Urry and Elliot (2010) discuss a future scenario of the digital city which has used technology to respond to and combat the environmental issues brought about by human-induced global warming. A techno-optimist view widely held by publics, scholars, corporations and governments alike. Authorised by a dominant discourse advocating reliance upon conceptions of evidence and proof, science and technology, rationality and objectivity, we have convinced ourselves a detachment from, and an intelligence, power and technological control over the environment, our surroundings and ourselves (Adams 1998). By extending our human powers through science and technology, through digital sensor monitoring, we believe we can address, undo, and reverse the environmental damage we continue to cause.

Furthermore through individually quantifying behaviors and habits through ‘miniaturised mobilities’, Elliot and Urry argue that this “…enable(s) people to deposit affects, moods and dispositions into techno-objects – storing such emotional and aesthetic aspects of self-experience until they are ‘withdrawn’ for future forms of symbolic elaboration and interpersonal communication” (2010:6). Therefore, the role of sensors can be understood to ‘extend our human powers’ into digitally quantifiable formats. For health care for example, to quantify exercise achievements (miles run, fastest mile, heart rate, calories burned) (see below), calculating calorie consumption, or monitoring abstaining from smoking (see below).

(Image 1: Screenshot Personal Nike Running Application)

(Image 2: A Facebook Friends Post – ANON)

Fors and O’Dell (forthcoming) question the role and use of such sensors, used both by ‘quantified self-ers’, organisations to combat energy waste (see ELLIOT ‘Smart Office’ below), and by businesses (Tesco Clubcard) and governments to monitor demographic behaviors consumer/citizen patters/habits (Oyster), and ask what does all this data collected actually do? Does it help improve the environment, prevent climate change, encourage civic engagement or improve public health? Like the ‘digital networks’ scenario outlined by Urry and Elliot (2010), it is important to question the use in collecting such data, individually or on a mass scale?

“Recent technological innovations for logging, tracking, monitoring and digitally circulating the body calls for further investigations of how it alters the everyday actions, habits, and possibilities for social organisation” (Fors & O’Dell, forthcoming, p.20).

de Lange (2013) argues that in order to achieve action, and change we must take an affective view, one which considers and explores emotions and feelings; “cities must exhibit intense expressivity” ( Thrift in de Lange 2013:3). We can understand how current deployment and use of sensors exemplifies de Lange’s view that ‘smart cities’ remain conceptually ‘stuck’, bounded by limiting parameters of ontological data and information gathering. Taking an epistemological approach however, of tying together spatial, social and mental spheres, prioritising emotions and reflexivity, by considering how we relate to each other and our surroundings, we might better understand the city, and how environmental and individual developments can be actioned and achieved (de Lange 2013:2).

“We must shift attention from technologies that seamlessly blend in with everyday life, towards technologies that move people, and enable them to move others” (de Lange 2013:6).

Bibliography

Adam, B, 1998. ‘Nature Re/constituted and Re/conceptualized: Mapping the scope of industrial traditions of thought’, in Timescapes of Modernity: The Environment and Invisible Hazards. London: Routledge

de Lange, M. 2013. ‘The smart city you love to hate: Exploring the role of affect in hybrid urbanism’. In The Hybrid City II: Subtle rEvolutions, edited by D. Charitos, I. Theona, D. Dragona and H. Rizopoulos. 23-25 May 2013. Athens, Greece.

ELLIOT ‘Smart Office’ 2010. http://vimeo.com/67715975 (Available at: http://www.elliot-project.eu/node/69, Last accessed 4.5.14).

Elliot, A., & Urry, J. 2010. Mobile Lives. Oxford: Routledge.

O’Dell, T & Fors, V. 2014. Body monitoring: on the need to put culture into the quantifying equation. Submitted to Culture Unbound (Available at: http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=12683&postid=4195709, Last accessed: 4.5.14)

Oyster ‘Access your data’ (Available at: https://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/privacy-and-cookies/access-your-data, Last Accessed: 7.5.14).

Hemment and Townsend (2013) argue that in the development and planning of ‘smart cities’ there is too much focus and attention given to the role of technology companies and governments in providing “top-down solutions – centralised proprietory systems:” (2013:iii). They identify the need to collaborate with citizens to ensure development, regeneration, and city planning is built upon a foundation of knowledge exchange. They do however recognise that ensuring the city is ‘smart’ and relevant, a democratic space servicing all, specifically creating opportunities for those without the means to participate is a challenge, but one which needs urgently addressing (Hemment and Townsend (2013:2-3).

Ratti et al (2013) consider a more optimistic, but less critical perspective recognizing the universalizing effects of globalization, where our towns and cities became standardized and generic, but argue we have entered a new phase of differentiation through what they term ‘networked specifism’. They suggest we are now empowered through connectivity and participatory platforms enriching and individually tailoring our experience of the ‘smart’ global city (Ratti et al 2013).

“Professional and amateur worlds have been radically disrupted by hyper-neutrality and cloud connectivity – whether as atomized networks of design professionals using synchronized digital tools to work together from across the globe or newly empowered citizen embarking on digitally-enabled participatory processes” (Ratti et al, 2013:20).

Yes, such access to participatory technologies ensures the potential for a ‘recursive public’ – “an open community that is both a result and a generator of networks” (Kelty, 2008:3 in Ratti et al 2013:20). However, does this actually ensure a more democratic, connected and collaborative public, which contributes to the development of smart city infrastructures that benefits the needs of all?

As Joroff (2013) points out “technological optimists puzzle over technologies failure to significantly impact major societal challenges such as income inequality, climate change and resource depletion” (2013:6). Why? Because such challenges are inherently political, economic and cultural, and until we witness a discursive shift which prioritises such issues, social change driven by such technological rigor will have limited impact (Joroff 2013:6).

Could ELLIOT (Experiential Living Lab for the Internet of Things) be considered an example of a more collaborative, participatory, development tool for the ‘smart citizen’?

“The ELLIOT (Experiential Living Lab for the Internet of Things) project aims to develop an Internet Of Things (IOT) experiential platform where users/citizens are directly involved in co-creating, exploring and experimenting new ideas, concepts and technological artefacts related to IOT applications and services. The project is expected to dramatically increase the adoption of IOT and to enhance the potential of collaborative innovation for the discovery of innovative IOT application/service opportunities in bridging the technological distance with users/citizens” (http://www.elliot-project.eu/node/3).

(Image from http://www.elliot-project.eu/node/14)

Rather than simply observing citizens/users during the research stage of new products and services, ELLIOT wants to engage and involve them in the development stage to ensure a more collaborative and reciprocally beneficial outcome, service and product is achieved for all parties. The obvious challenge of such a project is ensuring the citizen’s voice, and not just businesses and governments, is heard and equally prioritized to ensure citizen led projects are also developed.

Bibliography

Atelier. 2013. ‘[Innovative City] Involving Citizens as Researchers, Co-creators and Testers of the Smart City’ (Available at: http://www.atelier.net/en/trends/articles/innovative-city-involving-citizens-researchers-co-creators-and-testers-smart-city_422073 , Last Accessed 1/05/14)

ELLIOT ‘Experiential Living Lab for the Internet of Things’. 2010. (Available at: http://www.elliot-project.eu/node/1 , Last Accessed 01/5/14).

Hemment D. And. Townsend A. 2013. ‘Here Come the Smart Citizens’ In Hemment, D. And Townsend A. 2013. Smart Citizens, FutureEverything Publications (Available at: http://futureeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/smartcitizens.pdf, Last Accessed 1/05/14)

Hemment D. And. Townsend A. 2013. ‘Smart Citizens – Introduction’, In Hemment D. And Townsend A. 2013. Smart Citizens, FutureEverything Publications (Available at: http://futureeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/smartcitizens.pdf, Last Accessed 1/05/14)

Joroff, M, L. 2013. ‘The Tortoise Needs to Cross Many Chasms’. In Hemment D. And. Townsend A. 2013. Smart Citizens, FutureEverthing Publications (Available at: http://futureeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/smartcitizens.pdf, Last Accessed 1/05/14)

Ratti, C. Claudel, M. Picon, A. Haw, A. 2013. ‘Networked Specifism: Beyond Critical Regionalism’ In Hemment D. And. Townsend A. 2013. Smart Citizens, FutureEverthing Publications (Available at: http://futureeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/smartcitizens.pdf, Last Accessed 1/05/14)

Digital urban gaming enables the user to explore a hybrid space combining a digital gaming environment within a ‘real’ physical locality. Enabled through networked location based mobile technologies, digital urban gaming ensures the user explores different “modes of co-presence” (Hjorth 2011:357), between the online and physical worlds. Hjorth (2011) argues that this transforms our perception and engagement with, and understanding of space, place, networking, relationships and our environment.   

“Through contemporary examples of urban games, LBGM, and hybrid reality games, we can learn much about changing definitions and experiences of the urban, mobility, and a sense of place”

(de Souza e Silva and Hjorth 2009 in Hjorth 2011:359).

The perceptions of and our relationships with space and place, which are often embedded with personal “stories, memories and social practices” (2011:358), are challenged through urban digital gaming. Through exploration of a digital urban fitness game ‘Zombies, Run!’ the combined on and offline experience of a familiar running route being mediated through an audio based digital game where I imagined I were being chased by Zombies, creatively altered my perception of my space both visually layering my urban surroundings with a foreign digital cityscape, which was enhanced through audio noises mediating and enhancing my experience (radio streams from ‘mission operatives’, and gunshots for example). The application through audio story telling mediated my run through a zombie apocalypse; it was both motivating physically whilst being fun and engaging through the altered perceptions and engagement, blurring my immediate and online spaces.

(Images: ‘Zombies, Run!’)

The emancipatory, democratizing nature, and civic engagement possibilities of mobile media technologies has been much celebrated and criticized (Hjorth 2011; Rheingold 2002); through their potential to entrap us into “various erosions between work and leisure” (2011:367) which in turn may cause anxieties and pressures from such hybrid spaces and co/absent present practices (Gergen 2002). It is of course important to be critical of any new technology or medium (Hjorth 2011; de Souza a Silva Digital 2009), however urban gaming enables a new perspective and engagement with these technologies through imagination and creativity, where we could view it as a “reflexive step toward showing how these technologies and our uses of them have the potential to affect us socially, spatially and playfully” (de Souza a Silva & Sutko, 2009:15).

There are other experiences and issues addressed other than simply ‘play’ which can be developed through digital urban games; educational focuses or ‘bottom up’ approaches which address complex political and social issues (de Souza e Silva & Sutko 2009:14). ‘Rezone’ for example, based in Den Bosch (Netherlands), enables players to keep their city safe from deterioration and vacancy by salvaging real estate from decline within a combination of real 3D printed buildings with an augmented reality layer detailing real-time information.[1] “The challenge is for players to not just pursue individual self-interest but to strategically collaborate in order to defeat the system, which is programmed to let the city descend into decay” (De Lange 2013).

(Image: ‘Rezone’ www.themobilecity.nl)

“Rezone is composed of a physical board game with a number of 3D printed iconic buildings that represent the neighborhood, an augmented reality layer of real-time information about these buildings projected on a screen, and a computer algorithm programmed to induce vacancy. When the game begins all buildings are fully occupied. Then at alarming speed they spiral down towards total abandonment. A vacancy meter on the screen indicates the level of occupation from 4 (completely occupied) down to 0 (abandoned). Empty buildings act like a contagious virus that infects neighboring buildings too” (De Lange 2013).

(Image: ‘Rezone’ www.themobilecity.nl)

Rezone explores many different issues and developments post-digitalization; the relationship between the digital and the urban space whilst addressing social and political shifts by exploring the relationships between politics and citizen engagement, professionals and amateurs, and the role of the pro-sumer (De Lange 2013). In contrast to engagement with media technologies in order to make urban life comfortably networked and connected, “Rezone by contrast is a project in which digital technologies help to engage citizens with each other and their living environment” (De Lange 2013).  Rezone, like Dotplay as examined by Hjorth encourages the “possibilities of play in challenging the role of technology within society” (2011:365). What is particularly exciting from this perspective is the future for digital cities infrastructures; through mobile media and even gaming, there is potential for a more democratic and collaboratively built infrastructure between citizens, city planners, and politicians.

Bibliography 

Hjorth, L. (2011). Mobile@game cultures: The place of urban mobile gaming. Convergence, 17(4), 357-371

De Lange. M. 2013. ‘Rezone’ (Available at: http://www.themobilecity.nl/2013/04/22/rezone-the-game-playing-for-urban-transformation/, Last accessed 31/3/14).

Silva, Adriana de Souza e, & Sutko, Daniel. 2009. Digital cityscapes: merging digital and urban playspaces. Peter Lang: New York/Oxford

Gergen, K. 2002. ‘Cell phone technology and the realm of absent presence’. In Katz, J. And. Aakhus. M. 2002. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press

Behrendt (2012) recognizes that ‘locative’ media are usually reliant on the visual to determine our sense and perception of space. [1] Our focus on the visual aspect of these media, neglects auditory space perception, which is “productive for focusing on the very activity of engaging with mobile media and the urban context at once, the multi sensory, embodied, spatio-temporal experience of the urban journey or encounter” (Behrendt 2012: 289, emphasis in original). Behrendt (2012) importantly draws our attention in recognizing how everyday within the digital city, our construction of space, communications and information gathering is a combination of both visual and auditory sensory mediation. The immersive nature of sound is invisible, intangible and yet (especially once experienced through headphones) an all-encompassing experience. Beherndt argues that we “need to consider how immersion works in locative media, where we are both ‘here’ and ‘there’ in hybrid spaces” (2012:288).

Bull (2004; 2007) examines this relationship in the context of the Apple Ipod, and argues that the IPod “universalizes the privatization of public space, and it is a largely auditory privatization” (2007:4). Such ‘hybrid spaces’ it could be argued are more ‘immersive’ with the inclusion of an auditory element. To explore, I attempted to produce a locative sound for a running route via a locative mobile sound application sonicmaps.org, which proved unsuccessful.

(Sonicmaps.org located sound maps)

After various failed attempts over a number of days to familiarize myself with the visually simple, but user-unfriendly application, many hours trawling through the website reading and watching tutorials, and asking more technologically savvy friends if they had any idea, (all I/we managed was to upload a link via Dropbox to my ‘sounds’ on a map), my ‘locative sound’ experience via this application was non-existent and so too my dwindling motivation for my run. The process of creating a file via dropbox and copying a ‘link’ in which to upload sound, seemed overly laborious, and not possible via only your mobile device which in itself seemed to void the whole function of the application.

Giving up on Sonic Maps I returned to my well-trusted Ipod for my moral and motivational support. Selecting various ‘soundscapes’; specific albums which evoked memories, and physical motivations (spurred by fast paced music), I created my own ‘auditory bubble’ and ‘individual reality’. I was transformed from my current location of Sevenoaks (Kent), to my childhood, to running routes in Melbourne, and even to wistfully looking forward to upcoming holidays planned, all through the various music albums in which I was immersed. If one album finished I immediately began another, I ensured I had constant ‘mediated company’ (2007:6), craving the ‘feelings, desires and auditory memories’ (Bull 2007:3) evoked through the music.

(No music via my smart phone accompanied my run)

“In the head and mind of the IPod user the spaces of culture have been redrawn into a largely private and mobile auditory worship” (Bull 2007: 2-3)

My perception of the park was reduced completely to the visual, with my emotions, communications, information and knowledge of my space mediated through my auditory soundscape. My ‘sensory gating’ (2007:7) ensured I did not hear the birds in the trees, the wind or the trees rustling, I was in a completely privatised auditory world, with my music as my soundtrack. I ‘controlled and managed my environment’ through my IPod usage (2007:4); if I felt like saying hello to passers-by this could only be achieved by removing my headphones. If I felt too tired to do so I kept my headphones in, a ‘distancing mechanism’ (2007:14), where ‘silence equaled exclusion’ (Bauman 2003), ‘legitimising’ (on face value) my unfriendliness, in my ‘sonorous envelope’ (2007:4) I could not hear passers-by nor could they hear my soundscape. I was a silent presence, privatised yet personally empowered (2007:5), whilst simultaneously excluded from the public communicative space.

Augmented reality (AR) can be described as the layering of physical space with the digital representation of space. The AR application Layer describes itself as a “digitally enhanced view of the real world, connecting you with more meaningful context in your everyday life (layar.com/augmentedreality, emphasis added). Within Layer such ‘meaningful’ content could include restaurants, cafes, shops, tourist destinations, ‘celebrity spots’ and user generated content such as photos of a location, all mapped within a digital map generated by user LBS current location. “Layar [is] based on the notion that we are constantly surrounded by location-aware digital information” (Karppi 2011:92), invisible and incalculable by the human eye but generated visually by Layar.  Such technologies have extended our natural senses and capabilities (Karppi 2011), but arguably identified locations and ascribed a ‘value’ by the locational ‘marker’ (Uricchio 2011:27). The location only gains value through the digital representation (see below Kamsons Pharmacy in Layar).

If we understand AR interfaces as ‘representations of space’ it is useful to understand them as “[…] expressions of social practices carrying in them relative relations between knowledge, understanding and ideology” (Drakopoulou 2013:2). What then happens to our experience of urban space once experienced through the mediated visual AR interface? Drakopoulou argues that “the urban environment is changing not only in its appearance but in the way it is used, accessed and lived in by its inhabitants [… and] provides new ways of ‘experiencing’ the urban environment and spatial practice” (2013:1-4). AR is a temporary state of perception and sensory depiction, which Karppi (2011) argues may disrupt order and stability within our experience of urban space. It is arguable that this is achieved through a new ‘spatial commodification’ (Drakopolou 2013), enabled by AR. Personal engagement with the interface directed me, regardless of ‘functions’ to sites of consumption, from shopping, to buying groceries and eating out. Is this solely a commercial, consumer, capitalist experience, by mixing commercial information with everyday activities? Within Layar it was impossible to find a function that did not encourage or provide such commercialization of the urban environment and personalized consumption, which Drakopolou argues may encourage practices of autonomy (2013:9)?

(User generated content)

“AR applications are the next step in a long line of audiovisual technologies entangled in the networks of capitalism […] a mode of production but more broadly to heterogeneous apparatuses that affirm social subjection andtie users to machinic enslavement”

(Lazzarato 2006 in Karppi 2011:97).

Certainly from personal experience, I was not drawn to ask strangers or friends for recommendations of restaurants, locations of services or particular shops, drawn into a cycle of individualized ‘production of both reality and subjectivity’; self-subjective, self-enjoyment as a capitalist subject (Karppi 2011:100). These are arguably, not new patterns of individualized autonomy encouraged by neoliberal practices, but certainly another outlet from which to be ‘subjected’. Therefore, is there is not simply a ‘merging of physical space with digital information, ‘techno-synthetically composed’ (Drakopoulou 2013), there are broader implications, socially, culturally, and politically at play within the structures, developments and construction of an AR interface (Kennedy 2000).

This cannot however, be said in the same way of all AR applications and interfaces VisAge for example is a development project ‘visualising data from ages past’, and uses AR to visualize the spaces inside old buildings, and tells the stories of those which once lived there (http://mhms.org.uk/VisAge).

Perhaps we should consider that “the really compelling applications that are going to make AR take off just haven’t been built yet, “Instead what we’ve got primarily in the market are gimmicky advertising experiences”(Jules White, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Vanderbilt University). With the hope that in the future this might give way to more democratic, diverse uses and forms of engagement.

Own words (333)

Bibliography

‘Net locality’ can be understood as a dual on and offline, interactive, engagement and communicative practice. “Now, what is being organised is not just information, but the physical world that contains it” (Gordon & de Souza e Silva 2011:7). We no longer ‘enter the web’ (2011:7) from a fixed locale, we exist within a continual hybrid space; “… physical space has become the context for […digital] information” sharing (Gordon & de Souze a Silva 2011:9), mediating public and private spheres, real and ‘virtual’ or ‘digital’ spaces throughout our daily practices, behaviours and communications. [1]

LBS Image 1

By ‘checking in’ and ‘sharing a location’ one sends out the message that they are happy for others to know their location and potentially ‘join them’ in a social space, a café, at university, or even at home. Humphrey’s argues that LBS and subsequent interactions “makes the public social life of a city [and arguably any environment where you are connected] more familiar” (2010:775) and can “build and reinforce social ties” (2007:764).

 “The web now extends to physical locations […] The new organizing logic of the web is based on physical location. Increasingly, the types of information we find and access online depend on where we are […] opening themselves up to the environment” (Gordon and de Souza e Silva, 2011:7-11).

From LBS Image 1, ‘checking in’ made a “presence though markers on a map” (Gordon & de Souza e Silva 2011:86), and in turn opened ‘others up to the environment’ through a positive recommendation, encouraging others to comment and remark on their experiences of the environment (see the comment by a friend). This LBS and networking are described by Lofland as ‘parochial spaces’ “characterized by a sense of commonality among acquaintances and neighbours who are involved in interpersonal networks” 1998:10). A ‘highly contextual’ realm; similarly demonstrated by the interpersonal networks and interactions within the below image (LBS 2).

LBS Image 2

My ‘showcasing of the aesthetic of the public realm’ (Humphreys 2010) encourages a family member to comments on the image; “I know exactly where you are”. Such recognition and familiarity is only made possibly by the inclusion of the above image to ‘represent’ my space and presence in the countryside as one cannot always ‘check in’ at a specific ‘site’ or ‘location’. This further enables a ‘parochialisation’ and familiarisation of the public but rural, non-mapped digital space. As Lefebvre (2001) recognizes, “reconfiguring spaces means reframing the social interactions within them” (in 2011:79), made possible through the ability to ‘attach information to places’ (2011:79), in this case the photographic snapshot of ‘place’.  Therefore, LBS further blurs the ‘hybrid space’[2], the connected co-presence (Licoppe 2013), or if we are to critique these spaces, the ‘absent presence’ (Gergen 2002). Therefore the digital ‘sphere’ and the present space are ‘blurred further, once distinctive and separate ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres, now creating an dualism and further layering of the ‘hybrid space’.

Net locality is “not the product of specific technologies, but is instead emerging out of a cultural need to contextualise ourselves within a growing network of information” (Gordon & de Souza e Silva 2011:13). If we are to agree with this social shaping view of technology, are the reasons to why we engage with such locational devices then, to mark our individual, personalised stamp upon the Internet, to have a presence amongst the vast layers of information in which we encounter? Williams (1983) suggests that there is a humanistic desire for mobility and communications, and as such it could be argued that ‘net locality’ practices demonstrate the online (and quantifiable) representation of such intrinsic human behaviours.

Bibliography

De Souza e Silva, A, 2006, ‘From Cyber to Hybrid: Mobile Technologies as Interfaces of Hybrid Spaces’ In Space and Culture, Vol 9: 3 pp. 261-278.

Gergen, K. 2002. ‘Cell phone technology and the realm of absent presence’. In Katz, J. And. Aakhus. M. 2002. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press

Gordon, E. & Silva, A. de S. e, 2011. Net locality: why location matters in a networked world, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Humphreys, L. & Liao, T., 2013. Foursquare and the parochialization of public space. First Monday, 18(11)

Licoppe. C. 2013. ‘Merging mobile communication studies and urban research: Mobile locative media, ”onscreen encounters” and the reshaping of the interaction order in public places’. In Mobile Media & Communication Vol. 1 no. 1 122-128

Further Readings/Resources

Dawes. S. 2011, ’Privacy and the public/private dichotomy’, in Thesis Eleven Vol 107: 1 pp. 115–124

Humphreys, L, 2013. ‘Mobile social media: Future challenges and opportunities’ in Mobile Media & Communication Vol 1: 20 pp. 20-25.

Humphreys, L. 2007. Mobile social networks and social practice: A case study of Dodgeball, In Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Vol 13:1 pp. 341–360

Humphreys, L. 2010. ’Mobile social networks and urban public space’, in New Media Society, Vol 12: 5 pp. 763–778.

Katz, J. And. Aakhus. M. 2002. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press

Licoppe, C. 2004. ‘Connected presence: The emergence of a new repertoire for managing social relationships in a changing communications technoscape’. In Environment and Planning: Society and Space, 22, 135–15.

Further Reflections

Within the above image showing a ‘check in location’ accompanied by a photograph, below right is an advertisement for an upcoming concert for a band the user has ‘liked’ on Facebook. “We are where are devices are, and we are perpetually leaving behind data traces that can be mapped to our physical world” (2011:2). Therefore, initially this advert appears seemingly unrelated to the ‘location’ update but on further inspection we can recognize the triangulation of data; ‘checking in’ at a location in London, where the advertised concert is taking place, alongside the other information willingly volunteered on Facebook and selected a ‘preference’ to. Does such willingness to share such personal information demonstrate changing perceptions and acceptance of a lack of privacy, as acknowledge by Gordon and de Souza e Silva (2011), and assume an acceptance of such targeted advertising?

Traditionally ‘public’ and ‘private’ spaces were defined through our daily routines between space and time; ‘home’, ‘work’, ‘leisure’ and ‘local’ and ‘global’ parameters (Silverstone et al 1994; Williams 1990). Our perception and construction of these different spheres is arguably achieved through our media consumption practices (Berry et al 2013; Habermas 1992). For example, the home was experienced as a ‘private’ sphere for ‘leisure’ and family time defined by your locality, with the working environment within the ‘public’, outside of the home (Berry et al 2013; Silverstone et al 1994); the very act of engaging, with television in the home was traditionally conceived as a family bonding and ‘leisure’ activity bringing “the experience of belonging to a nation into everyday life, enabling ‘the public’ to be experienced in ‘the private’” (Hollows 2008:107), and ensured citizens felt a part of the ‘imagined community’ of a nation (Habermas 1992). ‘A public’ refers more towards ‘an audience, gathering or following’ (Hannay 2005:26-32 in Berry et al 2013:3). The ‘public space’ or ‘sphere’ refers to intended action; “where private individuals come together to discuss and deliberate upon ‘public’ affairs and matters ‘in the public interest” (Berry et al 2013:3). [1] However, new structures and patterns of interaction are emerging from mobile and digital communications and networks (Wei 2013).

Now such familial communications and social activities can be displaced from the private ‘home’ and achieved whilst in the ‘public space’ through applications on a mobile device; an imagined community, family interactions achieved on the move within the city. “Wireless technology and the media that use have [… broken] down the boundaries of urban public space – as surely they do domestic space” (Berry et al 2013:8). Forlano understands this new ‘space’ as ‘hybrid’ (Forlano 2013), the ‘membrane’ between public and private (Groening 2010); the meditation of our daily routines and activities through digital modes, a reorganization of private experience within the public realm (de Souza e Silva 2006; Bull 2004).

So how about connecting with strangers, other citizens in the public realm? An idea explored through a collaborative city art project in Vancouver ‘Unnumbered Sparks’ a collaboration between artist Janet Echelman and Google Creative Director Aaron Koblin, as part of TED’s 30th annual conference (2014).

“We all carry devices in our pockets that have the power to connect with people around the world, but rarely do we get a chance to use this incredible power to connect and create with the people standing next to us” (Ramasway 2014).

(Photo Ema Peter)

The interactive lighting sculpture is in fact a giant 300ft web browser with high-definition projectors. Visitors interact through their mobile device, using a mobile browser they select a colour and use their fingertips to trace paths using their device, projected onto the sculpture as beams of colour and light (Ramasway 2014). As Forlono argues “the appropriation and use of urban technologies have transformed the aesthetic, symbolic, and lived experience of cities in important ways” (Forlano 2013:1). This installation is a collaborative visitor and crowd controlled giant floating canvas, which anyone can create and contribute to in the public sphere, on their private device, collaborating with other citizens to create a stunning, visual experiment (http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/a-browser-that-paints-sky.html?m=1).

(Photo Ema Peter)

Such collaboration and the merging of private and public spheres calls for “a need for emergent notions of place, that specify the ways in which people, place and technology is interdependent, relational and mutually constituted” (Forlono 2013:2). This is a methodological challenge due to the “difficulty of defining the spatial and conceptual edges to research” due to the “logic of regional, national and temporal boundaries […being] undercut by mobile networks of connectivity” (Berry et al 2013:2-3). We need to develop a research approach, which develops mobile communications studies within other fields of research, for example anthropological, sociological and psychological studies, to enable a more holistic, and all encompassing approach (Licoppe 2013).

Bibliography

Bull. M. 2004. ‘To each their own bubble’: Mobile spaces of sound in the city’. In: Couldry N and McCarthy A (eds) Mediaspace: Place, Scale and Culture in a Media Age. New York: Routledge, 275–93.

De Souza e Silva, A, 2006, ‘From Cyber to Hybrid: Mobile Technologies as Interfaces of Hybrid Spaces’ In Space and Culture, Vol 9: 3 pp. 261-278.

Gergen, K. 2002. ‘Cell phone technology and the realm of absent presence’. In Katz, J. And. Aakhus. M. 2002. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press

Groening, S, 2010, ‘From ‘a box in the theater of the world’ to ‘the world as your living room’: cellular phones, television and mobile privatization’ in New Media Society Vol 12: 8, pp. 1330-1346.

Habermas. J. 1992. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Polity Press: Cambridge.

Hollows. J. 2008. Domestic Cultures. Maidenhead: Open University Press

Humphreys, L, 2013. ‘Mobile social media: Future challenges and opportunities’ in Mobile Media & Communication Vol 1: 20 pp. 20-25.

Humphreys, L. 2010. ’Mobile social networks and urban public space’, in New Media Society, Vol 12: 5 pp. 763–778.

Licoppe. C. 2013. ‘Merging mobile communication studies and urban research: Mobile locative media, ”onscreen encounters” and the reshaping of the interaction order in public places’. In Mobile Media & Communication Vol. 1 no. 1 122-128

Plant 2001. J. E. Katz. And. Aakhus. M. 2002. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press

Puro 2002. In J. E. Katz. And. Aakhus. M. 2002. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press

Ramasway, R. 17/3/14/. Google Creative Lab, ‘A Browser Which Paints the Sky’ (Available at: http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/a-browser-that-paints-sky.html?m=1, Last accessed: 13/5/14).

Silverstone. R. 1994. Television and Everyday Life London: Routledge,

Wei. R. 2013. ‘Mobile media: Coming of age with a big splash’, in Mobile Media & Communication Vol 1:50.

Williams. R. 1990. Television, Technology & Cultural Form, London: Routledge

Further Resources

Curran, J, Fenton, N. and Freedman, D. 2011. (eds) Misunderstanding the Internet. Routledge: London.

Humphreys, L. 2007. Mobile social networks and social practice: A case study of Dodgeball, In Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Vol 13:1 pp. 341–360

How Algorithms Shape Our World (Kevin Slavin 2011 discusses the impact of algorithms on our culture)

Individuals, the wider public, journalists, technology industry representatives, and government officials’ use flippantly the term ‘digital’, understanding what it actually means however, is a far more complex task than one would assume.

“The techniques, tools, and the conventions of media software applications are not a result of a technological change from ‘analogue’ to ‘digital media’. The shift to digital enables the development of media authoring software […] While we are indeed being ‘digital’, the actual forms of this ‘being’ come from software” (Manovich 2012:3).

With the ongoing development and growth of digital technologies and cities, a more poignant and perhaps helpful or accurate question is to ask, what is software and code, and what are the effects of these vital components that make up the move towards ‘digitalization’? Manovich advises that, “What as users we experience as properties of media content come from software used to create, edit, present and access this content” (2012:3). The capability to be ‘digital’ then, is ultimately only enabled by software.

“The practices of everyday life have become increasingly infused with and mediated by software” (Kitchen & Dodge 2011:3). Software mediation is everywhere; it “actively shapes peoples daily interactions and transactions […] and mediates almost every aspect of everyday life […] within entertainment, communications and mobilities” (Kitchin & Dodge 2011:9). Our entire daily routines, for example, are mediated through software and code, the alarm application on your mobile device or digital radio, travel tickets, engagement with a mobile device on your way to work, throughout your working day on the telephone, or at a computer, in the evening engaging with ‘entertainment’ through leisure practices on your computer, television, or electronic reading device (a Kindle, for example).

 “Software forges modalities of experience – sensorium’s through which the world is made and known” (Fuller in Kitchin & Dodge, 2011:39).

(Image: ‘The Matrix’)

“Software like many other technologies, engenders direct effects in the world in ways never envisioned or expected by their creators, and in ways beyond their control or intervention” (Kitchin & Dodge 2011:39). Software is everywhere, and “alters the conditions through which society, space and time, and thus spatiality, are produced” (Kitchin & Dodge 2011:13). For example, software shapes and speeds up social relations through “email, web pages, virtual worlds, mobile phones, […] and novel social networks (Kitchin & Dodge 2011:12). Not only are we able to meet, communicate and develop relationships through Internet software, but also the instantaneous and immediate nature of it can accelerate such interactions, and overcome, compress or determine spatialities. Similarly Slavin recognizes “this isn’t just information, this is culture, what you see or don’t see is that which is the physics of culture” (2011). Code matters for digital cities, because it mediates entirely its infrastructure; ”it has become the lifeblood of todays emerging information society” (Kitchin & Dodge 2011:3) and is what makes a city ‘digital’, without code it would not be able to operate or exist.

Kitchin and Dodge (2011) argue that code, when materialized through technologically becomes space, ‘an event’ or ‘a doing’, “code exists primarily in order to produce a particular spatiality […] the production of space [therefore] is dependent on code”(2011:16). For example, the Internet can be both mobilized by software on mobile devices, or it can be territorialized in the home by example through a localized Wifi connection and interaction with a personal computer. Different software therefore, creates spatial distinctions. This exemplifies Kitchin and Dodge’s discussion of how “social activities are now regularly transduced as code/space” (2011:20), how software and code contributes to, informs, and creates cultural practices (Slavin 2011), and is therefore ‘spatially active’ (Kitchin and Dodge 2011:ii); code mediates space, and space determines the code from which we can engage.

(Own words: 328)

Bibliography

Berry, D. 2012. Life in Code and Software: Mediated Life in a Complex Computational Ecology. Open Humanities Press.

Kitchin, R. & Dodge, M., 2011. Code/space software and everyday life, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press:

Fuller, M. In Kitchin, R. & Dodge, M., 2011. Code/space software and everyday life, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Manovich, L., 2011. Media After Software. (Available at: http://www.manovich.net/articles.php, Last Accessed: 24.2.14).

Images:

The Matrix

Videos

Slavin, K. 2011. ‘How algorithms shape our world’ (Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDaFwnOiKVE&feature=player_embedded#at=261, Last Accessed: 24.2.14).

Further Resources

There are also some interesting videos available at: http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Life_in_Code_and_Software  Last Accessed 24/2/14.

With increased urbanization, currently half the worlds total population resides in cities (Zenghelis 2012). By 2025 this will increase to 85%, the demands on a city to be ‘smart’ and develop in line with the ever-growing population is great. With increased urbanization came an “increasing mediatization of everyday life” (Lash 2005 in Tarantino & Tosano 2013). It is easy to celebrate the emancipatory, communicative nature of digitalization and the mediation/mediatization of our everyday, but what does this mean for our long-term communication practices, daily routines, and our cities infrastructures? Does a digital city equate to a ‘smart city’, and what actually makes a city ‘smart’?

Townsend understands ‘smart cities’ as “…places where information technology is combined with infrastructure, architecture, everyday objects, and even our bodies to address social, economic and environmental problems” (2013:15). Zenghelis understands such spheres as that which “think, adapt and evolve, and learn to optimize their use of resources” (2012). From an idealistic outlook, we can identify the development of ‘smart cities’ from a holistic perspective: combining a cities infrastructure with long term planning, policy, civic engagement, benchmarking, and learning from each other, with a predominant focus upon development of the ‘right technologies’ and the ‘right relationships’ to aid both economic growth and environmental solutions in the long term (Busch, 2012).

A ‘smart cities’ infrastructure must be resource efficient, through the planning of the urban environment, for environmental and economic sustainability (Zenghelis 2012). Both Townsend (2013) and Zenghelis (2012) stress the importance for identifying and defining outcomes, rather than simply investing in technological development, we must look at not the immediate goals and achievements, but the long-term effects. In achieving this, both scholars (Tarantino & Tosano 2013; Townsend 2013), and technology industry representatives (Busch 2012), focus upon the importance of developing our cities into ‘smart’ environments from the ‘bottom up’ through civic engagement, participation, and technological development.

(Photo by shutterstock.com)

Rarely does a day pass without the recognition of our increasingly digitalized environment and perpetual (Katz and Aakhus 2002) ‘connectedness’. We have all encountered it, through overhearing strangers observations or our personal conversations with friends and colleagues, our communication and interaction practices, information, communication and knowledge sharing are now very much, an ever evolving and changing landscape. Such connectivity is ‘seductive’ (Townsend 2013); we are seduced by applications, websites, social networks or any technology which ‘promises’ further ‘connectivity’. We cannot ignore however, that if civic engagement is a key component in the development of ‘smart city’ infrastructure, the gaps between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’, digital literacy, access inequalities, alongside technological means to limit and shape information (Deibiert & Rohoniski 2010), will all have an impact upon our ‘connectivity’ and digital competency: individually, locally, nationally and globally.

More generally, we need to focus on the effects of how we build and grow our ‘smart’ cities: the actors, stakeholders, drivers and key figures pushing these developments and why, alongside impacts on the individual. Similarly our research approaches must become all encompassing, combining multi-disciplinary, multi-layered analyses (Tarantino & Tosani 2013), combining space, place, object and context, to determine both how our ‘smart/digital city’ is technologically developing, and the impacts of this socially and culturally, on individual and collective behaviours (http://ec2012.lsecities.net/).

References:

Deibert. R. And Rohozinski. R. 2010. Liberation vs Control: The Future of Cyberspace, in The Journal of Democracy, Vol. 21: 4, pp. 43-57.

Katz, J. And. Aakhus. M. 2002. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press

Townsend, A.M., 2013. Smart cities: big data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new utopia, New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company,

Tarantino, M. And. Tosoni, S., 2013. Introduction: Beyond the centrality of media and the centrality of space. First Monday, 18(11) (Available at: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4953, Last Accessed7/2/14).

Lash. 2005. In Tarantino, M. And. Tosoni, S., 2013. Introduction: Beyond the centrality of media and the centrality of space. First Monday, 18(11) (Available at: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4953, Last Accessed7/2/14).

Urban Age Electric City (Availble at: http://ec2012.lsecities.net/, Last Accessed: 17/2/14).

Videos:

Lindsay, Greg, 2012. Urban Age Electric City: ‘Smart Working’ (Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEYscI8XSKo, Last Accessed 17/2/14).

Cerwell, Patrick, 2012, Urban Age Electric City: ‘Smart phones’   (Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biPxrcL6M1s, Last Accessed 17/2/14)

Behrendt, Frauke, 2012. Urban Age Electric City: ‘Smart e-bikes’ (Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbl8MJFoojM, Last Accessed: 17/2/14).

Zenghelis, Dimitri. Urban Age Electric City: ‘The Green Economy: A Global Perspective’ (Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhR-__CCSbo, Last Accessed: 17/2/14).

Urry, John, 2012. Urban Age Electric City: ‘Sociotechnical scenarios for our Changing Futures’ (Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UxAOhxOLYU, Last Accessed 17/2/14)

Images:

‘Smart City’, Shutter Stock, (Available at: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-157118825/stock-photo-conceptual-tag-cloud-containing-words-related-to-smart-city-digital-city-infrastructure-ict.html , Last Accessed: 17/2/14)