Copyright by Brendan Christopher Gaughen 2016 The Dissertation Committee for Brendan Christopher Gaughen certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Practices of Place: Ordinary Mobilities and Everyday Technology Committee: Jeffrey Meikle, Supervisor Steven Hoelscher Paul Adams Sharon Strover Craig Campbell Practices of Place: Ordinary Mobilities and Everyday Technology by Brendan Christopher Gaughen, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2016 Acknowledgements It takes a village to write a dissertation. The first words of acknowledgement and gratitude must go to members of the dissertation committee for their feedback, critique, and guidance: Paul Adams, Craig Campbell, Steven Hoelscher, and Sharon Strover, and especially Jeff Meikle for serving as committee chair. Conducting research took me places I never expected to go. Thank you to the staff at the Appalachian Trail Museum and the Lincoln Highway Museum. Thanks to Reid Williamson of the Extra Miler Club. Thanks to Ron Woods for showing me around the Postmark Museum in Bellevue, Ohio. Finally, a special thanks goes to Jodi Kearns at the Center for the History of Psychology at the University of Akron for making my visit to the archive exponentially more productive than I had anticipated. Thank you fellow graduate students and residents of the island of misfit toys, the Department of American Studies at the University of Texas: Carrie Andersen, Gavin Benke, Andrew Busch, Christine Capetola, Jose Centeno-Melendez, John Cline, Eric Covey, Dave Croke, Andrew Gansky, Irene Garza, Anne Gessler, Andi Gustavson, Andrew Jones, David Juarez, Julie Kantor, Jenny Kelly, Katie Feo Kelly, Kerry Knerr, Carly Kocurek, Stephanie Kolberg, Josh Kopin, Jake Maguire, Jason Mellard, Robert Oxford, Caroline Pinkston, Susan Quesal, Emily Roehl, Kirsten Ronald, Niko Tonks, Elissa Underwood, Jeannette Vaught, Eddie Whitewolf, Tracy Wuster, and Natalie Zelt. Special thanks to Sean Cashbaugh. Each of these colleagues and friends played host, provided a listening ear, shared resources, made for an excellent drinking companion, helped formulate and reformulate ideas, or (in all likelihood) fulfilled several of these roles. iv To the professors at the University of Texas I have been honored to learn from, Janet Davis, Cary Cordova, Shirley Thompson, Julia Mickenberg, and Mark Smith, thank you. Thanks also to Ella Schwartz, Chad Crawford, and Stephanie Kaufman for administrative help over the years. Going farther back, I would like to express my gratitude to the faculty of the Department of American Studies at California State University, Fullerton, particularly Mike Steiner, Elaine Lewinnek, and Pam Steinle, and the three members of my Master’s exam committee, Adam Golub, John Ibson, and Karen Lystra. Your influence is felt even today. Thanks to fellow CSUF American Studies alums Mary Anderson, Matt Glassman, Steven Ngo, Paul Saiedi, Sam Sousa, Jimmy Stroup, and Allison Wanger for your continued friendship. Thank you to Monica Ganas who planted the seed. To my parents, who have done more than enough, I could not have done this without your support and encouragement. Above all, my deepest gratitude is for Noelle, who has endured more of my nonsense than any one human being should have to. v Practices of Place: Ordinary Mobilities and Everyday Technology Brendan Christopher Gaughen, Ph. D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 Supervisor: Jeffrey Meikle This study examines four distinct ways people have encountered and interacted with place and explores how these experiences are impacted by certain technologies, paying close attention to the human experience of mobility. A fundamental idea in this study is that mobility is a crucial component to human identity and it is too limiting to view mobility as an abstraction absent of lived experience, as many postmodern theorists have done. Viewing mobility as an interrelation between people, place, and technology that shapes human beings and the physical environment, this study seeks to show how certain interactions with place contribute to a sense of self and identity for the individuals and communities discussed therein. The primary attempt in this study is to demonstrate how and why place is used in different ways by different people through various acts of mobility. Many of these practices, I believe, emerge as a response to postmodernity, even if their participants are unaware of larger structural processes. These practices are attempts to create stable meanings, definitions, and identities, to make known the unknown, to provide people with a sense of agency and autonomy, and give aspects of permanence to the ephemeral all in order to resist the destabilization, uncertainty, and powerlessness that exist in the present. Employing strategies such as bricolage and poetics, the human actors described in this vi study employ various practices of place in order to create meaning for themselves and the places they inhabit. This interdisciplinary project contributes to discourses of human geography, digital humanities, and material culture by locating previously unexplored intersections and relationships between place, practice, mobility, technology, and the human experience of being in place. vii Table of Contents List of Figures ..........................................................................................................x Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Navigating the Roadscape: Performing the Past Along the Lincoln Highway ........................................................................................................12 American(s) on the Move .............................................................................12 Landscape and Roadscape ............................................................................20 From National Road to US 40 ......................................................................25 From Auto Trail to Superhighway ................................................................28 The Lincoln Highway ...................................................................................33 The Last Days of the Lincoln Highway ........................................................41 The Lincoln Highway at 100 ........................................................................47 Gas, Food, Longing: Remembering Particular Mobilities ............................53 Chapter 2: Just Passing Through: Place Collectors, Collecting Place ...................61 Collecting the Immaterial .............................................................................66 Collecting Places ...........................................................................................77 Temporal Dimensions to Place Collecting ...................................................79 Place Collecting and Gaming Space .............................................................83 Jurisdiction Divisions and Other Arbitrary Boundaries ...............................91 Grids and Intersections .................................................................................97 The Quixotic Case of Alan Hogenauer .......................................................101 Chapter 3: Presence and Possession: Documenting Ephemeral Movements ......107 Creating Physical Traces of Presence .........................................................110 Writing Out of Place ...................................................................................113 Postmodern Graffiti and Anonymous Fame ...............................................120 Mobile Messages ........................................................................................124 Monikers .....................................................................................................130 To See and Be Seen ....................................................................................138 viii Ephemerality and Permanence ....................................................................142 Chapter 4: From Pizza to Parolees: The Prevalence of Location Monitoring in Everyday Life..............................................................................................145 Tracking the Mundane ................................................................................145 Scientific, Military, and Commercial Applications ....................................153 Tracking the Mobile Human Body .............................................................162 Complicit Surveillance and Conspicuous Mobility ....................................176 Poetics of Geolocation ................................................................................179 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................187 Ways of Movement .....................................................................................193 Interrelations ...............................................................................................199 Bibliography ........................................................................................................202 ix List of Figures Figure 1: Practices of Place Matrix ................................................................200 x Introduction