Mobilités surveillées : rôles et responsabilités des développeurs d’applications smartphone

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the develop­ment and impacts of location-aware applica­tions for smartphones. We suggest that such applications not only offer novel resources in the process of mobility, but also imply a certain number of risks for their users. Such “services” raise a series of issues in terms of privacy protection and social sor­ting by software, most notably. This paper approaches these issues from a viewpoint centered on one particular player in the production of location-aware software : the developers of mobile applications for smart-phones. Based on a series of semi-structu­red interviews with software developers, the paper explores how these “experts” un­derstand their own role and responsibilities with regard to the risks implied by their ap­plications. The paper highlights the central “authority” of these players in managing and mediating everyday socio-spatial rela­tions and practices of mobility. More speci­fically, the authority of software designers is anchored in their technical expertise, which offers great potential to act on the functions, risks and regulation of their applications.However, our results also reiterate the com­plex interactions linking these software developers to various other sources of au­thority, thus giving rise to complex actor­networks underpinning the production of mobile applications.

Keywords

• smartphone
• location-aware­ness
• privacy
• software-sorting
• authority