IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2014 - 76

ii) navigation of places in mapping
[29]. Maps are a representational
form offering a graphical representation of territory, and GPS presents
all space as coordinate reducing territory to data to be used and circulated. LBSN reveal the location of
the user in relation to the location
of other users of the application, in
relation to the previous comments
and impressions of venues from
other users and in relation to other
places in the database. This kind
of revealing challenges Radloff's
[30] critique that "the representational dimension ... dissolves the
site into the uniformity of the planetary dimension," with the planetary
dimension referring to the understanding of territory through scientific means. The location revealed
through the computational device
and the databases of places locate
the user in relation to other things
and entities in the world. The user
is located in relation to spots created
by other users (or not created at all
as may be the case).

Reading the Code
An analysis of the structure of the
coding of place in LBSN can help
understanding of how the device
creates this new representational
framework for the user. The user of
LBSN understands places as places
through the execution of code that
structures information about place.
The underlying computational processes combined with the pressing
call to the user to interact (from
the user interface), places the user
within the context of the identified
"gathered" code/space while calling them into the "place" or interface of the mobile device. Dodge
and Kitchin argue [31] that the production of space is a transduction -
performativity is one component,
as is the presence of objects and
non-humans (code).
This is a useful way to think
about place too as interactions with
technology reveal aspects of the
technology (while other aspects
remain withdrawn) and reveal
76

the world in a particular manner
according to the comportment of
the user to that technology. Berry
[32] uses the term "computational
image" to describe the cultural
technique used to select, store, process, and produce the data for the
process of computation from the
world, and which is then presented
back to the user. This computational image then takes as subject
matter manifest entities that it can
transform through calculations and
processing interventions [32]. This
process must necessarily involve a
translation from the physical to the
computational, and it is through the
code of the LBSN that this translation is achieved.
This analysis therefore positions code as the level of computation that allows for a surfacing or
making visible of place through a
gathering of social and personal
information that allows for a locating of oneself that can be argued
as deep. For the purposes of this
discussion, a functional account of
computation is used to describe the
computation of the mobile computational device. Fresco [33] summarizes the functional view (see
[33]-[34]) as the claim that a computational device has components,
which have functions and are organized in a certain way. Therefore
its functioning state is how computation is realized [35]. Computation
is the running of code and therefore
the operations of the device and
following Dodge and Kitchin [36],
this creates not just code/space but
also code/place. This code/place
is the location that is revealed
through the use of LBSN. It is the
representation that comes from the
interaction of user activity, code
functioning, and the physical location itself in an event that reveals
the location as a meaningful place
for the user, through the provision
of information and structuring of
that location through categorization and rating by other users.
Two examples of Foursquare
code (in JavaScript, taken from the

Foursquare developer API portal,
2012) can illustrate how the code
of the LBSN gathers the elements
identified into a revealing of place.
To analyze how code achieves this,
this paper utilizes a critical discourse
analysis [37]. Discourse analysis
itself is a non-homogeneous technique, and lacks a uniform method.
The non-uniformity of the method
allows for some creativity in the
application of the method, in this
case in a reading of computational
code. The aspect of discourse in
discourse analysis is the emphasis
on textual analysis [38], but this
textual analysis avoids a structuralist or formalist approach to the language being analyzed, and instead
takes a post-structuralist approach
to language. Here, the code is not to
be analyzed in the context of what
lexical choices are made (or the frequency of lexical choices, as in a
content analysis). The focus of the
analysis is to draw out the meaningful and relevant language choices
that are encoded in the database of
places with regards to how this language aids a deep understanding
of place for users. While the aim
of a critical discourse analysis is to
"explain the relationship between
language, ideology and power by
analyzing discourse in its material
form" [39], here it is used to explain
the relationship between the encoding of location and the understanding of location that emerges from
the representation made by that
code. While such a close reading
is open to criticisms of subjectivity, non-empirical rigor, and a lack
of a systematic approach to texts
[40], the approach is effective in this
instance as it allows for a reinterpretation of the contents of the code as
a social gazetteer or series of gazetteers that stand in comparison to traditional gazetteers on paper maps or
the pure coordinates of GPS.
The first example is a simple
check-in to a location on Foursquare - see Fig. 1.
The code of the application illustrates how this functional computation

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