Crowd-Sourcing the Smart City: Using Big Geosocial Media Metrics in Urban Governance

Using Big Data to better understand urban questions is an exciting field with challenging methodological and theoretical problems. It is also, however, potentially troubling when Big Data (particularly derived from social media) is applied uncritically to urban governance via the ideas and practices of “smart cities”. This essay reviews both the historical depth of central ideas within smart city governance —particular the idea that enough data/information/knowledge can solve society problems—but also the ways that the most recent version differs. Namely, that the motivations and ideological underpinning behind the goal of urban betterment is largely driven by technology advocates and neoliberalism rather than the strong social justice themes associated with earlier applications of data to cities. Geosocial media data and metrics derived from them can provide useful insight and policy direction. But one must be ever mindful that metrics don’t simply measure; in the process of deciding what is important and possible to measure, these data are simultaneously defining what cities are

Computing Utopia: The Horizons of Computational Economies in History and Science Fiction

This article connects the recent flourishing of economic science fiction with the increasing technicity of contemporary financial markets, to pose questions about computational economies, both historical and fictional, and their ambiguous utopian currents. It explores examples of computational economies and societies in which economic resources are largely defined and allocated by computational systems to challenge—if not entirely dispel—assumptions about the inextricability of computation and the dystopian specters of capitalism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism. The article puts insights from the histories of cybernetics, computer science, and economics into dialogue with sf novels that experiment with different sociopolitical configurations of computational economies. The novels that are the primary focus of the discussion are The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin and If Then (2015) by Matthew De Abaitua. The article concludes with some thoughts about the use of history and fiction for expanding the imaginative horizons of the computable in economics

The State Machine : politics, ideology, and computation in Chile, 1964-1973

Thesis (Ph. D. in History and Social Study of Science and Technology (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 343-392).This dissertation argues that Chile's history of computing is tightly interwoven with the history of the Chilean state. It begins by documenting the government use of mechanical tabulating machines during the 1920s and 1930s and concludes with the disbanding of the state computer enterprise known as ECOM in 1991. The dissertation pays particular attention to the period between 1964 and 1973, which was marked by the presidencies of Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Montalva and Socialist Salvador Allende Gossens. The dissertation addresses three central questions. First, it asks how Chilean economic policies and political events shaped the country's technological history. Second, it asks what we can learn from computers if we treat them as texts for understanding historical processes in Chile, the Latin American region, and the developing world. Finally, it addresses how Chile's political leaders used computing machines in their attempts to control Chile's social, economic, and political development and to forward their plans to modernize the Chilean nation. It argues that computers proved valuable not only in producing the Chile of today but in articulating national goals that changed over time.(cont.) Government, use of computers both reflected and made possible the ideological programs of developmentalism, socialism, and neoliberalism that dominated Chilean politics during the period under study. Based predominantly on archival research and oral history interviews, the dissertation follows a narrative format. It shows how computing technologies contributed to the practice of statecraft, influenced ideas of modernization, and reflected the tensions between Chile and the industrialized nations of the developed world.by Jessica Eden Miller Medina.Ph.D.in History and Social Study of Science and Technology (HAST

Vigilância camuflada? Compreendendo a contra-vigilância como prática e discurso crítico

In 2008, an exhibition center in Northern Spain hosted a project called Situation Room which tried to recreate an “open” control room drawing, on the one hand, on the experience of previous hacklabs or medialabs set up by social movements, and, on the other, on an operations room designed in the 70s in order to gather and analyze economic data to organize the Chilean economy under Salvador Allende’s government, called Project Cybersyn. The fact that an artistic/activist project would use a government initiative of surveillance as a reference brings to the fore questions about what it means to subvert the surveillance society, and the limits of privacy in the information society. What is identified as the problem in critical discourses, the ability to monitor people’s everyday moves and store personal data or the aims of surveillance? Or maybe it is the ideology or political affiliation of the surveillants that makes the difference? Are there instances in which the massive storage of personal data could be justified? Is all surveillance wrong or can control and data-mining be put to the service of dissent or the common good? This paper explores how definitions of counter-surveillance, sousveillance , privacy and data protection have been theorized in the existing literature and artistic practices and confront them with recurring themes in critical surveillance studies.En los últimos años diferentes proyectos artísticos se han inspirado en prácticas de vigilancia y los procesos sociales capturados por éstas. De la misma forma que en los estudios de vigilancia existe un debate sobre las diferencias entre las diferentes formas de contravigilancia, estos proyectos ofrecen diferentes perspectivas en torno a la posibilidad de recrear, cooptar o denunciar la vigilancia, y se relacionan con el fenómeno de formas diferentes. Apartir de una selección de seis proyectos artísticos sobre la vigilancia y el análisis de las cuestiones relacionadas con el poder, la tecnología y la agencia, este artículo utiliza el arte como puerta de entrada para la exploración de cuestiones que permanecen abiertas en el debate académico: ¿en qué consiste la subversión de la sociedad de vigilancia?, ¿cuáles son las diferencias entre recrear, co-optar y denunciar cuando se pretende concienciar sobre los aspectos cotidianos de las sociedades vigiladas? A partir de estos seis ejemplos artísticos, exploramos las formas en que los proyectos artísticos han planteado estas temáticas y las contraponen a la evolución de tratamiento de estos temas por parte de los estudios de vigilancia. Mientras que la mayor parte de los debates académicos se nutren de contribuciones académicas, este artículo propone una mirada al estado de los estudios de vigilancia desde las prácticas artísticas y las reflexiones que éstas sugieren como punto de partida, encontrando sorprendentes similitudes entre estas dos perspectivas, y sus debilidades actuales.Nos últimos anos, diferentes projetos artísticos se inspiraram nas práticas de vigilância e nos processos sociais capturados por elas. Do mesmo modo que nos estudos de vigilância existe um debate sobre as diferentes formas de contra-vigilância, estes projetos oferecem diferentes perspectivas sobre a consistência de recriar, cooptar ou denunciar a vigilância, além de se relacionar com o fenômeno de maneiras variadas. A partir da seleção de seis projetos artísticos sobre vigilância e a análise de quais seriam suas compreensões sobre as questões relacionadas ao poder, a tecnologia e os agenciamentos, este texto utiliza a arte como porta de entrada para a exploração de assuntos que permanecem indefinidos no debate acadêmico. Em que consiste a subversão na sociedade de vigilância? O que diferencia recriar, cooptar e denunciar quando o que se pretende é conscientizar sobre aspectos cotidianos da sociedade vigiada? A partir destes seis exemplos artísticos, este artigo explora como tais projetos desenvolvem a temática da vigilância, traçando paralelos com as abordagens acadêmicas

Cybernetics of Value Co-creation

The paradigm shift from value creation to value "co-creation" calls for a deeper grasp of organizational learning in marketing theory. This paper adopts a cybernetic view of the process of value co-creation to shed light on its relevant aspects and to supply a framework to implement operations and strategies to foster this process. Can cybernetics help to better understand the process of value co-creation? Can the Viable System Model (Beer, 1979) be a sound approach to shape a more effective value co-creation process able to achieve higher satisfaction and value? In this theoretical paper we will show how cybernetic can be effectively used to give a positive answer to both questions abov

FinBook: literary content as digital commodity

This short essay explains the significance of the FinBook intervention, and invites the reader to participate. We have associated each chapter within this book with a financial robot (FinBot), and created a market whereby book content will be traded with financial securities. As human labour increasingly consists of unstable and uncertain work practices and as algorithms replace people on the virtual trading floors of the worlds markets, we see members of society taking advantage of FinBots to invest and make extra funds. Bots of all kinds are making financial decisions for us, searching online on our behalf to help us invest, to consume products and services. Our contribution to this compilation is to turn the collection of chapters in this book into a dynamic investment portfolio, and thereby play out what might happen to the process of buying and consuming literature in the not-so-distant future. By attaching identities (through QR codes) to each chapter, we create a market in which the chapter can ‘perform’. Our FinBots will trade based on features extracted from the authors’ words in this book: the political, ethical and cultural values embedded in the work, and the extent to which the FinBots share authors’ concerns; and the performance of chapters amongst those human and non-human actors that make up the market, and readership. In short, the FinBook model turns our work and the work of our co-authors into an investment portfolio, mediated by the market and the attention of readers. By creating a digital economy specifically around the content of online texts, our chapter and the FinBook platform aims to challenge the reader to consider how their personal values align them with individual articles, and how these become contested as they perform different value judgements about the financial performance of each chapter and the book as a whole. At the same time, by introducing ‘autonomous’ trading bots, we also explore the different ‘network’ affordances that differ between paper based books that’s scarcity is developed through analogue form, and digital forms of books whose uniqueness is reached through encryption. We thereby speak to wider questions about the conditions of an aggressive market in which algorithms subject cultural and intellectual items – books – to economic parameters, and the increasing ubiquity of data bots as actors in our social, political, economic and cultural lives. We understand that our marketization of literature may be an uncomfortable juxtaposition against the conventionally-imagined way a book is created, enjoyed and shared: it is intended to be

The Politics of Platformization: Amsterdam Dialogues on Platform Theory

What is platformization and why is it a relevant category in the contemporary political landscape? How is it related to cybernetics and the history of computation? This book tries to answer such questions by engaging in multidisciplinary dialogues about the first ten years of the emerging fields of platform studies and platform theory. It deploys a narrative and playful approach that makes use of anecdotes, personal histories, etymologies, and futurable speculations to investigate both the fragmented genealogy that led to platformization and the organizational and economic trends that guide nowadays platform sociotechnical imaginaries

Smart City or How to Go to City Hall through the Cloud

On the campaign trail in 2013, then-mayoral candidate Denis Coderre promised to transform Montréal into a smart city. Since then, the city released a strategy and action plan, established the Smart and Digital City Office and introduced several projects as ‘smart’ initiatives. Still, what is a smart city and what does it mean to be smart? First, this thesis demonstrates that even if the smart city concept is often seen as ‘new’, it includes many central elements found in the early days of computing technology. Second, this research draws some parallels between the past and the present when it comes to justifying a new urban paradigm. Then, using critical discourse analysis and interviews with two key actors in the Montréal city apparatus, this thesis will reveal how the model was put in place, as well as some of the challenges that the administration faced in the process. By focusing on the regional development of Montréal, Québec, Canada as a smart city, this thesis hopes to make a meaningful contribution to the discussion about the relationship between technology, politics and the future of cities

Theory, reality, and possibilities for a digital/communicative socialist network society

Digital capitalism is guided by the organising principles of digital automation, information processing, and communication. It rests on the consolidation of relations of exploitation of digital labour based on flexibility and generating precarity. It makes profit from user data under conditions of surveillance. What would an alternative paradigm look like? This paper aims to sketch a possible socialist society resting on digital technology but organised on a different logic, namely that of autonomous production, leisure, and social engagement. It draws on relevant theories of the Left, evaluates them against the reality of digital capitalism, and suggests structural and user practice alternatives that can pave the way towards a digital/communicative socialism. This paper engages with the works of Czech philosopher Radovan Richta (1924-1983) and Austrian-French philosopher André Gorz (1923-2007). It shows that their ideas on the scientific and technological revolution and post-industrial socialism are highly relevant for the analysis and discussion of digital/communicative socialism