Dr. Jordan Frith, UNT Assistant Professor of Technical Communication, delivers a talk entitled “The Physicality of Digital Media” where he presents the case that the way we historically have talked about the internet limits our ability to fully grasp that interactions via digital media are very real and there’s no real life vs. virtual life—it’s all real. His talk explores the need to pay increased attention to how digital information has shaped and will continue to shape our experience of physical space, especially with the growth of the Internet of Things.

Jordan Frith is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Texas. His research focuses on the intersection of locative and social media, and he is particularly interested in the social impacts of smartphones. He has published in a variety of journals, including Mobilities, Technical Communication Quarterly, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Technical Communication and Mobile Media and Communication. He is co-author with Adriana de Souza e Silva of the book Mobile Interfaces in Public Spaces (Routledge, 2012), and his latest book, Smartphones as Locative Media (Blackwell-Wiley) published in 2015. Finally, his research is interdisciplinary, melding human geography, rhetoric, and media studies, and he has recently begun researching the materiality of the coming “Internet of Things.”

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx