Brandt, Tobias

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Interview with David Prendergast on “Mediating Between Technology and People in Smart City Transformations”

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PROFILEInterview with David Prendergast on ‘‘Mediating BetweenTechnology and People in Smart City Transformations’’Tobias BrandtPublished online: 28 February 2018 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2018Dr. David Prendergastdavid@humanintheloop.ieDr. David Prendergast is a social anthropologist, musicianand photography enthusiast. His research over the last20 years has focused on later life-course transitions and hehas authored a wide range of books and articles on ageing,health, technology, and social relationships. David’s doc-torate, completed in 2002 at Cambridge University, waspublished as a monograph ‘From Elder to Ancestor, OldAge, Death and Inheritance in Modern Korea’. Davidsubsequently worked on several major projects at theUniversities of Cambridge, Sheffield and Trinity CollegeDublin, including a history of the British Colonial WildlifeConservation, paid home care services in Ireland, and anESRC study into death, dying and bereavement in Englandand Scotland.David joined Intel in 2006 as Social Science Lead in theDigital Health Group and Principal Investigator in theTechnology Research for Independent Living Centre. In2011, he moved to Intel Labs as User Experience Lead andhelped set up and run the Intel Collaborative ResearchInstitute for Sustainable Connected Cities with ImperialCollege and University College London until 2015. Inrecent years David has focused on directing Urban LivingLabs and ‘Internet of Things’ research testbeds in London,San Jose and Dublin. David left Intel in 2018 in order toreturn to his anthropological roots.David has also held the positions of Visiting Professorof Healthcare Innovation at Trinity College Dublin andExternal Examiner to the Design Ethnography MSc atDundee University. His most recent volume ‘Ageing andthe Digital Life Course’ edited with Chiara Garattini wasnamed a CHOICE ‘Outstanding Academic Title’ by theAmerican Library Association and was described as one of‘the two most fascinating books on aging in the 21stCentury’ by the Huffington Post.Fortune Magazine named David a ‘hero of the 500’ in2014 for his involvement in helping establish LauraLynnHouse, Ireland’s first children’s hospice.BISE: David, as a social anthropologist, you approachthe phenomenon of digital transformations from a differentangle than IS research. What fascinates you about theeffect of IT on human relationships and social cohesion?Prendergast: The history of human civilizations hasbeen shaped by the relationship between society, technol-ogy, and environment. For instance, buffalo jumps havebeen used for over 6000 years by indigenous plains people,such as the Blackfoot in Canada. They reshaped the land-scape with hundreds of cairns, drive channels, and dis-guised runners that would gradually change the course ofthe herds and force them at full gallop over a cliff whereDr. T. Brandt (&)Technology and Operations Management, Rotterdam School ofManagement, Erasmus University, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50,3062 Rotterdam, The Netherlandse-mail: brandt@rsm.nl123Bus Inf Syst Eng 60(3):265–267 (2018)https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-018-0531-7they would be dispatched by waiting warriors. The car-casses would later be efficiently processed by a nearbycamp, conveniently situated by a confluence of rivers andtrading networks.The invention of both gunpowder and the printing pressrewrote political, geographic and military boundaries. Newmethods of glass manufacturing helped enable revolutionsin science and medicine, and in my own research area inKorea, the development of new irrigation techniques dra-matically increased rice production and led to a populationexplosion that changed social customs, inheritance law andfamily practices. From the Industrial Revolution and Cot-ton Mills of Lancashire through to what Klaus Schwab,founder of the World Economic Forum, rather grandly callsthe Fourth Industrial Revolution, it is not just fascinatingbut critical to reflect on how society shapes and is shapedby the inventions and innovations generated by humaningenuity. Taking Schwab as an example, simply begin toconsider the emergent social implications of ‘‘new tech-nologies that are fusing the physical, digital, and biologicalworlds, impacting all disciplines, economies and industries,and even challenging ideas about what it means to behuman.’’BISE: Much of your recent work focuses on ageing in adigital world. What challenges and opportunities do yousee in this context resulting from smart citytransformations?Prendergast: Shifting population dynamics in the EU-28 will see the proportion of its population aged 65–79grow from 13.6% in 2015 to 16.5% in 2030 and 17.2% by2050. Even more dramatic will be the doubling of thoseaged 80 ? from contemporary levels of 5.3% to 10.9% ofthe European population by 2050. Imagine that, nearly11% of the European population aged 80 years or older.Yet we are paying relatively little attention to preparing oursocieties for the coming age wave. It will bring bothopportunities and challenges. I still don’t understand whythe heterogeneous category of ‘older people’ receives solittle attention from policy makers, city planners or busi-nesses. Older adults in Europe have a combined spendingpower of 3000 billion euro and in the past two decadesconsumer spending among those aged 60 ? rose 50%faster compared to under 30. We are going to have toredefine our ideas of what constitutes old and pay greaterheed as researchers, governments and communities.Technology is going to help, but it is, and can only ever be,a partial solution. In terms of smart cities, one of the keythemes I built into the Intel Institute for Sustainable Con-nected Cities was making the invisible visible. By this, Iwas not merely interested in mapping underground cablesor visualizing microscopic air quality particles, but also inhow to understand and improve the hidden lives of citydwellers, and especially our older populations. When wedesign for ageing-in-place, we need to think beyond thebricks and mortar of the home, to how we can successfullyage as part of a community. Safe flexible transportationsystems are incredibly important. A truly smart city thinksabout the variegated needs of its citizens. As an ethnog-rapher who has interviewed hundreds of communitydwelling older adults, I have witnessed the hardship causedby loneliness and social isolation. Another pressing issue,as the 15–64 year old population substantially decreasesfrom 67 to 57% in Europe, will be the reduced numbers of‘invisible’ family carers. In the UK alone, six millioncaregivers are currently estimated to be saving the BritishNHS £119 Billion. It is only logical that we need to findways to tangibly support such caregivers as well as lever-age the potential of the older population itself. We need tokeep thoughtfully considering and discussing our healthand social care systems, the role of the family, hybridmodels of care, including companionship care. Most of all,how do we keep people engaging as active members ofsociety? You’d be surprised at how few older people trulyperceived themselves as old. This normally comes after aterrible life course change – a bereavement, a bad fall, acritical health event or when someone feels like a burden.People need to feel they are leading useful and meaningfullives.BISE: There is an ongoing discussion about the ‘digitaldivide’ between more and less tech-savvy people, which isoften related to a divide between the old and the young, aswell as between rich and poor people. With the focus onsmart cities, are we enforcing another divide between urbanand rural areas? How could we make the benefits of digi-tization accessible to everyone?Prendergast: Technologists often view the world infairly simple, power neutral terms. The ambition, notalways achieved, tends to be to design technologies such asedge devices, cloud infrastructures and end to end Internetof Things’ platforms, to be modular, scalable and trans-ferable across contexts. From this perspective, many of thethings developed for a city should be also useful for asmaller town or village. This said, of course inequities doexist. I usually prefer to think in terms of designing forcommunities rather than strictly cities, though there isadvantage, not least in terms of purchasing power andaccess to infrastructure, when working with city managersand departments. In fact, to alter the lens slightly, I wouldsuggest we deconstruct the idea of the ‘urban area’ as well.There are many groups and communities in urban areasthat stand outside the discourse and focus typically asso-ciated with ‘smart cities’. It was for this reason, that IntelLabs colleagues of mine in London became involved withthe H2020 Organicity project. The aim of this was to createa high-quality urban IoT platform and make it available foruse by groups such as start-ups, social and environmental123266 T. Brandt: Interview with David Prendergast, Bus Inf Syst Eng 60(3):265–267 (2018)innovators, and SME’s who would not normally have theresources or technical expertise to engage. I think manymore experimental, educational, and enabling initiativeslike this are required, in both rural and urban areas.BISE: From your experience, what are some bestpractices for achieving people-centric smart city transfor-mations and what are things to avoid?Prendergast: I think smart cities should be approachedfrom a transdisciplinary perspective. That is, we shouldutilize the skillsets and worldviews of many disciplines totackle ‘wicked problems’ from a variety of angles. The keyword here though is ‘problems’. A city is an incrediblylarge and complex organization, or rather collection oforganizations to deal with. Top-down approaches seem tofrequently spawn top-down technology-driven solutions.Personally, I prefer asking the question to stakeholders‘what is a particular need or issue you want to address?’whether they are city managers, stadium directors, parkkeepers, or garbage collectors. This helps focus the con-versation and provides a manageable set of boundarieswithin which to plan research, design prototypes and test inthe real world. A second practice I advocate is conductingas much ethnography or in situ observation as possiblebefore locking down your design or engineering require-ments. Try to understand the layers of the problem set aswell as the work flows, processes and limitations of itsdifferent stakeholders. Also at this stage, consider whetherthe local challenge is something that is also an issue inother cities and markets. As a social anthropologist, I spenda lot of time talking and working with different ‘publics’ orcommunities of geography and practice across a particularenvironment. The interesting thing about cities of course isthat ‘people’ as a unit of analysis may be a private citizen,a city employee, community group, or business, to namejust a few possibilities.BISE: The BISE community has a long history ofinvestigating socio-technical systems, historically often ina business context. Over the past years, however, therehave been more and more calls for research with a societalimpact, and the digital transformation of urban life is justone of the areas in which such an impact is possible.Having worked and engaged with the community, wheredo you think lie the greatest potential contributions inaddressing this societal grand challenge?Prendergast: Engineering community on differentprojects for at least five years now and I think we have allbeen delighted with the synergies and outputs from a col-laboration between our disciplines. An ethnographicapproach helps to unpick complexity and understandnuance whereas I greatly value the rigor, systematicthinking, and modelling capabilities that BISE scholars andDesign Science can bring to the table. Working as I oftendo in ‘Living Labs’ and IoT Testbeds this is particularlyuseful once an artefact such as a prototype or change in asocio-technical system is introduced into the equation. Infact, two of my recent projects, ‘building an IoT capabilitymaturity framework for Smart Cities’ and ‘exploring howto design autonomous vehicles for older adults’ weregreatly enhanced by having BISE postdoctoral researchersand thinkers working on them.BISE: David, thank you very much for your time andfor this interview.123T. Brandt: Interview with David Prendergast, Bus Inf Syst Eng 60(3):265–267 (2018) 267

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Interview with David Prendergast on “Mediating Between Technology and People in Smart City Transformations”

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