The Technological-Self?Professor Michael Leyshon

University of ExeterUK

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Who am I?• Social Geographer • Lives of Young People

– Performativity: the different lived experiences of young people and how young people form a sense of identity• Hangout• Gender• Leisure• Emotional connections to place

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Who am I?Memory and Identity 1. Young people and communities?

– Future (social-egalitarian perspective)– In need of control (moral panics)

• Fear for (social-liberal)• Fear of (neo-libertarian)

2. Changes to the economy– Post-productionist places (non-agri based economy)– Restructuring (gentrification)– Declining youth populations (leavers)

3. Technology and Self– Remaking and reproducing the self– Power relationships (regulation)

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Research

Mobile/Cell phones and youthful exploration:Stimulus or inhibitor?

Research question: Do mobile phones increase or decrease (or neither) young people’s exploratory behavio(u)r in space?

1. Does having a cell phone encourage young people to venture into new places because they know they have that “lifeline” to family/friends?

2. Or does having a cell phone mean you can always communicate with family/friends so less incentive to explore?

3. Does having a cell phone with a GPS mean you can never get “lost” so encourage exploration?

4. Or does having a cell phone with a GPS mean that Mom/Dad can always know where you are (surveillance!) so less incentive to explore “forbidden” places/times.

Decline in exploration over four generations has reduced knowledge of nature…and spatial knowledge?Source: MailOnlineReport by Natural England and RSPB

Research shows that children who walk to school have better spatial knowledge than those who go by car or bus.“Influential Factors on Children’s Spatial Knowledge and mobility in Home-School Travel: A Case study in the City of Tehran” Ehsan Ahmadi and Gen TanguchiJournal of Asian Architecture and BuildingEngineersing.

Considerable evidence to indicate that walking reduces incidence of obesity in children.

Mobile phone technology is in flux / evolutionary system - particularly GPS and locator services.• Wayfinding• Health and wellbeing• Knowing our place

‘Apps for Paranoid Parents’In Feb 09, Google launched Google Latitude – tracking software utilizing cell towers to triangulate global position. Now tracking is performed through router triangulation.

This facilitated numerous copies:FamfinderLife360Find My KidsFBI Child IDiEmergency ICE Family ProBaby Monitor Sex Offenders Search

WHRHS/UoE Student Research

• Students given broad topic of “mobile technology and the geography of young people”

• Research teams; each designed and implemented their own research project

• E.g.– Whether mobile technologies encourage the exploration

of unfamiliar places (terra incognita)

Research Hypotheses

1. Students will print out map/directions from the Internet before travelling to unknown places

2. Students are more willing to travel to terra incognita if they have a mobile phone

3. Students get to know a place less well when they use a GPS

1. Exploration on foot vs. car mobility (most of the seniors had drivers licenses).

2. Use of “old fashioned” print maps vs. GPS or print out of Google maps.

3. Use of sun to orient oneself vs. GPS.4. Use of “Street view” to locate oneself.

Students rely on GPS systems both on phoneand in car to navigate.

John: My iPhone pretty much tells me where everything is which takes the edgeout of places.

Jen: I hate it when I can’t get a signal

Themes

• The WH students survey of 200 peers found that they were more willing to travel to lesser known places (e.g. Newark or New York) with a cell phone than without.

• While 158 of 200 students surveyed said they felt comfortable in their home town without a cell phone, only 35 felt comfortable in Newark, while 59 would be ok in New York City.

• Ben: It’s about security … you know when you’ve got a signal you can always call someone.

Results

• The students used their cell phones frequently, though more for texting than talking.

• They report texting frequently with their peers through the day. Interestingly, most students report frequent cell phone contact with their parents. The majority of students contact their parents at least 1-3 times daily during school hours.

• There appears to be a heavy reliance on being readily in contact with parents. This might have repercussions on students establishing an independent identity (e.g., students will often call their parents to ask for advice in decision-making that they might be otherwise forced to do on their own).

Amanda: My Mum calls me a couple of times a day to talk about stuff..Greg: ..my mum knows not to call me (laughter)Amanda: No it’s not like that, we’ve always been close and we like talking.. You

know about stuff like shopping..

Results

• Person-person contact highly valued. Mobile technologies can be an important organizing tool, but they can’t replace face-to-face interaction.

• Cell phones are used for networking and locating but rarely verbal communication. Within social networks (approx 20-30 people) certain individuals played crucial roles as ‘master-weavers’.

Emma: I usually send out 2000 plus texts a month (laughs).. Charlie: yeah if you want to arrange something you tell Fran and

she tells everyone else.James: Wow, how much does that cost?Emma: I have an unlimited text package.

Results

Summary of Findings

• Students generally do not use the Internet to prepare before ‘going-out’, rather they rely more on “on the fly” technologies– GPS, Street View on cell phone

• Students are more comfortable exploring unfamiliar places with mobile technology– Use as a “lifeline”– Many even use GPS in hometown

• Relying on a GPS, students travel with a “blank mind” and do not use all their senses to get to know a place– Little use of (and memory for) landscape features

Neuroscientist Ellard says our‘mental maps’ are becoming sparser over the course of human evolution and our way finding talents are inferior to other species.Another neuroscientist, Hugo Spiers says “we might as a culture lose the skill of mapping our environment, relying on the Web to help us navigate” as our hippocampus (where we store mental maps) shrinks.

Phone as actant in gatherings.

Concluding Remarks

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New Research Project: The Technological Self and Belonging

Outline• This project will explore the role of new visual cultures

and how young people use technological innovation to record their encounters with self, people and places.• Through a combination of self-portraiture (the selfie) and

narrative discourse (the blipvert that accompanies selfies) young people are defining their sense of space and belonging by emplacing themselves in the world.

• The selfie is one of the fastest growing photographic trends of the past decade and is a prominent form of self-expression on increasingly visually focused online social networks.

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This research project will expand on these issues by considering how place factors into the production of the selfie and how selfies are used by young people to narrate their lives.

TasksIn teams:• Ask a research question / hypothesis to test• Take selfies• Record the process of producing a selfie• Document the process• How/why/where?

• Make a journal

New Research Project: The Technological Self and Belonging