networks; the user has to take a conscious act to switchnodes. Secondly the physical features of the built and natural world create boundaries for

the wireless signal. The signal will not pass through dense physical objects, such asconcrete, metal or over natural features such as hills. Even the weather can affect the

availability of a signal. In this way technology creates shadows or pockets of bounded‘off limits’ space; gaps in network availability. The boundary of the space is not just the

physical limits of visible space, but limits of access and usability.(presence) Physical line of sight is still often a requirement. In this sense the visual aspectof such technologies still has some relevance. In order to connect to a node the mobile

device itself must be able to ‘see’ the access point. Since these nodes are to all extentsand purposes concealed black boxes, the individual has to have an awareness of where

they need to position themselves in space in order to get a good signal. This is usuallyachieved by referencing the strength of signal bar in the mobile device interface, but if a

user returns to a place many times, they slowly start to develop an awareness of the presence of the node in that space, even if they aren’t able to visually see it. For external

public space this can sometimes be a little easier in that wireless aerials are by necessitylocated on rooftops and are thus often visible against the skyline.

(temporality)As mobile and wireless become ubiquitous in these transitional spaces,those using it still exhibit an often passive engagement with the space itself, but they in

contrast they start to literally spend more time in the space. The purposeful interactionwith a laptop or a long mobile phone conversation give the user a legitimate reason to

remain in a public space. Thus, if we see urban public space not just as a staticconstruction but as a setting enacted by the patterns of behaviour of people moving

within it, then the manner in which people’s everyday practices are affected by their

interaction with wireless technologies in effect transforms urban public space. Many havenoted how the introduction of the mobile phone has changed the mobility patterns of users, so that rather than meeting at landmarks in public locations like plazas or street

corners, youth tended to loosely co-ordinate movements and meetings through constantcommunication by mobile phone (Townsend 2000). These un-tethered networks leading

to a city co-ordinated on the fly in real time (Zook et al 2004). The increasing ubiquity of wireless networks similarly affects how people engage with urban public space.

Increasingly wireless access from high-end mobile devices will start to change patterns of





use, as these require less attention to the physical nature of the device, and typicallyintended to be accessed for shorter periods. But even still the moment when an individual

is required to pay attention to the device is a moment when their visual attention isconcentrated on the device itself, and in most cases the individual will also voluntarily or

involuntarily physically stop moving. In busy public spaces, such as a public street inDeptford, it is not practical to act in this manner. This means that individuals first seek

out a quiet place, where they are not mentally or visually distracted and then access awireless network. Interacting with wireless networks in public space may simply have the

effect of literally slowing down the normal pattern of movements through the spaces, as people’s attention is increasingly taken up by acting and reacting to flows of information.

Summary

Communication technologies shape our experience of urban public space. Startingwith the telephone we have learned to communicate at a distance, and to adapt to the

corresponding changes in the way we inhabit and imagine physical space. With theemergence of mobile and wireless technologies which are becoming ubiquitous in public

space we are still limited by our essentially metric perception of spatial settings. Thecomplex and rich nature of social interaction in public space is transformed when these

interactions are less defined by physical boundaries and frameworks. Spatial conceptssuch as separation, bounded-ness, linkage, presence and temporality are reconfigured by

mobile and wireless technologies so that although the physical setting still influences our actions, many aspects of social connectedness are further elaborated and accentuated. Inthe case studies discussed the effect of wireless networks on how public space is

inhabited and perceived. They identified that the non-visual presence of such networksmean that people tend not to see such technologies in spatial terms. In terms of the way

the technologies are enacted in public space, this results in patterns of behaviour where people slow down their movement through the space and generally. All of these social

and practical aspects of acting wirelessly tend to contrast against the idealised image of the person on the move, flicking between sets of information whilst walking through the

public spaces of the city. In a sense what we have is a discord between the physical andsocial possibilities offered by wireless technologies and the reality of the physical and

social world. The two domains are operating on different structures, layered one on top of another but in many instances not working as a unified domain. In order to resolve these

disparities it will be necessary to rethink some of the ways we act, occupy and alsoconstruct our physical world.

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