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In this book I bring together ideas that I have garnered and mused upon since at least 2007–2008. That was the time when the smartphone took off, and subsequently apps have proliferated, spread, and become implacably installed at the center of contemporary digital infrastructures, which in turn now underpin many societies globally.

I am grateful for the rich body of work on mobile communication and media and for many conversations, exchanges, and critiques I have been fortunate to have from friends and colleagues in this field, which has come into existence in the early 00s. This book functions as the third volume in a series and takes up many of the concepts, technologies, and ideas I explored in Cell Phone Culture in 2006 and Global Mobile Media in 2011.

My thanks to Cherry Baylosis, Xu Wei Wei (apps in China), and Punit Jagasia (apps in India) for their research assistance. I am especially grateful to Rosemary Curtis for her peerless research advice and for the preparation and proofing of the manuscript.

I would like to acknowledge the support of the University of Sydney, especially through a Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and DVC Research Compact Funding award for the project titled “Emerging Social Technology.” Earlier funding from the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC) for the research workshop “Social and Mobile Media in Southeast Asia” (co-convened with Lim Sun Sun) proved germinal, and I am grateful to its director, Professor Michele Ford, for this award.

The book was written after I took up a position at the superb Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. In a practical and government-of-the-self sense, the COVID-19 circuit breaker left me no option but to finish the book. The angle afforded by Singapore, an entrepôt and a global crossroads, has proved enormously helpful. My thanks to various colleagues, especially Rich Ling, and to the thoughtful and engaged students in my courses, “Global Media Issues and Policy” and “Digital Media Governance,” for many informative conversations.

It has been a pleasure to publish my first book with Polity. Sincere thanks to Mary Savigar for giving me the idea in the first place, for inviting me to consider it, for providing feedback, and for commissioning the project. I owe Ellen McDonald-Kramer a special debt of gratitude for her unstinting support and thoughtful advice through the process. Thanks to the reviewers for their helpful feedback.

Finally, thanks to my family, Bianca, Liam, and Jacqui, for their love, support, and interest especially during the close-quarter circuit breaker period of the COVID pandemic.

Gerard Goggin

Wee Kim Wee School of Information and Communication

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

March 2021