Finding Augusta: Habits of Mobility and Governance in the Digital Era

1 | Making Tracks: Augusta App Would Like to Use Your Location

Kansas Chapter one Making Tracks Augusta App Would Like to Use Your Location Quick Response (QR) codes, like the one here, address a need for increased data storage and take advantage of the fact that many of us have mobile networked devices ready at hand. Invented in Japan in 1994 for the purposes of tracking vehicles during automobile manufacturing, the QR code may carry numeric, alphanumeric, and binary information and accommodates special characters, such as Japanese kanji.1 This technology dramatically extends the information-carrying capacity of conventional barcodes, which are limited to twenty digits. QR codes have a data capacity hundreds of times greater because they store information in both vertical and horizontal directions. Moreover, the “position detection patterns” defining three of the four corners of the symbol allow them to be “read” in any orientation. In addition to displaying information, QR codes can be configured to connect to wireless networks and to open web pages. While barcodes could perform these functions in theory, in practice they lack the storage capacity to facilitate website access. QR codes belong to a large family of relatively recent technologies designed to increase dramatically the speed, accuracy, availability , and sophistication of object-to-information matching. These 2 Finding Augusta technologies include information-retrieval (IR) models, such as latent semantic indexing (LSI). As I will explain in the next section , LSI deploys a concept-based approach to managing “objects” (textual, audio, etc.) and returning results to a search query. Singular value decomposition (SVD) is one of the techniques for accomplishing this task of identifying associations and patterns among sets of objects.2 Along with technologies like GPS that locate individual persons, sourcing and parsing techniques make management of persons, places, information, and things a mathematical problem. They intensify management techniques identified by Michel Foucault—theorist of the biopolitical milieu—and Henri Lefebvre—theorist of the social space of the urban revolution—as directed toward ensuring a population’s complicity (Foucault) and complacency (Lefebvre) with governance. The QR codes that populate this book provide entry points to a virtual tour of the book’s argument. Scanning the QR code that heads this section directs readers to www.findaugusta.com, which invites them to download the book’s digital supplement Augusta App (from Apple’s App Store).3 Once downloaded, an initial splash screen appears that reads, “Register.”4 Accepting the invitation and registering will initialize Augusta App’s four distinct but articulated functionalities: Augusta Map, Augusta Feed, Augusta Ledger, and Augusta Photobox. Thereafter, the app returns the following statement to the newly subscribed participant’s device: “Augusta App would like to use your location.” Selecting “No” results in a significantly diminished experience of Augusta App’s functionality . But upon selecting “Yes,” three things happen: (1) Augusta Feed pings users periodically with updates, announcements, selected excerpts, and so forth; (2) the application’s tracking function tracks users’ locations, which is subsequently mapped against Scott Nixon’s Augustas and in relation to the broader Augusta App community ;5 and (3) Augusta App presents participants with a visual interface that features the image of a magnifying loupe at center 3 Making Tracks screen, which allows them to access data regarding others’ and their engagements with the book (via QR codes in the text) and the app. In combination, these dimensions provide users with an experience that proposes to illuminate the book’s central claim: because handheld networked technologies create habits that regulate populations , those habits may be revised by communities of participants who are themselves counted as members of a population.6 A magnifying loupe organizes the Augusta App interface, allowing a participant to navigate fields of interaction and review.7 The “lens” of the loupe offers two kinds of interaction depending on whether it is “transparent” or opaque. In transparent mode, the loupe opens onto the device’s camera view. In this mode, one can scan QR codes dispersed throughout the book, as well as take images for posting to Augusta Feed—which is the app’s most interactive feature.8 The opaque mode allows one to explore Augusta App–related content. By rotating the loupe, one cycles through the four channels that define varying degrees of interactivity. Augusta Map makes tracking obvious by visualizing the heuristic of the Traveling Salesman Problem. Requiring no active input from the participant, it simply harvests participants’ location coordinates, if they allow their GPS-enabled device to transmit them...