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Soft cities: Software and the remaking of the city

Soft cities: Software and the remaking of the city. Rob Kitchin National University of Ireland, Maynooth. MEDIACITY, Jan 18-19, 2008. Introduction. Thrift and French (2002) argue

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Soft cities: Software and the remaking of the city

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  1. Soft cities: Software and the remaking of the city Rob Kitchin National University of Ireland, Maynooth MEDIACITY, Jan 18-19, 2008

  2. Introduction • Thrift and French (2002) argue ‘[m]ore and more … the spaces of everyday life come loaded up with software, lines of code that are installing a new kind of automatically reproduced background and whose nature is only now starting to become clear’ (p. 309). • Over time cities and city life have become increasingly reliant on software and computer networking; • Cities are becoming virtualised; taking on the form of what Castells calls ‘real virtuality’ • So much so, that cities and the life they support would malfunction without software • Cities are becoming ‘soft cities’

  3. Soft cities • Cities are increasingly full of coded objects and coded infrastructures that support coded processes and combine to constitute coded assemblages • Coded objects • Machine-readable objects (Barcode, RFID) • Unitary objects (DVD player, washing machine) • Logjects • Impermeable logjects (MP3, GPS) • Permeable logjects (Mobile phones, Satellite television)

  4. Coded infrastructures • Coded infrastructure refers both to networks that link together coded objects and infrastructure that is monitored and regulated, either fully or in part, by code • Such coded infrastructure (or ensembles) includes distributed infrastructures such as • computing networks (e.g. Internet, intranets) • communication and entertainment networks (e.g. mail, telephone, mobile phones, television, radio, satellite) • utility networks (e.g. water, electricity, gas, sewerage) • transport and logistics networks (e.g. air, train, road, shipping) • financial networks (e.g. bank intranets, stock markets) • security and policing networks (e.g. surveillance cameras), • and relatively localised and closed systems such as localised surveillance (say within one building complex)

  5. Coded processes • Coded processes refer to the transaction and flow of digital data across coded infrastructure • Particularly important when they access, update, and monitor relational databases that hold individual and institutional data • Such databases can be accessed at a distance and used to verify, monitor (say for billing purposes) and regulate user access to a network, update personal files, and so on • Many such coded processes relate to bank accounts, mortgages, shares, taxation, insurance, health, crime, utility usage, service usage

  6. Coded assemblages • Coded assemblages are where several different coded infrastructures converge, becoming integral to each other in producing particular environments, such as office complexes, transport systems, shopping centres, and so on • For example, the coded infrastructures of water, electricity, gas, banks and mortgage lenders, commodities, Internet, telephone, mail, television, government database systems, and so on, work together to create an assemblage that produces individual households • The power of these assemblages is their interconnection and interdependence creating systems whose complexity and power are much greater than the sum of their parts • Cities consist of many overlapping coded assemblages

  7. Home • Tasks and routines of everyday home life are augmented, mediated and regulated in very mundane ways by code • digital alarm clock • ‘white goods’ – microwave, washing machine • satellite television; computer; fitness equipment

  8. Buildings • Buildings are becoming increasingly ‘smart’ • Parts of the infrastructure are mediated by software such as lifts and doors • Modern offices are controlled by building management systems • Lights and energy • Heating/air conditioning • Monitoring for risk (fire and security)

  9. Utilities infrastructure • Water • Electricity • Gas • Telecommunications • Might appear ‘dumb’ but are all controlled and managed using software

  10. Road infrastructure • Traditional regulatory technologies such as conventional signs and pre-set traffic lights are being complemented with ‘smart media’ • Aim to monitor and regulate the road system in real-time • Digital infrastructures include traffic management devices: • automatic altering of traffic light sequences • updating of road speed signs • automatic logging of vehicular congestion • variable toll charges • networked speed, red light, bus-lane cameras designed to discipline driver behaviour • monitoring of incidents

  11. http://www.clui.org/clui_4_1/ondisplay/loop

  12. Rail • Various rail systems are reliant on code for its day-to-day operation, from • the ticketing of passengers to • the operation of lifts and escalators; • network management to monitor the real-time location of trains; • control and monitoring of signalling; • displays that update passengers; • the computation of timetables and routes; • staffing schedules; • revenue and account databases; • embedded code in the trains themselves; • surveillance system

  13. The airport • ticket purchase occurs online and is verified by a credit card • check-in is verified by passenger and/or ticket codes • progress from check-in to plane door is sanctioned by surveillance codes and security checks • baggage is routed through barcodes and tags • immigration is controlled through personal identification codes (e.g. passport number)

  14. Communication • Most communication takes place via the coded infrastructures of telecommunications, except face-to-face conversations: mobile phones, conventional phones, fax, pagers, email, video conferencing. • Facilitating time space compression, convergence and distanciation by allowing instantaneous communication across distance, and in the case of mobile phones and pagers between moving devices • Reconfiguring where people work and live

  15. Work • The workplace is an environment that is increasingly reliant on software; workplaces are complex and dense assemblage of coded infrastructures and processes • These include utilities, logistics networks, customer, employment and product management systems, intranets ...

  16. Retail and consumption • How shops do business is highly reliant on software • Consumption increasingly consists of the intertwining of the coded assemblages of financial services, logistics, and shop/leisure facilities • These transactions are themselves made into a product in the form of customer profiling and geodemographics and used in marketing campaigns • Purchases tied into stock and logistics systems that track sales and place orders • Consumption of services and leisure occur across coded infrastructures (e.g., buying her goods and services by telephone) • And conventional leisure services are now augmented by code (e.g., monitoring one’s performance in the gym)

  17. Software and everyday spatialities • Software is diversely embedded in everyday life and is bound-up in, and contributes to, complex discursive and material practices • For us, understanding the difference software makes necessitates thinking about • The work that software does in the world • the relationship between software and space

  18. Technicity and the transduction of space • Technicity is the unfolding or evolutive power of technologies to make things happen • Software possesses technicity – it makes things happen • It does so through a process of transduction • For Mackenzie (2003: 10) • ‘transduction is a kind of operation. It is an operation in which a particular domain undergoes a certain kind of ontogenetic modulation. Through this modulation in-formation or individuation occurs. That is, it involves a domain taking-on-form, sometimes repeatedly’ • Transduction is the process by which ‘a domain structures itself as a partial, always incomplete solution to a relational problem’ (p. 10); it is the process of ontogenesis, the making anew of a domain through reiterative and transformative individuations • Individuation can consist of speech acts, actions, occurrences, memories, perceptions, and so on that result in a modulation in conditions of a person and their milieu • Each individuation provisionally solves a problem within a domain, this replaced by new problems

  19. Technicity and the transduction of space • For example, a person travelling through a city constantly changes their relation to their milieu thus posing a continuous supply of new problems • Space is thus produced through transductive individuations • Space is not a production, but rather an on-going set of transductions • Space is constantly being bought into being ‘as an incomplete solution to a relational problem’ • The relational problem is ongoing encounters between individuals and environment and in our case the solution, to a greater or lesser extent, is software • Relational problems include undertaking domestic tasks, travelling between locations, conducting work, communicating between people, and practicing consumption.

  20. Technicity and the transduction of space • In these cases, the process of transduction is technically mediated by the power of software to solve relational problems a function of its technicity • From this perspective, as space is traversed, individual mobilities, interactions and transactions in combination with software beckon particular forms of space into being • Thus we conceive space as a form of ontogenesis (always coming into being), rather than an ontology • Space as practice; as a doing; as an event (rather than an absolute, geometric abstraction or a social construction)

  21. Transducing Space • Coded objects, infrastructures, processes and assemblages, the technicity they engender, transduces space – beckons new spatial formations into existence

  22. Code/space • code/spaces are spaces dependent on code to function - wherein the materiality of everyday life and its attendant virtual coding are mutually constituted • Here, the relationship between code and space is dyadic – that is, without code the space would not be transduced as intended (hence ‘code/space’ rather than ‘coded space’) • Old non-software means of doing things have sometimes disappeared • Coded space is a transduction that is mediated by code, but whose relationship is not dyadic • software mediates the solution to a problem, but it is not the only solution

  23. Producing code/space • code/spaces are non-deterministic and non-universal • how code/space actually operates and is experienced is open to rupture: • code/space is embodied through the performances and interactions of the people within the space (between people, and between people and code). • In this sense, code/space is not consistently produced, always manufactured and experienced the same • Instead, code/space is constantly in a state of becoming, produced through individual performance and social interactions that are mediated, consciously or unconsciously, in relation to the mutual constitution of code/space • code/spaces of cities need to be analysed as complex systems with emergent properties

  24. Future of cities • Software is reshaping cities - affecting their form, how they function, how they are governed, how they relate to other places, and what occurs within them • More and more of the spaces of cities will consist of code/spaces – spaces reliant on software to occur • Software will increasingly mediate everyday life reshaping • activities and how we perform activities – how we move, shop, work, relax … • the material functioning of cities – the buildings, utilities and transport infrastructure • the time-spaces of cities, locally and globally • In understanding the changing nature of cities it is important to understand the role played by software and to develop appropriate tools to conceptualise the relationship between software, space and everyday life

  25. The End • Contact • Rob.Kitchin@nuim.ie • M.Dodge@manchester.ac.uk • Also see: • Dodge, M. and Kitchin, R. (2007) ‘Outlines of a world coming into existence’: Pervasive computing and the ethics of forgetting. Environment and Planning B 34(3): 431-445 • Dodge, M. and Kitchin, R. (2007) The automatic management of drivers and driving spaces. Geoforum 38(2): 264-275 • Kitchin, R. and Dodge, M. (2006) Software and the Mundane Management of Air Travel. First Monday 11(9) • Dodge, M. and Kitchin, R. (2005) Codes of life: Identification codes and the machine-readable world. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 23(6): 851 – 881 • Dodge, M. and Kitchin, R. (2005) Code and the transduction of space. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95(1): 162-180 • Dodge, M. and Kitchin, R. (2004) Flying through code/space: The real virtuality of air travel. Environment and Planning A 36(2): 195 – 211

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