John Marshall and Cézanne Charles
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The title for this piece is an ironic reference to an apocryphal William Gibson quotation: “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.” This quote has become ubiquitous at any technology-related event to the point where we recognize it, nod, and move on in search of the next piece of content. We are invoking our version to focus on what we believe to be the vital issue implicit in the statement if we are willing to unpack it.
The statement tells us that we will all eventually experience changes that have already begun and that those changes are inevitable. This last point, bound up in the word “yet,” is what we wish to explore. In our professional practice, we advise on developing digital capacity, infrastructure, and compelling use cases for technology within the Detroit Cultural Center, an 80+ acre district in Midtown Detroit. Here, we discuss the context and dilemmas arising from the proliferation of big data and the smart city and present the Cultural Center Planning Initiative 1 as a case study exploring the opportunities and challenges of approaching city-based systems transformation through a cultural lens.
Most of us will sleepwalk into the fully sensing, fully autonomous big data world where privately-owned algorithms have become deeply woven into our military, financial, judicial, workplace, healthcare, and social systems. Meanwhile, we are generating more data more quickly and from more devices than we can keep up with. Yet when we consider the collection of data from our engagement with ubiquitous computing, few of us would frame this as “informed” or “consentful.” 2 The business model of nearly all social media platforms is to mine and monetize personal data for sale to third parties. With any “free” connected service, we are “paying” with access to our data. This should be obvious. Yet most end-user license agreements are barely human-
Midtown Detroit Inc. 2020. TheCulturalCenterPlanningInitiative.Accessed August 3, 2021. https://www.midtownculturalconnections.com/about-ccpi
2 Lee, Una, and Dann Toliver. 2019. BuildingConsentfulTech.Accessed August 3, 2021. http://www.consentfultech.io/wpcontent/uploads/2019/10/Building-Consentful-Tech.pdf
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readable, and many go unread at least 91 percent of the time. 3 This lack of transparency is not inevitable. It is a choice. It has been designed so that we give consent without understanding what we are giving consent for.
Technological somnambulism 4 happens because of several interrelated factors. Still, one consequence is how this perpetuates and privileges the construction of expertise within existing dominant power, supremacist, and command and control decision-making structures. As articulated by Ruha Benjamin, “Zeros and ones, if we are not careful, could deepen the divides between haves and have-nots, between the deserving and the undeserving – rusty value judgments embedded in shiny new systems.” 5 Beyond the traditional focus on data quality and security, we need to consider the impact of data processing (its collection, analysis, and communication) on fundamental rights and collective social and ethical values.
When left to their own devices, where more technology is always a solution and never the problem, we know what our future will be if we leave technological development solely to the technology sector. We will get mobility as a service, large-scale intelligent and interoperable information systems, AI-based building monitoring and surveillance, and more exabytes of insights based on data collected from cameras, sensors, and mobile phones. We will also get higher needs for electricity, potential job losses for those least able to transition, and a hellscape of privacy and intellectual property issues. Some of the consequences of this may be anticipated, intended, and desired by some. They will also be unanticipated, unintended, and undesired by others. Demographics and social determinants of place primarily drive the difference. In other words, our sociotechnical imaginaries limit our sociotechnical capacity. These are the “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures.” 6 The so-called “smart city” is just such a sociotechnical imaginary.
If you type “smart city” into a Google image search, the results returned are very much of a kind. The results show an endless array of tall buildings overlaid with shiny icons in bubbles and vector lines, and there is a lot of blue. But, as Greenfield points out, “these are liminal settings that the philosopher Gilles Deleuze characterized as anyspace-whatever… [which] is never important for any quality of its own but only for the connections it facilitates or brings into being.” 7 Greenfield continues, “The frictionlessness of any-space-whatever makes it the ideal staging
3 Deloitte. 2017. “2017 Global Mobile Consumer Survey: The Dawn of the Next Era in Mobile.” Deloitte.Accessed August 3, 2021. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/us-tmt2017-global-mobile-consumer-survey-executive-summary.pdf
4 Winner, Langdon. 1986 TheWhaleandtheReactor:ASearchforLimitsinanAgeofHighTechnology.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
5 Benjamin, Ruha. 2019. RaceAfterTechnology.Cambridge: Polity Press.
6 Jasanoff, Sheila, and Sang-Hyun Kim. 2015. DreamscapesofModernity:SociotechnicalImaginariesandtheFabricationof Power . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
7 Greenfield, Adam. 2013. AgainsttheSmartCity.New York: Do Projects.
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ground for experiments in the optimal management of civic behavior, the formulation of governance-as-aservice and ultimately the development of business models for the fully privatized city.” 8 The dominant vision of what a smart city is, is far from neutral. All manner of biases are baked-in. The sheer volume and repetition of these visions limit the thought-space for alternatives. Contrastingly, if you type “cultural city” into a Google image search, the results returned are more varied. Many historical structures are represented; there are far fewer airborne graphical overlays and a more diverse color palette. So, the critical question is, who are these visions a preferable future for anyway?
We are concerned with how the smart city proceeds from and locates agency within broad publics and resists perpetuating existing inequities and marginalization. As urban subjects and inhabitants of cities, how might we redirect the goals of the smart city from efficiency to affordance, from solutions to preferences, from the generalizable to the personal, and from limitless ambitions to ambitious limitations? In this view, the smart city reveals and revels in ludic moments and encourages a deep engagement with the physical and informatic. For Mattern, “Our urban interfaces could compel us to ask questions about what kind of cities we want, and what kind of citizens we want to be.” 9 As Hill suggests, the dominant feature of the operating system of the smart city is that it is extensible; it retains broad open-source structures for inclusion and permissions for read/write and unboxing, for prototyping and debugging, for “productive inefficiency.” 10
The public realm is reimagined as a site of direct democracy connected through networks, rather than a specific place in-between, as in the Greek polis. The public realm becomes a laboratory for experiments on constructing the spirit of place (placemaking, place-keeping, and city-building in popular parlance), requiring new forms of cultural and cooperative governance. Considering this, how might we facilitate the emergence of inhabitants as operatives and co-creators in producing affective urbanism supported by technology to enable connection; what Hemment and Townsend refer to as “smart citizens.” 11
It may also fall to these “smart citizens” to seed counter-narratives that generate sufficient ideological allergies to these imaginaries. Perhaps it is also a widespread and equally culturally seeded idea that there are punk responses for every hyper-efficient optimized vision for the frictionless smart city. How might the smart city make affordances for inhabitants to withhold their cooperation or otherwise resist the participatory turn? Even highly prescribed cities cannot help but be refashioned once in contact with the messy lives of their inhabitants. As
8 ibid.
9 Mattern, Shannon. 2014. “Interfacing Urban Intelligence.” PlacesJournal.April. Accessed August 3, 2021. https://placesjournal.org/article/interfacing-urban-intelligence/
10 Hill, Dan. 2013. “On the Smart City or, a ‘Manifesto’ for Smart Citizens Instead.” Medium.February 1. Accessed July 15, 2021. https://medium.com/butwhatwasthequestion/on-the-smart-city-or-a-manifesto-for-smart-citizens-instead7e0c6425f909
11 Hemment, Drew, and Anthony Townsend. 2013. SmartCitizens.Manchester: FutureEverything. Accessed August 3, 2021. https://futureeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/SmartCitizens-%E2%80%93-FutureEverything_.pdf
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designers and creative technologists, this became apparent in late 2019, as we began work consulting on the Cultural Center Planning Initiative (CCPI) in Detroit, Michigan.
The CCPI resulted from a 2018 international design competition to reimagine Detroit’s Cultural Center. Competitively selected through an international design competition with 44 submissions from 22 cities worldwide, we were contracted by Midtown Detroit, Inc. (MDI) to develop a digital strategy for the 80+ acre Detroit Cultural Center. The district comprises twelve anchor cultural institutions: Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History; College for Creative Studies; Detroit Historical Museum; Detroit Institute of Arts; Detroit Public Library; Hellenic Museum of Michigan; International Institute of Metropolitan Detroit; Midtown Detroit, Inc.; Michigan Science Center; The Scarab Club; University of Michigan; and Wayne State University. This project represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine Detroit’s Cultural Center.
The charge of the CCPI is to reconceive the district as a platform for creating unique visitor and resident experiences in the public realm that encourages people to spend longer in the district and cross the threshold of more institutions. We are advising on the development of the digital strategy and framework. This includes developing rights and principles to govern safe, equitable, and consentful uses of place-based technology and guidelines for appropriate future investment in digital infrastructure. We envision the Detroit Cultural Center as a place where artists, cultural and educational institutions, visitors, and residents can explore new pathways for digital expression, storytelling, and inclusion.
The first phase established a baseline understanding of community technology, digital inclusion, and creative technology initiatives in Detroit and beyond from July-December 2019. This included assessments, site visits, and interviews with the stakeholder institutions. We interviewed a broad sample of employees from economic development, education, executive leadership, facilities, information services, marketing, operations, programming, security, and visitor services at each of the cultural center organizations. Our early analysis revealed that technology was seen primarily as a set of tools flowing from employee functions. No organizations, at this point, indicated that they had developed integrated cross-functional plans, strategies, and visions for digital technology.
Our interest in public Wi-Fi, municipal lighting, mobility and parking, open data, digital skilling, and inclusion led to interviews with municipal government and nonprofit leaders. 12 Our interviews revealed a patchwork of initiatives:
12 Downtown Detroit Partnership, Detroit Community Technology Project, Data Driven Detroit, Michigan Department of Transportation, and City of Detroit (offices of Digital Inclusion; Electrical Distribution Conversion; General Services; Lighting; Operations; Parks & Open Space; Planning and Development).
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● Detroit Community Technology Project 13 provides mesh networks, digital steward hubs, and training, as well as resources for equitable approaches to data, internet, and community-led technology
● Downtown Detroit Partnership was in the early stages to bring public Wi-Fi kiosks to downtown
● City of Detroit was developing a new smart parking app (including dynamic pricing and links to last-mile mobility, walking, and event options)
● City of Detroit and Data Driven Detroit’s developed an Open Data portal and suite of gov tech apps/tools
● City of Detroit is updating compliance plans for smart upgrades to municipal lighting that may include bundled Wi-Fi/5G and sensing technologies
● City of Detroit’s Office of Digital Inclusion launched Connect 313 as a city-wide multi-stakeholder initiative and fund to ensure all Detroiters can access the digital world and the opportunity it brings
The upstart nature of the initiatives underway recalls the radical transformations and mix of public/civic and private commercial forces that came together during America’s lighting and early electrification in the 19th and 20th Century articulated by Hughes. 14 These interviews helped better situate the CCPI within the context of other public interest and community technology initiatives in the city.
Following the interviews, we undertook a smart city field scan (a literature review of some 200+ reports) to identify and define the necessary technologies, infrastructure, strategies, and measurable outcomes that could inform the planning of the technology masterplan for the cultural district. We focused mainly on the roles and models of governance and regulatory controls, rights of access, and privacy concerns. As a result, we conducted a critical analysis of existing digital rights rubrics from national and international sources such as Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation); The People’s Roadmap to a Digital New York City; the VIRT-EU Values and ethics in Innovation for Responsible Technology in Europe Report; the Declaration of Cities Coalition for Digital Rights (a coalition with the support of the United Nations Human Settlements Program and the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition); and the Manifesto in Favor of Technological Sovereignty and Digital Rights For Cities; among several others. We parsed these for the most frequently mentioned criteria and concerns that would form the basis of a digital rights and principles rubric for the CCPI 15 in future phases.
13 Detroit Community Technology Project. 2021. DetroitCommunityTechnologyProject.Accessed August 3, 2021. https://detroitcommunitytech.org/
14 Hughes, Thomas P. 1979. “The Electrification of America: The System Builders.” TechnologyandCulture20 (1): 124-161.
15 As we began to wrap up this part of our field scan work, The California Consumer Privacy Act became legislation in January 2020. There are already several California Consumer Privacy Act-like laws in process (New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, and North Dakota), and fifty-one chief executives at major U.S. corporations, including Amazon, AT&T, and IBM, recently urged Congress to pass federal consumer privacy legislation rather than have each State implement their own regulations on data privacy. This is an issue that continues to grow in importance, so much so that we are developing an offshoot comparative research project for 2021-2022 to track and analyze the emergence of rights, principles, regulatory, and policy-based approaches to combat the excesses of technology, social media, and platform intermediaries.
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Finally, we developed a set of benchmark cultural districts in cities of comparative size, demographics, or population density, and peer institutions with a similar footprint, similar challenges, and barriers. The benchmarks established both practical and aspirational targets for the Detroit Cultural Center regarding what is technologically feasible, economically viable, and, more importantly, desirable to residents and visitors. This included: best practices for municipal public Wi-Fi; an exploration of their respective “digital toolbox” in terms of online presence (web, apps, etc.), physical-digital assets (infrastructure used to deliver and amplify visitor experiences, to drive event-based programming, public art, and work in the public realm); and descriptions of how they are using digital technology for governance, shared services, and to anchor institutions in their community and neighborhood. Our benchmark cities included Atlanta, Georgia; Columbus, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; Portland, Oregon; Cleveland, Ohio; San Jose, California; and international examples of Montreal (CA) and Melbourne (AU). These were presented as brief case studies to the stakeholder institutions and the CCPI partners.
While synthesizing and presenting key takeaways, gaps, and opportunities for the CCPI digital strategy, the first mandates for COVID-19 related lockdowns and closures happened. It is an understatement to say that the basic business model for the galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and performing sectors that prioritized the physical and in-person vanished almost overnight. While the CCPI organizations pivoted to respond to the various mandates and looked for ways to move their mission-related work online, we developed a digital capacity and transformation survey and observation project.
The survey gave us additional information on the twelve institutional stakeholders’ operations, programming, cyber-security, engagement, promotions, and resiliency. The survey results were used to update and deepen the initial stakeholder profiles and capture opportunities for the CCPI to develop cooperative and joint approaches to digital capacity and infrastructure. For the observation component, we tracked and captured the publicfacing web presence (websites and social media channels) of all the institutional stakeholders) from March 23 –April 20, 2020. We tracked how they were delivering organizational missions digitally; and maintaining an institutional presence online. We did a comparative analysis of the data collected benchmarked against The Cleveland Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and the University Musical Society (Ann Arbor, MI) that were all tracked in the same way. Each institution we observed translated existing or experimented with putting out new content online to reach their current audiences on digital platforms.
For most, they increased the volume and quality of online content, especially those with resources and capacity. The institutions all showed increased initial engagement with audiences and, in some cases, experienced a boost from new audiences. However, the COVID-19 pandemic made institutions acutely aware that a robust digital strategy entails much more than simply adding content. Such a strategy requires a fundamental shift in their understanding of digital skills and platforms to empower the relationships they want to have with audiences and
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communities. More than embracing the latest tech or platforms, organizations need to embed digital transformation into their fabric and culture with buy-in from the whole organization.
Additionally, our work indicated a need for a new, shared digital infrastructure in the district that incentivizes the institutions to collaborate further. We consistently heard that current visitors might be going to one institution in the district and leaving rather than taking advantage of the entire portfolio of the district. The institutions would benefit from a vision of the visitor journey supported by digital technology in physical space - connecting the physical experience with the online experience in mutually supportive ways.
The obvious challenge is how might the CCPI institutions develop a shared vision of catalytic ways to implement culture-led digital transformation. Our proposition creates a yearlong series of pilot opportunities to identify and test key priorities, challenges, and quick wins for 2021 and 2022. Having completed the positioning and benchmarking work in the fall of 2020, we worked with Midtown Detroit, Inc. to prepare an application for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that resulted in a 12-month $500,000 grant designed to support risktaking and experimentation within the cultural center institutions for place-based, digital transformation. This funding provides vital infrastructure, develops and documents use cases, and promotes collaboration and coordination among the institutions across three areas: digital infrastructure, digital visitor experiences, and digital capacity.
Digital Infrastructure
Given the presence of so many civic, educational, and public cultural organizations, we saw an immediate and distinct opportunity to develop digital infrastructure that would afford increased access to the internet throughout the district; without the tracking, advertising, and privacy challenges baked into many of the commercial kiosk systems deployed in cities. In partnership with Midtown Detroit Inc., Wayne State University (WSU) has made a 5-year commitment to provide outdoor Wi-Fi as a free, public amenity that allows for neartotal coverage of the Detroit Cultural Center. This Wi-Fi system will connect the Detroit Cultural Center to Merit Network, a non-profit member-owned organization governed by Michigan’s public universities. Founded in 1966, Merit owns and operates America’s longest-running regional research and education network and 4,000 miles of fiber optic infrastructure in the State of Michigan.
The wireless system extends WSU’s existing campus system and will encourage more outdoor programming from the cultural institutions. Our survey and site visits revealed that only eleven percent of institutions had accessible and reliable Wi-Fi for the public outside the institution. The Detroit Cultural Center network will also provide accessible and reliable public Wi-Fi to visitors and residents, a significant utility and amenity within Midtown Detroit. According to the American Community Survey (ACS), Detroit is one of the least connected cities in the US.
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Forty-nine percent of the residents of Midtown Detroit are in poverty, 16 and forty-one percent of homes have no broadband subscription. 17 Providing digital infrastructure in this context requires that we operate through a lens of digital inclusion to ensure that all individuals and communities, including the most disadvantaged, have access to and use of information and communication technologies. 18
We are also developing a simple Digital Rights & Principles framework that will aid the CCPI institutions in coordinating, evaluating, and making decisions for the adoption of shared digital infrastructure and services for the district. This will be a values-driven framework stemming from the critical analysis of existing rubrics that we undertook during our baseline research. We have begun testing these principles with Detroit residents in workshops that focus on access, equity, and transparency issues.
Digital Visitor Experiences
To consider the future placement of permanent urban screens for the Detroit Cultural Center, we worked with Midtown Detroit Inc.’s DLECTRICITY Nighttime Exhibition of Art & Light as part of the curatorial advisory for the festival’s fourth edition as it returned in September 2021. Part of our work is to document and evaluate compelling use cases for urban screens within the district. The CCPI institutions identified that one barrier to regular outdoor programming is the lack of permanent infrastructure to support this work. DLECTRICITY has presented three editions of the festival between 2012-2017, again with little ability to invest in permanent infrastructure to support its development. Our understanding and interest in urban screens flow from Mirjam Struppek’s articulation of their social potential - as possible sites and assemblies for cultural content and engagement that in some way act as a remedy or hedge against their dominant use in cities for commercial ends. Struppek states, “Urban Screens can only be understood in the context of the rediscovery of the public sphere and the urban character of cities, based on a well- balanced mix of functions and the idea of the inhabitants as active citizens…Their digital nature makes these ‘screening platforms’ an experimental visualization zone on the threshold of virtual and urban public space.” 19 To further our work, we plan to develop a set of simple generative questions to guide our case studies. We are interested in how might we:
● challenge the ubiquity and convergence of commercial content for urban screens through artistic, cultural, and locally-rooted programming;
● amplify and understand the performative quality of digitally-augmented spaces and their potential for promoting convivial interactions;
16 United States Census Bureau. 2017. 2017NationalPopulationProjectionsTables:MainSeries.Accessed August 3, 2021. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2017/demo/popproj/2017-summary-tables.html
17 University of Michigan Poverty Solutions. 2020. MappingDetroit’sDigitalDivide.Accessed August 3, 2021. https://poverty.umich.edu/research-funding-opportunities/data-tools/mapping-detroits-digital-divide/
18 Siefer, Angela. 2016. “What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Digital Equity’ and ‘Digital Inclusion’?” BentonInstituteforBroadband andSociety.October 27. Accessed August 3, 2021. https://www.benton.org/blog/what-do-we-mean-when-we-saydigital-equity-and-digital-inclusion
19 Struppek, Mirjam. 2006. “The Social Potential of Urban Screens.” VisualCommunication5 (2)
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● and disrupt the screen-zombie attention economy and provide opportunities to meet the core psychological need for belonging by providing foci for people to gather in public.
Digital Capacity
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need for digital engagement with audiences as the CCPI institutions and their peers across the globe went into lockdown for 18 months. A 2020 survey of 750 museum directors by the American Alliance of Museums in the US indicated that one out of three institutions might shut down permanently because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 20 The need for increased digital capacity in the arts and cultural sector is now seen as a priority for finding new ways to connect with the public and salvage a business model fit for purpose. From a recent study by the Knight Foundation, 31 percent of museums admit they have no digital strategy, and 43 percent of art museums report they have one or fewer dedicated digital staff. 21 Grounded in this context, we developed two new initiatives: The Transformer Series and Transformer Fund. 22
The Transformer Series was six moderated panel discussions and learning opportunities focused on how cultural organizations, artists, creative technologists, and others create compelling digital experiences, engage audiences, and build resilient strategies and models for the future. These convenings were curated and produced by rootoftwo and presented by Midtown Detroit Inc. We engaged local, national, and international thought leaders for six 90-minute sessions from April - June 2021. This work was fundamental to creating a supportive learning culture within the Detroit Cultural Center. The intent behind the Transformer series was to gather and share with the CCPI institutions a broad range of new approaches and provide models from other organizations so they might recognize the opportunity technology presents. However, we did not want to inspire without giving the possibility to encourage the institutions to take risks. Therefore, at the final session, we launched the Transformer Fund in July 2021.
Open to the Cultural Center Planning Initiative institutions, the Transformer Fund offers financial support of up to $25,000 per project to create novel forms of digital expression, storytelling, and engagement that advance the organization’s digital capacity, vision, and strategy. The objective of this fund is to identify, develop, and produce new digital modes of action, interaction, and collaboration from staff members of CCPI institutions that extend beyond the physical boundaries of individual institutions into the wider district and online. The
20 Kenney, Nancy. 2020. “One Out of Three US Museums May Shut Down Forever, a Survey Confirms.” TheArtNewspaper.July 22. Accessed August 3, 2021. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/one-out-of-three-us-museums-may-shutdown-forever-a-survey-confirms
21 Knight Foundation. 2020. DigitalReadinessandInnovationinMuseums:ABaselineNationalSurvey.Miami: Knight Foundation. Accessed August 3, 2021. https://knightfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/DigitalReadiness-and-Innovation-in-Museums-Report.pdf
22 rootoftwo, LLC. 2021. TransformerSeriesandFund.Accessed August 7, 2021. https://transformer.rootoftwo.com
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Transformer Fund invited proposals for pilot projects with a hybrid physical/digital connection to the Cultural Center.
Collaborations between institutions were encouraged. Funding priorities strongly encouraged proposals that explore experimental and interactive projects which engage audiences within participatory experiences. In addition, priority was given to projects that include and financially support artists, creative technologists, and culture-bearers with a clear connection to Detroit residents and neighborhoods.
Once awarded, these pilots will form the basis of our test use cases to feedback into the strategy and master plan for the Detroit Cultural Center as an event-based landscape. We are hopeful that the CCPI institutions will embrace the opportunity to pilot art, science, and technology ideas to engage people in immersive and participatory digital experiences in the public realm. Our work on the CCPI is ongoing.
Conclusion
Technology is never neutral. The sociotechnical imaginary - the values and worldviews that afford, frame, and bring into being any technology - are implicated as much as any individual that chooses whether or how to use it. As Safiya Noble asserts, the ubiquity and persistence of new digital technologies and algorithmically driven software “demands a closer inspection of what values are prioritized in such automated decision-making systems.” 23 On top of this, given the speed of technological development and the common inertia of policy change, there is a widening gulf between innovation and legislation. We have been working with a model where regulations have been developed slowly and cautiously and persist for long periods. This is an anathema in the face of machine learning, ubiquitous computing, and exponential data, especially in markets where the dominant ideal is unconstrained growth and a winner-takes-all mentality. We need to move from a once-and-for-all approach to a more open-ended and contingent framework that can anticipate, understand, and act on what, when, and how to regulate technology. A framework aware of the potential harms, benefits, and outcomes - seen and unforeseen, and intended and unintended. Fundamentally this requires a rewiring and reordering of decision-making and governance that recognizes the need for a plurality of expertise and knowledge, shared learning, and deliberation. As Jasanoff argues, “The issue, in other words, is no longer whether the public should have a say in technical decisions, but how to promote more meaningful interaction among policy-makers, scientific experts, corporate producers, and the public.” 24
23 Noble, Safiya Umoja. 2018. AlgorithmsofOppression:HowSearchEnginesReinforceRacism.New York: New York University Press.
24 Jasanoff, Sheila. 2003. “Technologies of Humility: Citizen Participation in Governing Science.” Minerva(Kluwer Academic Publishers) 41 (3): 223-244.
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There is a clear opportunity to position technological development within a socio-cultural context where the arts and civic institutions act as thoughtful mediators and facilitators of public engagement and consent. However, we are under no illusions that the twin forces of commerce and politics will stand aside and let cultural institutions make decisions entirely free from their influence; that would be absurd. Still, as the CCPI evolves, it presents a catalytic opportunity to develop an active event-based landscape that supports other civic activities, imaginaries, and creative uses for urban technology within an inclusive and equitable framework for the Detroit Cultural Center.
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References
Benjamin, Ruha. 2019. RaceAfterTechnology.Cambridge: Polity Press.
Deloitte. 2017. “2017 Global Mobile Consumer Survey: The Dawn of the Next Era in Mobile.” Deloitte.Accessed August 3, 2021. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/technology-mediatelecommunications/us-tmt-2017-global-mobile-consumer-survey-executive-summary.pdf
Detroit Community Technology Project. 2021. DetroitCommunityTechnologyProject.Accessed August 3, 2021. https://detroitcommunitytech.org/
Greenfield, Adam. 2013. AgainsttheSmartCity.New York: Do Projects.
Hemment, Drew, and Anthony Townsend. 2013. SmartCitizens.Manchester: FutureEverything. Accessed August 3, 2021. https://futureeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/SmartCitizens-%E2%80%93FutureEverything_.pdf
Hill, Dan. 2013. “On the Smart City - or, a ‘Manifesto’ for Smart Citizens Instead.” Medium . February 1. Accessed July 15, 2021. https://medium.com/butwhatwasthequestion/on-the-smart-city-or-a-manifesto-forsmart-citizens-instead-7e0c6425f909
Hughes, Thomas P. 1979. “The Electrification of America: The System Builders.” TechnologyandCulture20 (1): 124161.
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2003. “Technologies of Humility: Citizen Participation in Governing Science.” Minerva(Kluwer Academic Publishers) 41 (3): 223-244.
Jasanoff, Sheila, and Sang-Hyun Kim. 2015. DreamscapesofModernity:SociotechnicalImaginariesandthe FabricationofPower.Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Kenney, Nancy. 2020. “One Out of Three US Museums May Shut Down Forever, a Survey Confirms.” TheArt Newspaper.July 22. Accessed August 3, 2021. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/one-out-ofthree-us-museums-may-shut-down-forever-a-survey-confirms
Knight Foundation. 2020. DigitalReadinessandInnovationinMuseums:ABaselineNationalSurvey.Miami: Knight Foundation. Accessed August 3, 2021. https://knightfoundation.org/wpcontent/uploads/2020/10/Digital-Readiness-and-Innovation-in-Museums-Report.pdf
Lee, Una, and Dann Toliver. 2019. BuildingConsentfulTech.Accessed August 3, 2021. http://www.consentfultech.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Building-Consentful-Tech.pdf
Mattern, Shannon. 2014. “Interfacing Urban Intelligence.” PlacesJournal.April. Accessed August 3, 2021. https://placesjournal.org/article/interfacing-urban-intelligence/
Midtown Detroit Inc. 2020. TheCulturalCenterPlanningInitiative.Accessed August 3, 2021. https://www.midtownculturalconnections.com/about-ccpi
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Noble, Safiya Umoja. 2018. AlgorithmsofOppression:HowSearchEnginesReinforceRacism.New York: New York University Press.
rootoftwo, LLC. 2021. TransformerSeriesandFund.Accessed August 7, 2021. https://transformer.rootoftwo.com Siefer, Angela. 2016. “What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Digital Equity’ and ‘Digital Inclusion’?” BentonInstitute forBroadbandandSociety.October 27. Accessed August 3, 2021. https://www.benton.org/blog/whatdo-we-mean-when-we-say-digital-equity-and-digital-inclusion
Struppek, Mirjam. 2006. “The Social Potential of Urban Screens.” VisualCommunication5 (2). United States Census Bureau. 2017. 2017NationalPopulationProjectionsTables:MainSeries.Accessed August 3, 2021. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2017/demo/popproj/2017-summary-tables.html
University of Michigan Poverty Solutions. 2020. MappingDetroit’sDigitalDivide.Accessed August 3, 2021. https://poverty.umich.edu/research-funding-opportunities/data-tools/mapping-detroits-digitaldivide/
Winner, Langdon. 1986. TheWhaleandtheReactor:ASearchforLimitsinanAgeofHighTechnology.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
MARSHALL AND CHARLES BIOS
John Marshall is a designer, curator, and researcher with over 20 years of experience working on tangible interactions for objects, products, and responsive environments. In 1998 he co-founded rootoftwo with Cézanne Charles John is a tenured associate professor in the Stamps School of Art & Design at University of Michigan. Marshall holds a PhD in digital design and fabrication technology from Robert Gordon University, a MA in Art as Environment from Manchester Metropolitan University, an MFA in Sculpture from The Ohio State University, and a BA in Fine Art with Honors from Glasgow School of Art.
Cézanne Charles is a designer, curator, and researcher with 20 years of experience working at the executive level within the creative industries (US/UK). With John Marshall, she leads rootoftwo’s work at the intersection of culture, design, technology, social justice, and public policy. Cézanne serves on the boards of Allied Media Projects, Design Core Detroit’s UNESCO City of Design initiative, and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. Charles has a MPA from the Ford School of Public Policy University of Michigan (science/technology emphasis) and a BA in Theatre Studies from The Ohio State University.
https://rootoftwo.com/
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