The Captured City — Real Life

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You can’t go about your day anymore without tripping over smart stuff — smart refrigerators, smart toothbrushes, smart locks, smart whatever. All this smartness usually amounts to equipping the previously dumb thing with sensors that collect data, software for algorithmic operation, and internet capabilities so it can constantly communicate with other things and be remotely controlled by its owners, makers, and hackers. But what does it mean to apply “smart” to an entire city? From the beginning, the “smart” model of urbanism has been an ambiguously defined project. It promises to empower urban planning by turning the city into a nexus of real-time data on every aspect of how the city (and its inhabitants) function and optimize urban infrastructure by slapping sensors everywhere and connecting it all together into a centralized network. It promises to thrive under conditions of fiscal austerity and fierce competition by importing entrepreneurialism into city hall. Ultimately, it promis

The Captured City The “smart city” makes infrastructure and surveillance indistinguishable Jathan Sadowski November 12, 2019 share Image: By Ventral is Golden . Courtesy the artist. You can’t go about your day anymore without tripping over smart stuff — smart refrigerators, smart toothbrushes, smart locks, smart whatever. All this smartness usually amounts to equipping the previously dumb thing with sensors that collect data, software for algorithmic operation, and internet capabilities so it can constantly communicate with other things and be remotely controlled by its owners, mak

The Captured City — Real Life

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