Velcro City Tourist Board

Category: Futures

  • an hollowed-out epistemology, an epistemic poverty

    I’ll stop blockquoting Audrey Watters when she stops saying shit that needs saying. The science fiction of The Matrix creeps into presentations that claim to offer science fact. It creeps into promises about instantaneous learning, facilitated by alleged breakthroughs in brain science. It creeps into TED Talks, of course. Take Nicholas Negroponte, for example, the…

  • (against) a world that is hollowed out, closed off, sold off, “safe”

    I hadn’t heard of freelance ed-tech thinker and avenging angel of firebrand rhetoric Audrey Watters before Sentiers linked to this transcription of a recent keynote of hers… but from now on, I’ll be keeping an ear out for her work. If you’d now please all stand for a rousing chorus of “Fuck the Hot Take…

  • “A sterile and decontextualised narrative”: Grossi & Pianezzi (2017), Smart cities: Utopia or neoliberal ideology?

    Grossi, G., & Pianezzi, D. (2017). “Smart cities: Utopia or neoliberal ideology?”. Cities, 69, 79-85. Pretty simple paper, this one, in the sense that it does exactly what it says on the tin; the specific case (Genoa, Italy) is not of great relevance to me right now, but I want to drag some quotes out…

  • the city bureaucrat of the future learns, not preaches

    The appearance of this piece by Barcelona’s chief technology and digital innovation officer, Francesca Bria [via Sentiers] is serendipitous, given that one of the tasks on my slate this week is to do the edits and tweaks on a long-overdue chapter on the “smart city” for a forthcoming Handbook of Social Futures. Five guidelines for…

  • the slowdown papers

    Those among you with a more futures-y orientation may already have noticed Dan Hill publishing last week a collection of work that he’s calling “The Slowdown Papers”; this is the header post that bundles them and links them all. I’ve been following Dan’s work for quite some time now. He was always an interesting and…