unSmart Cities: The New Hyperhabitat
Envisioning the smart city as if people mattered
This February, Cybersalon invites you take part in our third event of the Cybersalon Hyperhabitat Series…
The Smart City is upon us. Ubiquitous computing is increasingly blurring our perception of the virtual and the physical. Over the next decade the Internet of Things will permeate our lives, workplaces and homes with millions of sensors and devices, tracking, measuring and automating the world around us – from smart buildings to reactive streets, connected cars to real-time algorithmic advertising.
Beyond the hype, cities must smarten up. In 2007 for the first time in human history urban population surpassed rural population. By 2050 almost 70% of world population will be urban, with most cities containing over 10 million inhabitants. We need smarter cities to cope with the strains and friction of increasingly larger, more dense, and hopefully more sustainable, cities.
However, as the digital truly encompasses the physical, we want to understand the impact of this new hyperhabitat – before we relinquish control to algorithms, city AI M2M infrastructures and the corporate forces of IBM, Cisco, Google etc.
Join Cybersalon, digital urbanists, activists, hackers, academics, artists and entrepreneurs as we attempt to envision a more democratic, open and secure smart city.
Speakers include Dr Rick Robinson – ex-IBM, Smart Cities veteran architect, Nick Rosen – author of the book on how to detox and live “Off Grid“, Priya Prakash – D4SC Design For Social Change & Changify, Carl Smith – Director of the Learning Technology Research Centre at Ravensbourne, and Yodit Stanton – OpenSensors.io tech startup, an open-source Open Data alternative to the corporate Internet of Things, incubated by the Open Data Institute.
Smart City game arcade!
Additionally – we’re organising a Smart City themed gaming arcade, including Watch Dogs (PS4), Sim City, Sim City 2000, Transistor and many more!
Suggested long form reading
- Bruce Stirling, The Epic Struggle for the Internet of Things
- Adam Greenfield, Against the Smart City
- European Parliament, Mapping Smart Cities in the EU
- IBM, Device Democracy: Saving the internet of things
- Dan Hill, The Street As Platform
Suggested reading
- Cybersalon’s previous Smart City event – New Urban Informatics 27th May 2014
- Art Sheep, Do you know why USB drives are buried in NYCs walls?
- Pando, People only desire the basics from a smart home
- Chicago’s WindyGrid: taking situational awareness to a whole new level
- Chicago’s ‘Array of Things’ – the sensing city
- CitizenSense
- LinkNYC: CityBridge – first of its kind municipal WiFi
- Smart City Strategy, Intelligent Thessaloniki
- Adam Greenfield’s blog
- PostScapes
