Urbanizing technology: When the City Talks Back. ...

Urbanizing technology: When the City Talks Back.

Saskia Sassen at PICNIC Festival 2011, 15 September 2011.

From the presentation: “More and more technology are being ‘plopped down’ on our cities. If you read the engineers’ description, or the technologists’ description, of what that technology can do, you really expect a lot. Mostly, it doesn’t happen. The technology might indeed be able to do A-B-C-D but it perhaps get to do only B. This then raises the question: what is it about that encounter between the technology and - which might be a very well intentioned technology - and the space that is the city. I want to name that space. A space which is when the engineer comes and talks to the city planner or the government official, that space is not visible. It’s like ‘here’s the technology, here is the space with the problem, the city - and it should work’. Mosty, it doesn’t. I want to recover that invisible gap that exists between the technology and the problem that the city might have - and name it and detect it and work at it.

Saskia Sassen, author and professor of Sociology and Co-Chair, The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University.

Thanks to MEDEA co-worker Elisabet M. Nilsson for sharing this link after attending the PICNIC 2011 conference!

If you enjoy this post, make sure to subscribe to Curated by MEDEA

picnicnetwork.org