Townsend, Anthony M. Smart cities: Big data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new utopia. WW Norton & Company, 2013.

Anthony Townzend grounds smart cities on the history of urban planning theories. He describes what smart cities are and how governance of cities is going to change by these new interventions. He clarifies the idea in accordance with its different actors: city mayors, industry, entrepreneurs, civic hackers and citizens. In this confrontation, what author is conveying is how determinant is each one of these actors. Townzend’s perspective as a planner is different from what corporations as actual initiators of smart cities in the market, claim. He takes a critical position to draw realities versus overexcitement of city mayors that is happening by seductive situation that has formed for them.

Gabrys, Jennifer. Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet. University of Minnesota Press, 2016.

In Program Earth, Gabrys asks many questions. She frames notions in their usual framework and then tries to take them beyond their recognized concepts. Her philosophical and artistic approach in contemplating about the relation of technologies with human in the context of sensing environments is radical but unfinished. Through the book and more specifically in chapter 9, the author suggests that rather than deciding which connectivities are preferred in a way towards smart city, we might instead attend to the ways in which collectives are turned into measurable entities and individuals, which are further put into relation through infrastructures of measurement.

 

Graham, Stephen, 1965, and Simon Marvin 1963. Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition, Routledge, New York;London;, 2001.

 

Arendt, Hannah. The human condition. University of Chicago Press, 2013.

 

McQuire, Scott. Geomedia: Networked Cities and the Future of Public Space. 2016

Scott McQuire prefers looking at the characteristics of the future cities not as smart cities or sentient cities but as media cities. He considers new media technologies from smart phones to LED screens as an integral part of the contemporary city. Here he moves from media into geomedia where online connections have moved from being placeless to being geolocated in urban spaces. Geomedia is a concept based on the intersection of four characteristics of communication in cities by new technologies: ubiquity, real-time feedback, location awareness and convergence.

 

Zuckerman, Ethan. Rewire: Digital cosmopolitans in the age of connection. 2013.

We live in the age of connection. With exponential growth of online tools and the number of connected people to internet, there are more opportunities for connectivity of people and societies.  However these opportunities are not enough and equal to more connectivity. Zuckerman describes how we are stuck in our own limited social circle and how we are unaware of the news that is happening around the world. He draws the necessity of factors involved in forming a meaningful connection and becoming cosmopolitan citizens.

 

Dourish, Paul, and Genevieve Bell. ““Resistance is futile”: reading science fiction alongside ubiquitous computing.” Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 18.4 (2014): 769-778.

The authors have written another essay, Yesterday’s tomorrows: notes on ubiquitous computing’s dominant vision in 2005. In that essay they criticize the dominant fashion of scientific writing about ubiquitous computing which is highly based on the predictions of Weiser. However they argue that we no longer need to talk about the future in the way that Weiser used to because now we are living in that future. They see a lack of cultural and realistic consideration in the most of scholarly researches of ubiquitous computing. Their Resistance is futile suggests looking at the future in a different way. They analyze the role of science fiction movies on culture on how they have in fact enriched science. Their case studies on sci-fi movies are different from Weiser point of view because of their cultural elements where failures are or victories are based on the intersection of future technologies and culture.

 

Bleecker, Julian. “Design Fiction: A short essay on design, science, fact and fiction.” Near Future Laboratory 29 (2009).