Open source metropolis – Anthony Townsend
In describing the evolution of social media from the platform of the internet Townsend states Burns and her team (in addition to other DIY research communities) began to experiment with new ways to deliver social services through the platform of the internet. Burns described the event forty years later stating that the convergence of amateur video and cable in the 1970s was “the perfect storm”. “In just a few short years, a growing network of public access activists had torn down barriers to community broadcasting that existed for nearly fifty years” – Could we recreate the perfect storm today? Ignoring our dispositions and fears of the hypothetical, allowing for complete smart city infrastructural implementation, assuming a revolutionary stance, infiltrating or gaining rights to the “smart city domain” of data and innovative technological platforms that supersede those of smart cities in complexity and potential? Could this not, coupled with exacting agency over the infrastructure to manipulate data results, allow us to contribute to our city in a much more proactive way?
“The technology giants building smart cities are mostly paying attention to technology not people, mostly focused on cost effectiveness and efficiency, mostly ignoring the creative process of harnessing technology at the grass roots, but the breach of public access cable in the 1970s is a reminder that truly disruptive applications of new information technologies have always come from the bottom up” – Notice here that the disruptive applications, while bottom up in their approach, required a top down infrastructural implementation to traverse and exploit. “The urge to repurpose technologies designed for one way communication like cable and turn them into interactive conduits for social interaction pops up again and again. Today, civic hackers, artists and entrepreneurs have begun to find their own uses and their own designs for smart-city technology.”
“But once you had an idea of the social network, it’s like ‘Dodgeball is Friendster for cell phones’. People understood it” – Crawley signifies the importance of concurrent technological applications not only as exploitable tools but as essential precursors or “molders” of the socio-cultural collective’s psychological scaffolding i.e. their ability to perceive, understand and accept new technological applications.
“Today, we take for granted the rich ecosystem of software available for our phones”, but “In 2003..Wireless carriers exacted tolls for content providers to enter their walled garden. Setting back the build-out of the mobile web for years.” – What kind of access is permitted to the smart city’s bed of sensored data? Do our dispositions with regards to privacy stand in the way of access to “walled gardens” if we persist to demand our information be “secure”? It appears that not only is top down infrastructural implementation crucial along with concurrently emergent technological applications, but the open access to both in promising to set the table for bottom up disruptive applications of sociability, serendipity and delight.
The “frequency hopping technique called spread spectrum, originally devised for torpedo guidance during World War II” extended the functionality of WiFi, in addition to it’s open source potential in that they could now “shove as much data across public airwaves as they could over wire with no subscription fees”. It seems that regardless of the original purpose of the technological invention, each “piece of the puzzle” lends itself to a complete picture in the form of bottom up exploitation and consequent disruptive applications combining and extending preceding technologies functionalities. Strategic, technological engineering must come before the creative utilization of the consequent structure/data. Does that not in some way support the smart city’s advocacy of big data harvesting? (although contingent on granted/forced access to the domain)
What form does interaction manifest if it was contingent on the spread and access to WiFi? If people are being attracted to a certain location for the promise of a portal to transport them elsewhere? In this respect does a non-sensored, digitally disconnected part of the city constitute a smart city ghetto much like Bryant park did in the 80s?
“Municipalities began to take over the deployment of public Wifi-access on a larger scale”, It seems like bottom up innovation (although contingent on preceding top down infrastructural implementation) inspires or catalyzes large scale technological implementations which in turn provide yet another traversable platform for further innovation/exploitation. Does that not shift our perception of power from a top down vs bottom up to a symbiotic relationship or dialogue between technology giants, dumb citizens (unconscious exactors of agency) smart citizens (educated DIY communities non-intimidated by the interworks of the technology) and the respective socio-cultural/political context?
Urban Versioning System 1.0 – Haque & Fuller
Architecture as one of Humanity’s oldest practices constitutes a fixed mean of channeling behaviors, a physical common that serves as a high resolution low pace environment of internal, intuitively and tacitly collected information resulting in a respective embodied predisposition in the space. As our cognitive pool becomes layers with increasing amounts of media and interfaces (sent vs internalized information) – architecture assumes the role of the background. Does code become (as a result of cycles of technological evolution and respective embodied predispositions of a new common) this generation’s tool of designing urban performances?
“The difference should be that we consciously recognize our interdependence (architecture, citizens and technologies) and thus must consciously act upon it.” We have repeatedly morphed spaces through exacting agency and populating them with socio-culturally conceived devices (such as a news paper stand) that result in consequent urban performances that challenge/extend the original functionalities of spaces and respective embodied predispositions. Is the fine line between a conscious participant and an unconscious consumer simply the recognition of where agency lies in crafting our surroundings within the seemingly restrictive smart city grid?
The design of the future built environment “appears to be split between large developers and ubiquitous computing technologists with architects finding themselves irrelevant” It can be argued that architecture, as an expansive discipline, trains us (or should) to carefully consider concurrent social, cultural & political contexts and respective implications on our designs. Are other disciplines as inclusive? Should architects now be charged with addition ubiquitous computing design to their vocabulary?
“Most important is to develop a method through which architecture the physical conduit for knowledge and memory can itself be open”, it’s signified here that architecture has thus far mainly been a top down process of attempting to create performances at different locations and scales i.e dictating vs accommodating interactivity and special use. “We want to see what happens if we work otherwise” – Is the answer quite literally delegating parts of the design process to an array of disciplines and the respective citizens (subjects) of the site of implementation? Fixity allows architecture to serve as a scaffolding populated by contingent or unplanned uses, but buildings are rarely designed for that express purpose. Can we start thinking of the concurrent socio-cultural collective as a performance that architecture must accommodate vs create/resist?