Abstract
Abstract. Due to their technical capabilities and use-cases, LBS can impose autonomy constraints on individuals, both through direct interaction and via indirect means. This essay outlines four main interaction characteristics that constitute LBS as a vector of influence and contextualizes them by mapping them onto a pragmatic framework of autonomy.
Highlights
Humans are increasingly interacting with algorithmic agents belonging to the class of context-aware services; this includes interaction with processes that can be identified as pertaining to location-based-services (LBS)
The final part of this essay will shortly elaborate on these aspects as they pertain to potential autonomy constraints
Inhibition with respect to certain actions, e.g. using a certain LBS device in a certain way in a certain context, to avoid embarrassing or incriminating data to be collected, may steer individuals’ decision making. This may lead to the individual avoid using the LBS device in certain locations. If this is inconvenient, e.g. mobile phones that are used for a variety of reasons incur convenience costs when turned off or left behind, or impossible, e.g. LBS devices that are permanently installed into vehicles that the individual must use, the individual may choose to alter their behavior in order to avoid the undesired data collection by the LBS device, creating intrinsic and/or relational-societal/mental autonomy constraints
Summary
Humans are increasingly interacting with algorithmic agents belonging to the class of context-aware services; this includes interaction with processes that can be identified as pertaining to location-based-services (LBS). These interactions are not necessarily autonomy-neutral, i.e. as a result of such interaction, the affected individual may experience constraints to their capability of selfdetermination with respect to some aspects of their life for a certain period of time. Highly effective advertising feeding on location data may introduce, i.e. insert, a want to consume a certain good in an individual This want, a mental state by itself, may be in conflict with other (competing) wants to consume other (competing goods) or the want to not consume any goods, with this conflict already diminishing the individual’s autonomy. In this sense it may be useful to differentiate between core LBS devices that can determine their own geospatial location and other LBS devices that cannot, but are still able to provide LBS
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