Marleen Stikker of Waag will give a lecture called 'Technologies for the People? A bottom-up approach to urban informatisation' at Digital Clouds and Urban Spaces, Cities as Information Systems in Vienna (Austria) on 11 June 2014.
Urbanity is increasingly shaped by networks of informational technologies. However, it is not only traffic control systems, energy supply, infrastructure and planning models which are based on ever more complex digital systems. The world of work, social spaces and cultural processes, too, increasingly rely on a complex structure of electronically controlled processes.
Global companies and their technologies promise to make cities more efficient, safer and cleaner. But do these systems actually benefit the citizens, and if so, to what extent? What might be long-term consequences and which side effects must be expected? What are the risks of an ever-increasing dependence on complex systems? Which options and possible courses of action do citizens actually have?
