Bio
Jennifer Gabrys is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Principal Investigator on the European Research Council starting grant, Citizen Sensing and Environmental Practice. Her work investigates environments, material processes and digital technologies through theoretical and practice-based work. Projects within this area include Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics (University of Michigan Press, 2011), which examines the materialities of electronic waste; and a study currently underway on environmental sensor technologies and practices, Program Earth: Environment as Experiment in Sensing Technology. Prior to joining the Department of Sociology, she was Senior Lecturer and Convenor of the MA in Design and Environment in the Department of Design at Goldsmiths, University of London. She completed a PhD in Communication Studies at McGill University in Montreal, during which time she was engaged as a research fellow on the Culture of Cities and Digital Cities / Mobile Digital Commons projects.
Abstract
"Locating the Idiot in the Smart City"
Urban infrastructures are increasingly embedded with computational sensor technologies that are intended to automate urban processes and facilitate urban efficiencies. While such smart city developments might clearly be addressed as infrastructural technologies, at the same time they influence modes of urban engagement through interaction both with urban sensor technologies, and with smart phones, digital devices and platforms that are meant to co-activate urban functions. This presentation will discuss the different ways in which sensor-based and digitally enabled modes of DIY and participatory urbanism have been taken up on the one hand as grassroots strategies for articulating new types of commons and democratic urban participation; and on the other hand as strategies integral to smart city development proposals. What are the convergences and divergences across these different mobilizations of DIY urbanism? How do models of participatory urbanism such as updatable maps for street repairs, air quality sensors, or platforms for tree planting organize new infrastructural and citizenship practices that emerge at this juncture of sensor-based and data-based citizenship? By focusing specifically on the use of citizen sensing applications for environmental monitoring and sustainability, this presentation will consider the distinct modes of participation and urbanism that emerge in these speculative and actual projects. The presentation will discuss the specific capacities of citizens and publics that are operationalized through digital practices dependent upon urban environmental sensors, and will speculate about what other practices and imaginaries might emerge through an approach that specifically seeks to trouble the dynamics of DIY digital urbanisms.
