ABSTRACT
Location-aware mobile technologies produce different forms of control. Parents give their children “chaperone” phones equipped with GPS to control where they might go. Parole officers remotely control parolees’ mobility patterns to restrict the places they can visit (Shklovski et al. 2009; Troshynski, Lee, and Dourish 2008). People use their GPS-phone mapping capabilities to feel familiar with their surrounding environment, leading to the belief they are able to “control” the chaos of urban spaces. Other location-aware applications, such as location-based mobile games (LBMGs) 1 , allow players to “filter” their environment by selecting the people and things they want to see. By simultaneously helping users control their interactions with other people and with their surrounding environment while also enabling new ways for individuals to be controlled, location-aware technologies have become interfaces 2 to public spaces. 3
