On Gabrys, Jennifer – Program Earth: Chapter 7, Citizen Sensing in the Smart and Sustainable City: From Environments to Environmentality.
– According to Foucault, the behavior of a subject or population is but indirectly influenced in the generalized state of ‘environmentality’ (pp190). What would the techniques of environmental governance come to be in a smart city of direct monitoring of bodies and their predicted behavior patterns?
– In the smart city, software constitutes urban processes to such an extent, that they themselves fail in case the former does (pp197). Should computational operations consciously allow for faults and glitches in programmed environments instead of programming them out? The production of code, as MacKenzie describes it (pp197-198), bears resemblance to that of space. Software is a complex, co-written product that is constantly subject to change and prone to error. Do we need to design an oxymoron ‘non-plan’ approach to urban computing?
On Shepard, Mark and Simeti, Antonina – What’s so smart about the Smart Citizen?
– Mapping the field of smart urbanism, we come to realize that it is not at all homogeneous. To the contrary, it is characterized by a strict opposition whose ends are defined according to who leads the initiative (ICT companies, developers, governments vs. citizens), what are their methods (top-down, centralized vs. bottom-up, distributed) and what are their -more or less pronounced- intents (automation, optimization, efficiency vs. engagement, social and cultural revitalization) (pp13-14). As with every opposition, each end in a sense includes the ideas of the other – just inverted. This underlying convention prohibits them from articulating a different, more holistic approach and inducing change (pp17). A hybrid between the Smart City and the Smart Citizen may seem as a long-anticipated bridge, but what are would its ‘materials’ be? Who and how could design the convergence of two so seemingly disparate poles? Should we rather reinvent completely new tools for this middle ground?