Tag Archives: temporality

Digital Timescapes book

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Today is the official publication date of ‘Digital Timescapes: Technology, Temporality and Society’, a new book by Rob Kitchin, which is an output from the Progcity project. Ordering details can be found on the Polity Books website.

The back cover blurb

Digital technologies are having a profound effect on the temporalities of individuals, households and organisations. We now expect to be able to instantly source a vast array of information at any time and from anywhere, as well as buy goods with the click of a button and have them delivered within hours, while time management apps and locative media have altered how everyday scheduling and mobility unfolds.

Digital Timescapes makes the case that we have transitioned to an era where the production and experience of time is qualitatively different to the pre-digital era. Rob Kitchin provides a synoptic account of this transition, charting how digital technologies, in a wide range of manifestations, are reconfiguring everyday temporalities. Attention is focused on the temporalities associated with six sets of everyday practices: history and memory; politics and policy; governance and governmentality; mobility and logistics; planning and development; and work and labour. Critically, how to challenge and reorder digitally mediated temporal power is examined through the development of an ethics of temporal care and temporal justice.

Conceptually and empirically rich, Digital Timescapes is an essential guide to our new temporal regime. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Media Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Human Geography, and History and Memory Studies, as well as those who are interested in how digital technologies are transforming society.

Here are the table of contents and a flavour of the technologies and temporalities discussed (click to enlarge).

      

New paper: The timescape of smart cities

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Rob Kitchin has a new paper published online first in Annals of the Association of American Geographers, The timescape of smart cities. doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2018.1497475

Abstract

To date, critical examinations of smart cities have largely ignored their temporality. In this article, I consider smart cities from a spatiotemporal perspective, arguing that they produce a new timescape and constitute space–time machines. The first half of the article examines spatiotemporal 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 article details how smart cities shape the nature of temporal modalities, considering how they reframe and utilize the relationship among the past, present, and future. The analysis draws from a set of forty-three 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.

New paper: The timescape of smart cities

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Rob Kitchin has published a new Progcity working paper (35) – The timescape of smart cities.

Abstract

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.

Key words: time, timescape, temporality, space-time, smart cities, rhythm, pace, tempo, scheduling, real-time, past, present, future

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New paper: Algorhythmic governance: Regulating the ‘heartbeat’ of a city using the Internet of Things

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Claudio Coletta and Rob Kitchin have published a new Programmable City working paper (No. 22) – Algorhythmic governance: Regulating the ‘heartbeat’ of a city using the Internet of Things – which is due to be delivered at the Algorithms in Culture workshop at the University of California Berkeley, 1-2 December 2016.

It can be downloaded from: OSF, ResearchGate, Academia

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 paper, 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 (1992[2004]), and subsequent research, we employ rhythmanalysis in conjunction with Miyazaki’s (2012, 2013a/b) 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-work that intervenes in space-time processes; (2) three distinct forms of algorhythmic governance, varying on the basis of adaptiveness, immediacy of action, and whether humans are in, on-, of-, off-the-loop; (3) and a number of factors that shape how algorhythmic governance works in practice.

Key words: algorhythm, algorithmic governance, rhythmanalysis, Internet of Things, smart cities, time geography