Place-based Technologies Research Articles

Bringing the Future to Geomedia Studies: Geomedia as Sociotechnical Regime and Imaginary

Geomedia, representing an epochal shift in spatial mediations and spatialized media, changes daily life. This future-directed thematic issue advocates for contextualized understandings of geomedia that transcend contemporary hegemonic representations of technology. It recognizes the transformative powers of geomediatization processes and asks what “geomedia futures” such processes might bring about. Bridging critical geomedia studies and critical future studies, it challenges dominant narratives about tomorrow’s technological society and promotes the exploration of diverse, equitable, and sustainable futures with and under geomedia. Through numerous methodological approaches, the collected articles examine the role of geomedia in contexts such as urban planning, tourism, surveillance, governance, and policy. The thematic issue emphasizes the importance of envisioning alternative futures that resist technological rationalization and unethical exploitation of geospatial data, supporting more inclusive and human-centered mediatized places. This work contributes to ongoing debates in geomedia studies, highlighting the need for critical and interdisciplinary approaches to understand and shape our technological future.

Ontological Upgrade

This paper uses ‘deep time’, as an alternative ontology to crisis management to argue for the application of a broad decolonial approach in lieu of contemporary green design practices. Methodologically, this paper substantiates it claims by utilising conventional academic ‘knowledge’ production, as represented in literature, references, and case studies, but also supports the expansion of knowledge through a deeper exploration of place, pattern, and time demonstrated by intermingling deep time principles with Indigenous spatial practices. Fearing that urban life will descend into obsolescence and irrelevance if no such knowledge systems are taken up, this paper proposes an alternative trajectory as a preventive measure, which has all been exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic. By exploring alternative Indigenous design ontologies, specifically in Oceania, alongside deep adaptation and deep time, this paper’s authors intend to provide an important basis for research and teaching that reinvigorates connections to Indigenous epistemologies and knowledge systems. This paper proposes that by taking up notions of deep adaptation and Indigenous epistemologies as critiques of Western notions of time, property, etc. architecture, design and planning might re-situate ideas, ranging from stewardship to maintenance, within time and placebased technologies outside of the discourse of crisis.

Digital media innovations through participatory action research: Interventions for digital place-based experiences

Abstract This article presents an action-research study investigating a spatially sensitive innovation process of place-based experiences in a rural area of Sweden. Lately, there have been a growing number of initiatives focused on developing location-aware mobile media – geomedia technologies – to offer place-based digital experiences within tourism. Drawing on contemporary critical studies on geomedia technologies, we stress the importance of reflecting upon the implications of place-based technologies to minimise both the negative impacts on a place and the neglect of local perspectives. We conducted action-research interventions to unpack the complexity of developing place-based mediated experiences. The study makes an illustrative case of how interventions lead to more nuanced development processes of geomedia technologies while simultaneously fostering creativity. We argue that as action research allows researchers to intervene in media innovations, it identifies models for more nuanced place-based development processes, including local spatial and sociocultural perspectives.

Augmenting Design Education for Sustainability through Field Exploration: An Experience of Learning from DIY Practices in a Rural Community

This article (visual essay) provides a glimpse of a field trip ventured by design students as part of a larger study of developing a localised version of design education for sustainability, focusing on the wants and needs of non-urban populations in vast Russian hinterlands. The central goal is to introduce would-be designers to the concepts of locally appropriate technology and sustainable/circular living by real-life examples and, eventually, teach them to recognise the sustainable potential of place-based technologies and practices of their making, using and maintaining. The primary data came from the trip to Pozhva, a village in Permskiy Krai, Russia, that gained popularity among DIY activists and users of off-road vehicles in Russia in the early 2000s because of its unique, community-centred manufacture of lightweight ATVs on low-pressure tires, nicknamed “jeeps”. This article presents the students’ journey in a comic strip portraying a composite character of technologies and their user-designers as experts in local conditions and (subconsciously) agents of circularity. The article closes with a discussion on the expedition’s discoveries and learning outcomes, correlating them with broader implications for design education.

Manufacturing a natural advantage: capturing place-based technology rents in the genetically modified corn seed industry

Despite the assumption that firms in high-tech sectors rely on technology to render nature obsolete, this article shows that technology has made nature and place paramount to the genetically modified (GM) corn seed industry. The present work focuses on research and development (R&D) stations for the top five firms, which control nearly 90% of the U.S. corn market. The main factors that influence firms’ selection of these sites and the role these hubs play in the productive process are identified. Drawing on ethnographic and archival data in the corn seed industry’s three main R&D hubs, Chile, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii, the present study shows that competitiveness relies not only on biotechnology, but also on the place-based mechanisms that make that technology profitable. By locating R&D sites in particular natural and regulatory environments, firms are able to harness resource co-rents and place-based relational subrents. These enable firms to extract technology rents through intellectual property rights. This has implications not only for industry competitiveness, but also for power relations between firms, the state, and communities. Because firms draw profits by maximizing the climates and regulatory contexts in these places, they also become place-bound. This may be used by communities and local governments as a negotiating tool for better environmental and labor arrangements.