ABSTRACT Locative media has been attacked for being too eager to appeal to commercial interests as well as for its reliance on Cartesian mapping systems. If these critiques are well founded, however, they are also nostalgic, invoking a notion of art as autonomous from the circuits of mass communication technologies, which the authors argue no longer holds true. This essay begins with a survey of the development of locative media, how it has distanced itself from net art and how it has been critically received, before going on to address these critiques and ponder how the field might develop.