on Townsend, “Tinkering Toward Utopia,” Smart Cities (115-141)
– As experiences become a reward or bonus for their users, many apps of the emerging Social Web are interpreting the city as a platform of entertainment, full of challenges to be unlocked (pp147). It appears that this approach inevitably leads to their initial spontaneity giving way to a kind of ‘programmed serendipity’ (pp152). For instance, Foursquare took a not-so-subtle commercial direction when it mined its databases to deliver personalized recommendations, while the DIYcity project reached a financial dead-end (pp158). How can grassroot smart initiatives survive without monetizing their users’ habits at the expense of their ideals?
– If buildings are simply the ‘support system’ of urbanity (pp160), urban sociability, its fundamental substance, is a rather volatile one. Could the crossing of the Social Web movement with grassroot smart-city initiatives materialize it by producing direct impact on the urban fabric? How could such ephemeral tangible effects be hacked to extend their life-span and address enduring urban problems?
– As hacking is typically done for the sake of control of infrastructures for personal gain (pp.166), how can it be put in the service of social change? To what extend is the ecosystem of software developers (and architects as well) distantiated from real social problems and how could this be reversed?
on Gabrys, “Engaging the Idiot in Participatory Digital Urbanism,” Program Earth (207-240)
– (Please allow me to refer to the etymology of the word ‘idiot’, as an extension to the background provided by Gabrys (p209-210) to demonstrate the divergence between the classical and the smart approach of the citizen a couple of thousand years later).
In ancient Athens, participating in the commons was not just another property of citizenship – it was a duty. The word “idiot” derives from the Greek “ιδιώτης” (:idiothes), a derogatory term that characterized the apolitical members of society, those that neglected their civic responsibilities of participating and voting. Such behavior resulted in the removal of their civil rights and them being send to exile. In his Politics, Aristotle defined the idiot as the opposite of the citizen, stating that citizenship is first and foremost a matter of education and culture.
On the other hand, participatory urbanism sees the citizen from a completely different perspective. The idiot could be a precious agent within the smart city, bearer of potential for more flexible, open-ended, yet passive interactions (pp215) fueled by passive participatory sensing. In many ways one can argue that the smart city runs on a more inclusive model than the classical one – even Aristotle was concerned about the fact that hardworking members of society, such as the mechanics, were unable to excel in their civic responsibilities and were rendered noncitizens. Does the smart city need to be inhabited by entities that are simultaneously citizens and idiots? And how probable is it that this hybrid will lose its balance, rendering active forms of engagement unlikely to take place?
– In the context of ‘write-able cities’, the citizen and the city are to be brought into dialogue (pp.217), far from the initial conception of the smart citizen as a mere data-generating node. Gabrys is examining the forms of motivation and skillset a citizen needs to engage in this open process (pp.220). A question would be, how could an ongoing process like this be structured and sustained in time? Do we need to design a model for a kind of mutual governance?
Also, given the rapid pace that smart technologies change, citizens would probably have to ceaselessly evolve to maintain the integrity of their citizenship intact. Would this lifelong smart education be citizen-driven or government-driven?
– The relationship of politics and disruption has always been a tense one. Is the inclusion of the idiot, an agent of disruption, a disguised attempt to appropriate deviations from the smart norm by extending the tolerance of participation processes? Criticizing digital platforms of participation, Iveson warns that they are not necessarily fostering political engagements, yet Gabrys seems to regard the idiot as a fruitful voice of doubt for (not against) the good intentions of smart initiatives (pp235). But what impact can a voice make? Is this to empower new modes of participation, or rather to prevent Sterling’s “dump ghettos” and dump countercurrents of resistance from happening?