Spaced and timed in the New York Marathon

We inhabit a world of near ubiquitous information and communications technology (ICT) presence. Mobile communication networks now have a carrying capacity (bandwidth) to allow user-friendly communication tools (software) to transmit information rich (e.g. text and imagery) messages in real-time, across the globe. As consumers of the bandwidth capacity on offer, we are being presented with many additional means of using this possibility to contact each other. Combined advances in ICT and software functionality produce new types of information (e.g. spatial location) that might be ‘valuable’ to receive, and thus worthwhile to pay to transmit. Our telephones are no longer just phones, but advanced microcomputers with all the modifiable functionality which that implies (via hosted software applications or ‘Apps.’). Mobile devices offer new opportunities to communicate new types of information from new situations to new ‘audiences’ or ‘constituencies’. ICT infrastructures (e.g. cellular networks) allow trans-global communication instantly and relatively cheaply. It is argued that when accompanied by mobile devices running such software, they are creating personal ‘coded spaces’ (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011) that are significantly modifying how interpersonal contact, or lack of it, may be interpreted. In this essay I detail my experience of one such coded space, the New York City (NYC) Marathon, and discuss some of the implications of communications software infiltration into this and similar situations