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

by Heidi Rae Cooley

Overview

Winner of the 2015 Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Finding Augusta breaks new ground, revising how media studies interpret the relationship between our bodies and technology. This is a challenging exploration of how, for both good and ill, the sudden ubiquity of mobile devices, GPS systems, haptic technologies, and other forms of media alter individuals’ experience of their bodies and shape the social collective. The author succeeds in problematizing the most salient fact of contemporary mobile media technologies, namely, that they have become, like highways and plumbing, an infrastructure that regulates habit. Audacious in its originality, Finding Augusta will be of great interest to art and media scholars alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611685237
Publisher:	Dartmouth College Press
Publication date:	03/04/2014
Series:	Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	175
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

HEIDI RAE COOLEY is an assistant professor in the Department of Art at the University of South Carolina.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments • Keyword “Augusta” • Introduction – Bodies, Mobilities, Technologies • CHAPTER ONE – Making Tracks Augusta App Would Like to Use Your Location • CHAPTER TWO – In Hand and On the Go Design, Neuroscience, and Habits of Perception Handheld • CHAPTER THREE ª “Location, Location, Location” Placing Persons, Accessing Information, and Expressing Self • CHAPTER FOUR – Secured Mobilities How to Think about Populations • Conclusion An “Aesthetics of Existence,” or Habit-ing Differently • “Augusta” Revisited • Notes • Bibliography • Index

What People are Saying About This

Steve Anderson

“A unique contribution to critical mobilities research through its integration of theoretical models from media studies, neurophysiology, and semiotics. The book pursues a bold, practical aspiration to change everyday habits with regard to mobile tracking and thereby resist the ability of governments to surveil and control their populations.”

Nanna Verhoeff

“Cooley imaginatively examines the contemporary tension between mobility and governance, tracing an archival analog home movie that, in its time, already played with navigation as we now know it. Studying practices of finding and tracking in the cultural present, and the way governance deals with those habits, she examines exciting alternatives to the obsession with surveillance.”

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

“A prescient, well-written and convincing interrogation of mobility as the defining problem of our current era. It will change the way we study new media by moving us away from questions of surveillance to those of tracking, from autobiography to autography, from images as content to images as a series of patterns and rhythms, from confession to sharing. Absolutely brilliant.”

Editorial Reviews

A unique contribution to critical mobilities research through its integration of theoretical models from media studies, neurophysiology, and semiotics. The book pursues a bold, practical aspiration to change everyday habits with regard to mobile tracking and thereby resist the ability of governments to surveil and control their populations.” —Steve Anderson, associate professor of Media Arts + Practice, USC School of Cinematic Arts

“Cooley’s book raises critical questions for future research and contemporary debates regarding surveillance, privacy, and civil liberties. . . . The greatest strengths of Cooley’s work include her unique example of digital humanities scholarship and critical readings of the political stakes of new media technologies.”—H-Net/H-War

“A prescient, well-written and convincing interrogation of mobility as the defining problem of our current era. It will change the way we study new media by moving us away from questions of surveillance to those of tracking, from autobiography to autography, from images as content to images as a series of patterns and rhythms, from confession to sharing. Absolutely brilliant.”—Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, author of Programmed Visions: Software and Memory

“Cooley imaginatively examines the contemporary tension between mobility and governance, tracing an archival analog home movie that, in its time, already played with navigation as we now know it. Studying practices of finding and tracking in the cultural present, and the way governance deals with those habits, she examines exciting alternatives to the obsession with surveillance.”—Nanna Verhoeff, author of Mobile Screens: The Visual Regime of Navigation

From the Publisher