In Being Human in Digital Cities, Myria Georgiou explores how technology reshapes urban life, transforming how we relate to ourselves, each other and the space around us. Examining the digital order’s influence, including datafication, surveillance and mapping, Georgiou’s essential book advocates for centring humans through the paradigm of the “right to the city” based on social justice, equity, democracy and sustainability, writes Samira Allioui.

Being Human in Digital Cities. Myria Georgiou. Polity. 2023.

Technology, embodied through so-called smart cities (places where traditional networks and services are made more efficient with the use of digital solutions for the benefit of their inhabitants and business), has been implemented into all aspects of public and private urban life. Recently, the United Nations created the Hub for Human Rights and Digital Technology as a way to encourage cities to strategise around their “right to have digital rights,” stating that: “Together, as we seek to recover from the pandemic, we must learn to better curtail harmful use of digital technology and better unleash its power as a democratising force and an enabler”.

Myria Georgiou’s Being Human in Digital Cities addresses the question, how do digital cities change what it means to be human in relation to digital urbanism and digital justice? It has never been more urgent to understand how the digital order functions and its implications for controlled cities and lives. The city is where so many hopes and fears emerge for the future of humanity, and therefore studying its changing nature in a digitalised world is crucial. Moreover, the relationship between the transformation of cities and the right to the city has not yet been seriously explored.

It has never been more urgent to understand how the digital order functions and its implications for controlled cities and lives.

Intrigued by the growing symbolic power of technology in regulating the city, Georgiou demonstrates how an unstable but tenacious urban order is planned, performed, and sometimes resisted on platforms and networks to sustain the social order in cities that experience perpetual crisis. Georgiou’s principal thesis is that the digital order reflects the revived and contradictory mobilisation of humanist values across different quarters of the city. Human-centric conceptions of technology are at the heart of an emerging digital urban order. According to Georgiou, these values are gaining renewed currency by imagining and planning relationships between humans and data.

The book identifies the rhetorics and performances of the digital order as core elements of processes of change in the relational constitution of cities, technologies, and power (42). The book’s generative force comes from Georgiou’s assertion that a dynamic comeback of humanist values in and for the digital city is underway. Her central argument is that humanism matters when it mobilises (populist humanism), normalises (demotic humanism) and contests (critical humanism) power (143-144). Considering the various implications of being human in digital cities is a critical topic at a time when declarations and manifestos have emerged worldwide claiming to protect citizens’ digital rights. Digital rights are a range of protections regarding access to the internet, privacy, transparency regarding how data is used, control over how data is used and democratic participation in municipal technology decisions. They need to be protected because they represent the bridge that links our traditional human rights with the complexities of the online world, ensuring that our digital identities, decisions, and interactions are treated with the same protection and respect as in the physical world.

[Digital rights] link our traditional human rights with the complexities of the online world, ensuring that our digital identities, decisions, and interactions are treated with the same protection and respect as in the physical world.

The digital order has become a post-neoliberal response to neoliberal crises, and it breaks from the strategies of neoliberalism in different ways (31). It is a new order which “emerges because of widespread pressures to recognize the sacredness of life and the value of society” (30). Through “the promotion of unpredictability, openness and diversity, the digital order integrates instability into stability” (31). The author subtly explains why she privileges the category of the human and consequently rehumanisation-dehumanisation in understanding the digital order. Since technology is more and more infiltrating our consciousness, we become addicted to our devices that distract us and feed us information. But paradoxically, while these changes drive us to retreat to corners of comfort, we try to conquer divisiveness by cultivating communities. A research journey across eight cities of the global North and South – from London to Seoul, and from Los Angeles to Athens – over seven years has shaped Georgiou’s understanding of the digital order. From this grounding, she explains how she adopts a decentred conception of the city which privileges a transnational and transurban vision and practice. Georgiou’s methodological choice of a critical humanist approach promotes an open, creative, and participant-led approach that includes the perspectives of humans.

Georgiou adopts a decentred conception of the city which privileges a transnational and transurban vision and practice.

Her compelling research reveals two paradoxes. First, migrants’ experiences, gathered through interviews conducted with 60 teens in Athens and Los Angeles, present rehumanisation-dehumanisation as a continuum rather than a blunt proposition. Second, the Global South is ever present in cities of the Global North (113). Georgiou’s findings suggest that becoming urban reinforces autonomy. For example, migrants’ everyday experiences, mediated and linked through urban migration and technology, reveal their acute awareness that the development of autonomy protects them from certain kinds of dehumanisation such as exclusion Moreover, during this research conducted in the context of a European project on young people’s digital lives, Georgiou witnessed sentiments of enthusiasm and relief when participants were talking about a commonly used urban technology: Google Maps, including Google Earth and Street View (115). Participants were relieved because “becoming urban is not only about learning but also about being an autonomous subject in navigating city”.

Her work evidences the value of everyday technologies (namely, smartphones and apps) and the concept of “secret city” (117) for those excluded from so many other spaces of representation. A secret city only exists in a sociotechnical imagination. As a place of consumption, it is imaginary in the sense that it remains discovered and consumed through technical devices. In fact, as smart cities begin to become dehumanised realms and behavioural data is neglected, the place of humans risks being devalued. Georgiou’s research is an invaluable attempt to claim and interrogate human experiences in their entanglement with the digital in urban settings.

Georgiou describes predictive policing, the practice of using algorithms to analyse massive amounts of information to predict and help prevent potential crimes as a mundane form of symbolic violence regularly applied in the city (126). This is part of a wider trend of states’ increasing the surveillance of citizens, with surveillance understood as any personal data acquisition for management influence or entitlement. Predictive policing systems have been empirically shown to create feedback loops, where police are frequently sent back to the same neighbourhoods, regardless of the true crime rate. In the US, predictive policing tends to disproportionately target more African Americans, areas with higher concentrations of Latinos and Black, Asian and Minority ethnic (BAME) people.

In response to these trends of profiling and surveillance, the right to the city emerges as a new paradigm that provides an alternative framework with which to rethink cities and human settlements based on the principles of social justice, equity, democracy and sustainability.

In response to these trends of profiling and surveillance, the right to the city emerges as a new paradigm that provides an alternative framework with which to rethink cities and human settlements based on the principles of social justice, equity, democracy and sustainability. According to Georgiou, it presents “a revamped moral vision which points to potentially democratising processes that recognize and address urban injustices” (97). It is worth noting that Georgiou, unlike other authors, prefers to address the concept of the right to the city rather than the “right to a smart city”, her research does not advocate an approach focused on “smart citizens”, “smart citizenship” and “smart cities”. She avoids a citizen-centred approach and instead privileges life, freedom, and wellbeing, expanding her framework to include all humans in urban settings, whether they are citizens or migrants.

Finally, the book, brimming with secondary research, opens new critical avenues into techno-political research on digital cities. More precisely, knowing that humans are less studies as agents involved in the creation of digital, the book sheds light on urban humanity which often remains an opaque category. It highlights humans as agents of change and the displacement of questions of power but also of rights to the city. She investigates essential questions about what it means to be human in digital cities, suggesting that “the most compelling claims to humanism come from those who experience dehumanisation”. Such offerings beg the question of readers, who is and isn’t seen as fully human within city spaces and how does the dawn of the digital city affect those boundaries?

Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image credit: Goldilock Project on Shutterstock.

In future AI is the new technology which is likely to have the greatest impact on our economy and our society. But how AI is used and developed is a choice, and so far AI has been predominantly focused on continuing the emphasis on automation. To realise the full potential of AI and minimise its Continue reading »

This story was originally published in the Daily Yonder.

Adaline Sneak lives at the end of a long, unmarked dirt road in a rural area of the Navajo Nation in Utah. Getting there requires a high clearance vehicle and at least moderate navigation skills.

Residents here don’t have typical addresses with street names and house numbers. Until recently, Sneak’s official address was even vaguer than the directions a gas station clerk might give a lost driver — seven miles south of Montezuma Creek, Utah, County Road 410.

She can’t get mail with an address like that, nor could someone search directions to her house on Google Maps, for example.

But for someone like Sneak, an address like this is more than just inconvenient. It’s life-threatening. Sneak suffers from seizures, and about a year ago, an ambulance got lost on the way to her house because of her ambiguous address.

Adaline Sneak recently registered her Life Alert system with her new Plus Code so that emergency responders can find her house more easily. Credit: Emily Arntsen

“We almost lost her that day,” said Arlene Begay, Sneak’s mother. The ambulance eventually made it to Sneak’s house, but only because someone on the emergency response team happened to know Begay’s sister, whom they called for directions to Sneak’s house.

“That’s happened a few times actually,” Begay continued, recalling other times the ambulance had gotten lost. But now, any confusion over Sneak’s address is hopefully cleared up for good.

This fall, Sneak was one of over 3,000 residents on the Navajo Nation who received a new, more accurate address through an initiative led by a nonprofit called the Rural Utah Project. The new addresses, which were developed by Google, are called Plus Codes. The codes are simple alpha-numeric coordinates based on longitude and latitude.

All locations on Earth have unique, Google-generated Plus Codes, the same way every location on Earth has global coordinates, though the Plus Codes are much shorter than global coordinates, making them easier to share and remember.

Slow beginnings

Plus Codes aren’t new — Google started developing the free, open-source technology in 2015. But the system has been slow to catch on in some areas.

For the Rural Utah Project, whose main mission is to empower disenfranchised voters, educating people on how to use Plus Codes originally started out as a way to increase voter registration on the Navajo Nation.

While registering voters during the 2018 state and county elections, field organizers with the Rural Utah Project realized hundreds of residents on the Navajo Nation were registered in the wrong voting precincts because of mix-ups with their addresses.

“When I got my ballot, I noticed I had the wrong school board member that I was voting for,” said Daylene Redhorse, a field organizer with the Rural Utah Project who lives on the Navajo Nation and spearheaded the addressing initiative.

Plus Codes are simple alpha-numeric codes based on longitude and latitude. The Rural Utah Project partnered with Google to distribute thousands of Plus Code signs on the Navajo Nation. Credit: Emily Arntsen

In rural parts of the Navajo Nation, as with many rural areas in the United States, step-by-step descriptive addresses are the norm. These addresses are valid for most services that require proof of residence, such as enrolling in public schools or registering to vote.

But just because these are technically “official” addresses doesn’t mean the system is particularly functional. For example, when Redhorse registered to vote with her descriptive address — 15 miles southwest of Bluff, Utah, County Road 436 — the county accidentally pinned her in a district north of Bluff.

“It’s discouraging for people, getting the wrong ballot and feeling like their vote doesn’t count,” Redhorse said. “As it is, we already have a lot of people who are skeptical about voting. When I go door-to-door registering people to vote, a lot of them say, ‘Why would I register? I don’t count. Nobody counts us.’”

Crushed by negative news?

Sign up for the Reasons to be Cheerful newsletter.
[contact-form-7]

That attitude, Redhorse explains, stems from a long history of oppression and disenfranchisement for Native Americans, who didn’t receive the nationwide right to vote until 1962, when New Mexico was the last state to grant Native Americans suffrage.

In order to help Utah residents on the Navajo Nation adopt the Plus Codes system, the Rural Utah Project partnered with Google, who helped field organizers match thousands of homes with their new addresses. Those Plus Codes were then printed on blue plastic signs, which were delivered door-to-door, along with information about how to register to vote.

Since starting the initiative, the Rural Utah Project has registered nearly 2,000 new voters with their Plus Codes.

A new address right on time

The day that field organizers arrived at Sneak’s house to deliver her Plus Code sign and explain the new addressing system, she had a seizure. Redhorse’s colleague, Tara Benally, called 9-1-1 and gave the dispatcher Sneak’s new Plus Code.

“They were able to use the Plus Code no problem,” Redhorse said. “They found the house easily.” Sneak is now able to use her Plus Code for her Life Alert system, which, her mother said, is a huge relief.

Herman Chee Jr., chief of the Monument Valley Fire Department, says Plus Codes have made. Credit: Emily Arntsen

Herman Chee Jr., chief of the Monument Valley Fire Department, said that most EMS responders on the Navajo Nation already use Google Maps, which is compatible with Plus Codes, unlike descriptive addresses, which mostly rely on local knowledge to pinpoint.

“With our community, we just know where people live,” he said. But memory isn’t always perfect, especially during emergencies. He said there were many times when he made mistakes getting to the scene and had to double back.

“I remember one time, we got paged out to a structure fire. I was communicating with dispatch, and they just told me to take this road, then that road. And that was it. It was dark, and it was really snowing. I just had to guess. I could see the structure fire in the distance, but I still took that wrong turn. Had to go back,” he said. “Took a long time.”

Become a sustaining member today!

Join the Reasons to be Cheerful community by supporting our nonprofit publication and giving what you can.

Join

He said Plus Codes have helped responders reach people’s houses faster. But the system only works if people remember to use their new addresses when calling 9-1-1. He was recently called out to a fire using a descriptive address.

“When I finally arrived, I saw that blue sign on their house,” he recalled. “I always tell people, use your Plus Code, remember your Plus Code. It’s so much easier for the dispatch.”

Beyond expectations

Redhorse said that when she started the addressing project for voter registration, she didn’t even think about all of the other benefits.

“Then we started to notice UPS coming down the dirt road, then FedEx coming down the dirt road.”

The United States Postal Service, which handles all voting by mail, doesn’t recognize Plus Codes. Rural residents will still need a post office box to receive mail-in ballots.

But commercial mail carriers, such as the United Parcel Service (UPS) and FedEx, have already started incorporating Plus Codes into their systems.

Daylene Redhorse, a field organizer with the Rural Utah Project, helped distribute over 3,000 Plus Code signs to residents on the Navajo Nation. Credit: Emily Arntsen

“I tell people to put their Plus Codes in the ‘description’ section when they’re buying something online,” Redhorse said. “The delivery person can usually figure it out that way.”

Residents can also use their new Plus Codes to receive at-home medical treatments, which were previously unavailable to them in some cases because of their addresses.

Redhorse used to work in a dialysis clinic in Blanding, Utah. For some of her patients that lived on the reservation, the commute was over two hours.

“The biggest complaint from our patients was that they didn’t want to make the drive every other day, but they couldn’t do home dialysis because they didn’t have an address that the insurance companies would recognize,” she said.

“One guy who used to be my patient used his Plus Code to get on home dialysis, and now I’ve been seeing the same truck that we used to have at the clinic going down the dirt roads,” she said. “When I see that I say, ‘Wow, this has really changed people’s lives.’”

The post On the Navajo Nation, Accurate Mailing Addresses Save Lives appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

Entrepreneurs Alisha Fredriksson and Roujia Wen spent months in 2022 scouring London for the right space to develop a prototype. Their big idea — to capture carbon emissions from cargo ships by trapping the gas amongst calcium oxide pebbles, through a system fitted on board — required a big, well-equipped space. 

The options their search yielded were less than appealing. Large warehouses that had the high ceilings Fredriksson and Wen needed to build their venture, Seabound, were typically empty, with tenants needing to fully equip it themselves with the right machinery, plus the electricity to power it. They tended to be in industrial zones with only the likes of auto shops or dark kitchens for neighbors, and they usually required signing a five-year lease.

Seabound co-founders Alisha Fredriksson and Roujia Wen. Courtesy of Seabound

“As a six-month-old startup at the time, it was a scary proposition,” Fredriksson recalls.

Then Seabound found BLOQS, a 32,000-square-foot converted warehouse in the north London suburb of Enfield, fully kitted out with £1.3 million (around $1.7 million) worth of light industrial equipment for all kinds of manufacturing, including wood processing and metal fabrication, laser cutting and engraving, 3D printing, sewing machines, spray painting and more. If that didn’t already make the case for moving in, the flexible membership structure then quickly sealed the deal for Fredriksson and Wen. 

The initial sign-up is free, with members simply paying a daily rate for the machinery they need to use, as well as for flexible office and storage space if they need it. Raw materials are available to purchase too, price-matched with local suppliers. And if members need to learn to use a particular piece of equipment, they can pay for training. An added bonus is the on-site restaurant, where an award-winning chef serves a seasonable and affordable Mediterranean menu. Yet the biggest draw for the Seabound team was the community of 1,000 other like-minded members.

Credit: Claudia Agati

“We wanted people to not just make whatever it is that they needed to, but we wanted to provide a facility where somebody was able to do what it is that the world needs,” says BLOQS cofounder Al Parra.

“It’s a fun place to go to work every day. We have a whole ecosystem of people that we’re a part of. Whereas if we were in our own warehouse on some industrial site, I don’t think we would have friends there — it would be more lonely,” says Fredriksson.

The expertise available at BLOQS has also allowed Seabound to tap into support on an as-needed basis. “We’ve actually also been able to keep our team very lean, because we’ve been able to occasionally work with people at BLOQS as a kind of ‘surge support,’” Fredriksson says. “For instance, there are technicians at BLOQS that have helped us, and there are electricians who are members that we’ve been able to contract with. So we have flexibility in terms of space and resourcing.”

The Seabound co-founders tested their prototype on board an 800-foot commercial container ship in late 2023. Courtesy of Seabound

Seabound was able to leverage everything on offer at BLOQS to test its carbon capture technology, with the team spending two months in late 2023 on board an 800-foot commercial container ship. The Seabound prototype successfully captured around one metric ton of CO2 per day, meaning the team, now back on dry land at BLOQS, can move into their second phase of research, development and testing, aiming to deploy their next system onto a ship in 2025.

Crushed by negative news?

Sign up for the Reasons to be Cheerful newsletter.
[contact-form-7]

BLOQS co-founder Al Parra feels Seabound is one of the best examples of why he and his partners set up the space, which he describes as having “its own dynamism,” to drive innovation. “What this women-led climate tech engineering group is doing is incredible,” says Parra. “They started at BLOQS because they couldn’t take on the risk of their own premises. That very often is the case, that people come to us because they have a physical need of something that we provide, but then they stay because of the community. They’re in this confluence and mix of abilities, skills and knowledge. If you don’t know how to do something, you can be damn sure you’re one handshake away from somebody who does.”

As the UK’s largest open-access professional maker space — and the country’s first pay-as-you-go space of its kind — BLOQS has created 380 full-time jobs and has turned over a collective £15 million a year (around $19.1 million) since it launched in 2012. (It was then in a different location and moved to Enfield in 2022.)

Al Parra is BLOQS’ co-founder and director. Courtesy of BLOQS

As an open-access maker space in London, BLOQS isn’t alone. Thirty-eight maker spaces in the UK capital are listed on the Open Workshop Network, while 3D printing support organization CREATE Education lists community-centric spaces across the country on its site. Discipline-specific workshops also exist for professionals. But where BLOQS is unique, argues Parra, is that it’s the only cross-discipline site out of which someone could run a business. 

“We wanted people to not just make whatever it is that they needed to, but we wanted to provide a facility where somebody was able to do what it is that the world needs,” says Parra.  

Parra has observed that BLOQS members are able to leapfrog the initial set-up period of building up manufacturing contacts, which can take up to 10 years. 

“We simplify access to things which are really expensive. If you don’t come from a privileged background, it’s difficult to get together that money. At BLOQS, you can walk straight in, from something like a building site, from a course or degree, or you can transition from another career, and we’ve got all of the resources,” says Parra. 

“By making all of the technology that we’ve got available and affordable, we are diminishing the barriers between that and the creative mind.”

The DEMAND team at work. Courtesy of DEMAND

Some entrepreneurs see BLOQS as a testing ground for new ideas and stepping stone to a more permanent, private premises, while others see fit to call it their home for the foreseeable. Seabound’s future, for example, looks promising enough that Fredriksson is already forecasting a need for a larger separate space to accommodate dedicated facilities as well as manufacturing partners, although research and development, she thinks, could still be done at BLOQS.

The charity DEMAND, meanwhile, which creates assistive products for people with disabilities, has made its journey to BLOQS in reverse. After having spent the previous 20 years operating out of its own factory just north of London, the team migrated to BLOQS in 2022 after deciding its impact could be greater working in a shared space. Spending time and money on building and machine maintenance was holding the organization back, and with no other similar outfit nearby, the team felt isolated.

“The combination of flexible space and industrial-grade machinery has had a lot of impact on our speed and efficiency. And having access to the community makes it feel like we’re in a much bigger organization — we can lean on, and be inspired by, other people,” says Lynnette Smith, DEMAND’s head of creative.

DEMAND’s push-along “big car” is designed for children with balance issues who are unable to ride a bicycle. Courtesy of DEMAND

“Being here has definitely helped us maximize the impact of each thing we design. We were very skilled at making one of something for a specific individual. While that’s still the purpose of DEMAND, to make something for an individual need, we’ve now got the machinery that helps us make much more repeatable things.”

DEMAND products refined at BLOQS include a ramp for boccia, a Paralympic sport in which athletes use the ramp to propel their ball to get as close to the target ball as possible, as well as a “big car,” a push-along car designed for children with balance issues who are unable to ride a bicycle. BLOQS’ machinery has reduced human error, and accelerated the production process, says Smith. The technology at BLOQS has also streamlined the production of an eye-led communication aid, which was originally designed for one user, Mark, who DEMAND has since collaborated with to enable it to be reproduced for others.

Growing the charity in this way is one of Smith’s key goals, as is collaborating more closely with users like Mark.

Courtesy of DEMAND

“Having access to the community makes it feel like we’re in a much bigger organization — we can lean on, and be inspired by, other people,” says Lynnette Smith, DEMAND head of creative.

“We would love to keep working with BLOQS to make sure that accessibility happens, potentially also in new places that BLOQS open as a partnership — that’s something we’d love to see the impact of,” says Smith.

Expansion is definitely in the cards, according to Parra, with the BLOQS team assessing the feasibility of a second site in either South London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester or Glasgow, to open in 2025. Beyond the UK, Parra sees global demand for spaces like BLOQS. Similar models are already emerging, like South Africa’s Made In Workshop, Ireland’s Benchspace and Artisans Asylum in the US, all offering flexible, affordable models with a range of machinery.

Cofounder Alan Parra sees BLOQS as a model that could be replicated in other cities. Courtesy of BLOQS

Parra envisions real potential in developing countries, where microfinance schemes have become common in helping small-scale entrepreneurs build businesses and a livelihood.

“The developing world, where everybody’s one or two generations away from a village, understands this concept of sharing resources so intrinsically, that we’re getting interest from South Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe [to open another BLOQS],” says Parra.

“We’re offering a model for how we can make the things that we need, in a way that is sustainable.”

The post Inside the UK’s First Open-Access, Pay-As-You-Go Factory appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.