Scholars are well-aware that the smartphone is much more than just a mobile telephone. A plethora of applications have been developed to run on smartphones, covering just about every aspect of human life. What is distinctive about the fact that these apps run on smartphones (as opposed to other kinds of devices) is that the smartphone makes them mobile (the apps travel with the user) and locative (the apps know the location of the user). As a result, smartphone applications that take full advantage of these characteristics have the ability to bring users together in real space and real time. The key to the success of such “netware” apps is their generation and retention of social graphs that connect their users both socially and physically. Netware apps like ride hailing that are built around mobility and location have the potential to dramatically restructure economic and social life by reconfiguring their users’ experiences of the physical and temporal world. We use ride hailing as a case study to illustrate how the new social geographies generated by mobile netware apps interact with physical geography to generate a new sense of space that can only be mapped by the companies that “own” our social graphs.

学者们很清楚，智能手机不仅仅只是一部手机。已经开发了许多应用程序来运行在智能手机上，几乎涵盖了人类生活的各个方面。这些应用程序在智能手机（与其他类型的设备相对）上运行的事实与众不同的是，智能手机使它们具有移动性（应用程序与用户一起旅行）和位置性（应用程序知道用户的位置）。结果，充分利用这些特性的智能手机应用程序具有将用户实时和实时聚集在一起的能力。此类“网络软件”应用程序成功的关键在于它们的生成和保留社交图，这些社交图可以在社交和物理上连接其用户。围绕移动性和位置构建的诸如乘车称赞之类的Netware应用程序具有通过重新配置用户对物理世界和时空世界的体验来显着改变经济和社会生活的潜力。我们以乘车欢呼为例，来说明由移动网络软件应用程序生成的新社交地理区域如何与自然地理区域相互作用，以产生一种新的空间感，这种空间感只能由“拥有”我们社交图表的公司来绘制。