In my social circle, we use apps everyday through our smart phones. As we learned from this week’s topic, all apps, digital platforms and even individuals can be viewed as engaged with other multiplicities (or assemblages across individuals and different things). And this idea leads to some key questions about apps: How does each app assemble things? What social relations does it come together with? How does this change social
relations? How does all this come together in the world including the physical world and the online world?
Here are the apps which I am using at the moment on my smart phone.

I have around 40 apps on my iPhone these days (some of them are Chinese apps).
Some apps like the starbucks, H&M can assemblage the online experience and the real-life goods together. For example, with the Starbucks app you can order what you wanna drink then send it to the recent shop then you can get a fresh warm drink when you arrive the shop.
Some apps change my social relations like the facebook, twitter, skype, it helps me communicate with friends anytime anywhere and breaks the barrier of space and distance. As we get more apps, more platforms, with more kinds of relations between them, and between them and the world (and us) we get what we might call a “multiplicity of multiplicities” in contemporary media and communications. Or we could say that apps make for multiple transindividuations of environments,users, Cloud/Stack/data and world (Bratton, 2014). Bratton (2014) argues that apps are data centers. By opening apps, we enter into a world of connectedness through a remote device such as what I use my phones for. He also mentions that apps help assemblage the users and the environment together by various specific programmings.
Also, Apps seem to be one part of ubiquitous computing. Ubiquitous computing is a concept where computing is made to appear everywhere and anywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing can occur using any device, in any location, and in any format. (Wikipedia, 2014).So, another feature of these apps is ubiquity. Ubiquity means things everywhere, it can be the social realations in our real life, it can be the envrionment we are in, now it can be the apps we have in our hand.
Moreover, apps also can affect the outside environment when it links to the world. Ambient Commons (Boullier, 2013) refers to Mccullogh’s notion of ‘ambient commons’, which consists of all things in the built environment that we take for granted as part of the landscape, such as architectural design, urban spaces and amenities. We see that mediated technology such as smart phones become part of the ambient commons as it is increasingly integrated into society. He observes media feeds are everywhere, such as on building facades, billboards, hotel lobbies and restaurants, and phone apps have become common use in everyday transactions, such as transferring money between accounts and scanning bar codes. For example, from the apps on my phone, I have Zhifubao (a Chinese app) which helps me transfer money between people and buy things online. The technology is already affect what we do in the society (pay by zhifubao app) and the society accept this as well (permit this app’s normal running). In summary, through the analysis of Bratton and Bollier’s ideas, and also the apps I showed above, the smart phones and apps have become so integrated into our society, our relations and even our habits. These technologies have empowered the individual to use them as ‘tools’ to suit their needs and connect to the outside with multiplicity, flexibility and ubiquity.
References
Bollier, David (2013) ‘How Will We Reclaim and Shape the Ambient Commons?’, David Bollier: news and perspectives on the commons, July 16, <http://bollier.org/blog/how-will-we-reclaim-and-shape-ambient-commons>
Bratton, Benjamin (2014) ‘On Apps and Elementary Forms of Interfacial Life: Object, Image, Superimposition’, Bratton.info, December, <http://www.bratton.info/projects/texts/on-apps-and-elementary-forms-of-interfacial-life/>
Wikipedia (n.d.) ‘Ubiquitous Computing’ Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing>