In this updated second edition, Jason Farman offers a groundbreaking look at how location-aware mobile technologies are radically shifting our sense of identity, community, and place-making practices.

Mobile Interface Theory is a foundational book in mobile media studies, with the first edition winning the Book of the Year Award from the Association of Internet Researchers. It explores a range of mobile media practices from interface design to maps, AR/VR, mobile games, performances that use mobile devices, and mobile storytelling projects. Throughout, Farman provides readers with a rich theoretical framework to understand the ever-transforming landscape of mobile media and how they shape our bodily practices in the spaces we move through. This fully updated second edition features updated examples throughout, reflecting the shifts in mobile technology.

This is the ideal text for those studying mobile media, social media, digital media, and mobile storytelling.

Jason Farman is Director of the Design Cultures & Creativity Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is Professor in the Department of American Studies and a faculty member with the Human-Computer Interaction Lab. He is also Faculty Associate with Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. His books include Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World, Foundations of Mobile Media Studies: Essential Texts on the Formation of a Field, The Mobile Story: Narrative Practices with Locative Technologies, and Mobile Interface Theory: Embodied Space and Locative Media. His work has appeared or been cited in the Atlantic, Atlas Obscura, Real Life, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the BBC, NPR, ABC News, the Associated Press, the Christian Science Monitor, the Baltimore Sun, and the Denver Post, among others.

List of Figures

Preface

Introduction: The Pathways of Locative Media

1. Embodiment and the Mobile Interface

2. Mobile Representations of Space

3. Locative Interfaces and Social Media

4. The Ethics of Immersion in Locative Games

5. Performances of Asynchronous Time

6. Site-Specific Storytelling and Reading Interfaces

Conclusion: Movement/Progress/Obsolescence: On the Politics of Mobility