Here, I Used to Be

Abstract

This article examines how location-based mobile media technologies are affecting the ways individuals experience the relationship between memory and place. We argue that location-based mobile applications that allow people to check in to places or record their routes represent new practices of place-based digital memory. Many individuals are using mobile media to mobilize place and memory together to create new forms of digital network memory from which they may begin to remember their pasts and to write their histories—a kind of rhetorical and poetic memory making. To help illuminate these practices, we analyze applications such as Foursquare and My Tracks and draw on research in mobilities studies, new media studies, and memory studies to introduce and advance concepts such as personal digital archiving and digital network memory. These practices of place-based digital memory have consequences for understanding the interrelationships between mobility, place, memory, and mobile media.

Smartphones and Cognition: A Review of Research Exploring the Links between Mobile Technology Habits and Cognitive Functioning

“…Though it may seem as if constant access to a limitless database of knowledge should improve cognition, much has been written about how the rapidly changing landscape of technology is negatively affecting how we remember our own lives, the places we have been, and those with whom we have interacted (e.g., Kuhn, 2010; Humphreys and Liao, 2011; Pentzold and Sommer, 2011; Frith and Kalin, 2015; Özkul and Humphreys, 2015). However, as with attentional impact, the body of empirical evidence demonstrating tangible effects of mobile media devices on memory and knowledge is limited.…”

Restricted Spatiality and the Inflation of Digital Space, an Urban Perspective

“…Although the inflation of digital space is clear, the analysis of Twitter content does not reveal any transference of the spatial content of the city to the virtual space. Although the digital revolution has transformed the way people experience urban space through those mediums, the embodied spatial dimension of those experiences cannot be easily replaced with digital mediums (Frith & Kalin, 2016). As the state of being in the ontological process of the urban web moves towards being on the web, new urban practice becomes a combination of spatial and virtual interactions that are less affected by socio-cultural and geographical bonds.…”

New Visualities of Space and Place: Mapping Theories, Concepts and Methodology of Visual Communication Research on Locative Media and Geomedia

“…Locative media enable users to assign meaning to places (Frith & Kalin, 2016) and to create place attachment (Schwartz, 2015) by ' checking in' and appending geotagged information to a location which other people in turn can access with their devices while at the location: 'No matter how mobile our everyday lives have become, we continue to value places, remember what they mean to us, identify ourselves with them, and communicate our identities through them' (Özkul, 2015, 112). Providing location information that can be incorporated to artefacts that users create and share about their place experiences changes the value and meaning of places.…”

“…This enhances the awareness of multiple meanings of place because users are able to explore aspects of a city that are not physically visible (Özkul, 2015). Locationbased mobile practices thereby serve to facilitate identity construction, memory making and the creation of place attachment (Frith & Kalin, 2016;Schwartz, 2015), whereby images are of particular importance (Hand, 2016;Pink, 2011). In research terms this involves tackling the plural fragmented perceptions of space shaped by subjective experiences and the diversity of visual narrations from 'producers'.…”

“…Consequently, the analysis of geotagged photos from platforms such as Instagram or Facebook facilitates the understanding of 'new performances of self and re-inscriptions of the body in place and space ' (2015, 1656). Images taken on the move and shared on LBS or photo platforms serve as identity construction and for the creation of place attachment and memory making (Frith & Kalin, 2016;Hand, 2016;Özkul, 2015;Pink, 2011). The operators of these photo-sharing platforms also recognise this aspect: Instagram founder Kevin Systrom said at the launching of the feature 'Photo Map', '[w]e don't want Instagram only to be about "now", (…) [i]nstead we want Instagram to be a visual collection of your memories -something beautiful and nostalgic' (Bonnington, 2012).…”