To date, critical examinations of smart cities have largely ignored their temporality. In this paper I consider smart cities from a temporal perspective arguing that they produce a new timescape and constitute space-time machines. The first half of the paper examines temporal relations and rhythms, exploring how smart cities are the products of and contribute to space-time compression, create new urban polyrhythms, alter the practices of scheduling, and change the pace and tempos of everyday activities. The second half of the paper details how smart cities shape the nature of temporal modalities, considering how they reframe and utilise the relationship between the past, present and future. The analysis draws from a set of 43 interviews conducted in Dublin, Ireland, and highlights that much of the power of smart urbanism is derived from how it produces a new timescape, rather than simply reconfiguring spatial relations.
A paper by Claudio Coletta and Rob Kitchin, ‘Algorhythmic governance: Regulating the ‘heartbeat’ of a city using the Internet of Things’ has been published in Big Data and Society as part of a special section on ‘Algorithms in Culture’. It is open access.
Abstract
To date, research examining the socio-spatial effects of smart city technologies have charted how they are reconfiguring the production of space, spatiality and mobility, and how urban space is governed, but have paid little attention to how the temporality of cities is being reshaped by systems and infrastructure that capture, process and act on real-time data. In this article, we map out the ways in which city-scale Internet of Things infrastructures, and their associated networks of sensors, meters, transponders, actuators and algorithms, are used to measure, monitor and regulate the polymorphic temporal rhythms of urban life. Drawing on Lefebvre, and subsequent research, we employ rhythmanalysis in conjunction with Miyazaki’s notion of ‘algorhythm’ and nascent work on algorithmic governance, to develop a concept of ‘algorhythmic governance’. We then use this framing to make sense of two empirical case studies: a traffic management system and sound monitoring and modelling. Our analysis reveals: (1) how smart city technologies computationally perform rhythmanalysis and undertake rhythm-making that intervenes in space-time processes; (2) distinct forms of algorhythmic governance, varying on the basis of adaptiveness, immediacy of action, and whether humans are in-, on-, or, off-the-loop; (3) and a number of factors that shape how algorhythmic governance works in practice.
One-day Workshop, Hamilton Seminar Room (317), Eolas Building, North Campus, Maynooth University, Ireland, December 14th, 2017
Hosted by the Programmable City project at Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute and the Department of Geography
Places are strictly limited so please register by December 1stRegister Now
In line with the parallel concepts of slow food (e.g. Miele & Murdoch 2002) or slow scholarship (Mountz et al 2015), ‘slow computing’(Fraser 2017)is a provocation to resist. In this case, the idea of ‘slow computing’ prompts users of contemporary technologies to consider ways of refusing the invitation to enroll in data grabbing architectures – constituted in complex overlapping ways by today’s technology services and devices – and by accepting greater levels of inconvenience while also pursuing data security, privacy, and even a degree of isolation from the online worlds of social networks.
The case for slow computing arises from the emerging form and nature of ‘the algorithmic age.’ As is widely noted across the sciences today (e.g. see Boyd & Crawford 2012; Kitchin 2014), the algorithmic age is propelled forward by a wide range of firms and government agencies pursuing the roll-out of data-driven and data-demanding technologies. The effects are varied, differentiated, and heavily debated. However, one obvious effect entails the re-formatting of consumers into data producers who (knowingly or unwittingly) generate millions of data points that technology firms can crunch and manipulate to understand specific markets and society as a whole, not to mention the public and private lives of everyday users. Once these users are dispossessed of the value they help create (Thatcher et al 2016), and then conceivably targeted in nefarious ways by advertisers and political campaigners (e.g. see Winston 2016), the subsequent implications for economic and democratic life are potentially far-reaching.
As such, as we move further into a world of ‘big data’ and the so-called ‘digital economy,’ there is a need to ask how individuals – as well as civil society organizations, small firms, small-scale farmers, and many others – might continue to make appropriate and fruitful use of today’s technologies, but while also trying to avoid becoming another data point in the new data-aggregating market. Does slow computing offer a way to navigate the algorithmic age while taking justice seriously? Can slow computing become a part of diverse strategies or tactics of resistance today? Just what are the possibilities and limitations of slow computing?
This one-day workshop will discuss these and other questions about slow computing.
For further information, please contact mussi@mu.ie
Programme
10.00-10.15 Welcome: Rob Kitchin & Alistair Fraser
10.15-11.30 Keynote address: Stefania Milan, Associate Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam and Associate Professor of Media Innovation (II) at the University of Oslo.
Paper session 1: Problematising the algorithmic age
11.30-11.45 Nancy Ettlinger, Algorithmic affordances for resistance
11.45-12.00 Jess Hoare, Slippery people: Technologization and technoratization of cities and bodies
12.00-12.15 Pip Thornton, Language in the age of algorithmic reproduction: a critique of linguistic capitalism and an artistic intervention
12.15-12.30 Chris Pinchen, Dance Like Your Microwave Isn’t Watching: (From CryptoParty to Teen Vogue via Emma Goldman and reverse engineered sex toys)
12.30-13.10 Discussion
13.10-14.00 Lunch
Paper Session 2: Rights and resistance in the algorithmic age
14.00-14.15 Aphra Kerr, Bringing the citizen back into the Algorithmic Age
14.15-14.30 Gabriela Avram, Community networks as a form of resistance
14.30-14.45 Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake, Digital disengagement as a right and a privilege: challenges and socio-political possibilities of refusal in dataised times
14.45-15.00 Marguerite Barry, Kalpana Shankar, Aphra Kerr, Slowcalisation – towards an ethic of care for human-data interactions
15.00-15.40 Discussion
15.40-16.00 Coffee
Paper Session 3: Practising slow computing
16.00-16.15 Paul O’Neill, Practice what we preach: Tactical media art as a form of political resistance
16.15-16.30 Rachel O’Dwyer, Coined Liberty: Cash as Resistance to Transactional Dataveillance
16.30-16.45 Lindsay Ems, Global Resistance through Technology Non-Use: An Amish Case Study
16.45-17.00 Kate Symons, OxChain – Reshaping development donors and recipients
The modern retail store is a complex coded assemblage and data-intensive environment, its operations and management mediated by a number of interlinked big data systems. This paper draws on an ethnography of a superstore in Ireland to examine how these systems modulate the functioning of the store and working practices of employees. It was found that retail work involves a continual movement between a governance regime of control reliant on big data systems which seek to regulate and harnesses formal labour and automation into enterprise planning, and a disciplinary regime that deals with the symbolic, interactive labour that workers perform and acts as a reserve mode of governmentality if control fails. This continual movement is caused by new systems of control being open to vertical and horizontal fissures. While retail functions as a coded assemblage of control, systems are too brittle to sustain the code/space and governmentality desired.
We are pleased to announce five visiting positions to Maynooth University to work with the Programmable City and/or Building City Dashboards research teams located in the MU Social Sciences Institute and the National Centre for Geocomputation. We are particularly keen to host visitors with an expertise in urban data, data visualisation, augmented/virtual reality, media art and installations, and spatial analytics/modelling, either from a social theory or applied/technical perspective.
It is anticipated that visitors would be based in Maynooth for two to four weeks and would present a seminar and discuss their work with Maynooth scholars, and also explore potential future collaborations with respect to research, funding applications, publications, events, and student exchanges.
All visits must take place by the end of July 2018. The maximum value for costs for each visitor is €3,000 (to include travel, accommodation, subsistence, but not salary) payable for receipted expenses. Any costs associated with the visit beyond €3,000 will need to be met by the visitor.
To apply, please send an expression of interest that details your relevant expertise and reasons for wanting to visit, along with a CV and prospective dates of visit to Rob.Kitchin@mu.ie, with the subject line ‘Visiting position MU’. Queries about the positions can also be sent to the same email address. Closing date: 24th September 2017
These visiting posts are funded by Science Foundation Ireland as part of a supplemental grant to Prof. Rob Kitchin’s European Research Council funded Programmable City project. The Building City Dashboard project is also funded by Science Foundation Ireland.
The Dublin Dashboard, developed by both projects, and presently being redeveloped is at http://www.dublindashboard.ie/ @dublindashboard
Between the two projects there are presently four PIs (Prof. Chris Brunsdon, Prof. Rob Kitchin, Martin Charlton, Dr. Jeneen Naji), 11 postdocs and 8 PhD students. Project partners include Ordnance Survey Ireland, Central Statistics Office, Smart Dublin, and Smart Cork Gateway.
The 4th annual Programmable City workshop takes place next week (5-6 Sept) at Maynooth University. This year’s theme is the right to the smart city, exploring ideas of citizenship, civic participation, social justice, urban commons and co-creation. We’re very much looking forward to welcoming our speakers and guests and to listening to the papers and engaging in discussion. The event is already at capacity, but as with previous years we will be videoing all the talks and will make them available on the Progcity website in due course.
Introduction: Rob Kitchin, The Right to the Smart City.
Session 1: Citizenship and the Smart City
Katharine Willis (Plymouth, UK), Ava Fatah (UCL, UK), Ana Baltazar (UFMG, Brazil) & Satyarupar Shekhar (CAG, India): Whose Right to the Smart City?
Jiska Engelbert (Erasmus, Rotterdam): Whose right to (define) the smart city? Extending our critical pointers beyond citizen participation
Réka Pétercsák & Mark Maguire (Maynooth): Participation in the Smart City: An Ethnographic Study of Citizen Engagement in Dublin
Cesare Di Feliciantonio (Maynooth): Against the romance of the smart community. The case of Milano 4 You.
Session 2: Urban Commons
Ramon Ribera-Fumaz (UoC, Barcelona): Citizens for Digital Social Innovation: Between Smartness and Commoning?
Michiel de Lange (Utrecht, Netherlands): Datafying the commons: data publics and smart citizenship
Paolo Cardullo (Maynooth): Smart Commons or a smart approach to the Commons?
Session 3: Co-creation and city governance
Nancy Odendaal (Cape Town, South Africa): Appropriating ‘big data’: exploring the emancipatory potential of the data strategies of civil society organisations in Cape Town, South Africa
Anna Davies (TCD): Smart flows? Commodification, commons and consumption for smarter cities
Robert Bradshaw (Maynooth): Democratic Rationalizations in the Bikeshare Sector
Session 4: Public labs, citizen-centric living labs, citizen science
Tara Whelan (Limerick): Matters of fact and matters of concern: issues of legitimacy, trust and resistance in citizen science
Gabriele Schliwa (Manchester, UK): Smart cities by design? Interrogating human-centred design as a tool for civic participation
Session 5: Shared city making (civic hacking, civic media)
Andrew Schrock (Chapman, USA): Toward an Actual Theory of the City: “Civic Tech” as a Mid-Level, Organic Model of Urban Change
Catherine D’Ignazio, Eric Gordon & Elizabeth Christoforetti (Emerson, USA): Participatory Urban Sensing: a Blueprint for a Community-led Smart City
Sung-Yueh Perng (Maynooth): Civic technology, social innovation and the reshaping of smart cities
