Future Schlock
Part of their utopia is foreclosing on our ability to imagine our own.
Which fits very much to Technologische Artefakte Ohne Narrative and Electronics And Power Dynamics. The point is, that the tech companies utopia is often our dystopia, as in neo-liberal takeover of amazon, data collection in Google or privacy and hate speech issues with Facebook.
But Sidewalk’s vision ignored the realities of the already existing built environment, proceeding as if a new city and its people would just be coded into existence. […] To tame the messy complexity of cities, Sidewalk posited a top-to-bottom model of full-stack urbanism, programmed for total efficiency and rationality. But in practice this would mean not creating a city from scratch but claiming territory where people already lived. Building the dreamscape of the future required them to first colonize the cityscape of the present.
That is exactly what I’m proposing with Electronics And Power Dynamics. There is a colonial element to it, in that we are not the users of the devices, but the devices are techno-pedagogical in creating perfect consumers out of us.
This is very political processes come in. They are important in governing tech to not overtake whatever they desire. In this particular project, the academic helped to analyse the nearly-inaccessible planning documents.
Sidewalk Labs had a wealth of capital and influence at its disposal, but the public had something that proved to be more effective: care and attention.
Unsettling (colonial discourse) is where I can apply my expertise.
The ideology of “technology,” as it is expressed by the tech industry and its thought leaders, is the necromancy that keeps this zombie capitalist system from staying in its grave.
These corporations are now struggling against the last remaining limits, both politically (what the government will permit) and socially (what the public will tolerate).
What I did not mention here in the notes yet, is the text’s attempt to motivate to believe in and act for utopias. Capitalism is a failed utopia, but also an example that utopias can become reality.