The entire concept of space, as perceived in a geometric sense, is completely altered to the point of being moot with locative media and other forms of internet communication. Largely because you can contact anyone else in the world who has an internet connection, community becomes less about the people who are physically around us and more about the people with whom we choose to associate. Also, distance is not much of an issue because someone can immediately go from Reading, Pennsylvania to Chonhyizhen in China within a matter of second with locative tools such as Google Earth. Rather, the sense of place is more about the visual characteristics than anything else in most cases, and as a result a lot of the character of the location is lost (even the visuals are limited by the edges of the image.) Though locative media can help you get to know a place better from a visual standpoint, and to a certain extent, a spatial standpoint, there really is no substitute for being there and simply experiencing the place. On the other hand, locative media works well as a tool for augmenting information in relation to spatial characteristics, or even in creating new fictional locations.
-Andrew Valentino
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