Since the rise of the smartphone apps have become entrenched in billions of users' daily
lives. Accessible across phones and tablets watches and wearables connected cars sensors
and cities they are an inescapable feature of our current culture. In this book Gerard Goggin
provides a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the development of apps as a digital media
technology. Covering the technological social cultural and policy dynamics of apps Goggin
ultimately considers what a post-app world might look like. He argues that apps represent a
pivowtal moment in the development of digital media acting as a hinge between the visions and
realities of the mobile cyber and online societies envisaged since the late 1980s and the
imaginaries and materialities of the digital societies that emerged from 2010. Apps offer
frames construct tools and constitute small worlds for users to reorient themselves in
digital media settings. This fascinating book will reframe the conversation about the software
that underwrites our digital worlds. It is essential reading for students and scholars of media
and communication as well as for anyone interested in this ubiquitous technology.
