Civic Technologies — Tools or Therapy?

Dietmar Offenhuber, Essay, No Density, Senseable Technologies, Technology and fabrication

Big Society, Bitcoin technology, Citizen’s role, Civic Technologies, Critique, Efficiency, Efficient city, Essay, FabLab, Gamification, IBM, Infrastructure, Jean Luc Godard, Luxury vs. Poverty, Margaret Thatcher, Neo-weberian, Neoliberalism, Network, New citizen, Participation, Political jurisdiction, Public good, Public management, Sherry Arnstein, Smart city, Smart tool, Technology, Usman Haque

First published in Ars Electronica 2015: Post City. Hatje Cantz

Jean Luc Godard’s Alphaville was perhaps the first film about a smart city: a city where are all infrastructure is controlled by a central computer according to principles of reason and efficiency. That is until the cartoon detective Lemmy Caution takes it down. Even when Alphaville was released in 1965, the idea of the city as an intelligent machine was not new, it was already a familiar science fiction trope.