How we interact with the digital world and with the digital tools that we have today? That is the question I asked myself at the beginning of this course. Digital cultures came to me as an experience to question the use of technology in the design and development of cities and societies, in the time of the climate crisis; and as a disruptive experience to understand technology for someone (me) who is starting to get more involved in the world of data and automation.
Image created though ChatGPT representing the concept of Digital Cultures.
It highlights people communicating through devices, interlinked by data streams, with a background showcasing satellites, data centers, and digital connectivity.
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DATA AND THE TECH METAPHORS
The first reflection we did in class was about the definition of Data.
For me, data could be defined as information that can be measured, it can be text, numbers, or multimedia, but it is different depending on your area of research and the way you want to aporach the data. It has two categories that can include:
Qualitative
textual descriptions
maps
pictures
transcripts
Quantitative
Surveys
temperatures
measurements
counts of words
It is important to clarify that Data and Statistics are not the same, Statistics are the result of data analysis and interpretation. But why is this interpretation important? Because it allows us to indetify patterns and trends, offer solutions and understand scientific phenomena; and as urban designers, data is a powerful tool in our attempt to understand the cities and the world.
At the same time, data is information. Everything around us can be and generate data, that’s why understanding this concept may feel vague; however, it brings a lot of power (in knowledge or economical) to those who know how to extract, manipulate and use it.
And speaking of data manipulation, there is a very interesting analysis we did in class when it comes to how we have developed a language to udnerstand data and what we do with it, and that is through the use of metaphors. The essence of this figure of speech is to make complex ideas more understandable, and since data is an abstract concept, we have assigned a language around it, for which we understand data as a natural resource (like carbon or oil) that has a great value, can be mined and refined by experts and industries, that is meaningful without processing, and can be traded, stored, and protected in a vault. Data has become the steel of the digital economy.
Image source: NicoElNino. (n.d.). Big data technology and data science illustration. Data flow concept. iStock. https://www.istockphoto.com/es/vector/tecnolog%C3%ADa-big-data-e-ilustraci%C3%B3n-de-ciencia-de-datos-concepto-de-flujo-de-datos-gm1448152453-485760115?utm_medium=organic&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=iptcurl
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THE MATERIALITY OF DIGITAL CULTURES
Speaking of metaphors, the way we understand data storage works as a figure of speech as well. IT companies sell us the idea that data can be stored in the cloud, so we interpretate it as a floating-lacking of three dimensional forms that can be anywhere with a connection to the web, and even though the second is correct, the first not so much. Data storage is not an entity that exists in the air, but instead is a network of telecommunications, satellites, kilometer-long submarine cables and data-centers warehouses that occupy a volumne in our terrestrial dimension.
Data centers have become the most important infrastructure of the 21st century, and with the constant transition from paper to digital, they have become the libraries of knowledge that allow the information and economic transactions worldwide. For this reason, their physical presence in cities has change the form of them. Due to the huge amount of necessary electrical power, data centers and energy infrastructure are becoming one, with data centers being a priority over cities and human settlements.
At the same time, it is important to remeber the materiality of these centers. The construction of data centers is not excluded from the contruction industry pollution we generate when a new building is built, we are talking about enormous warehouses capable to storage huge hardware equipements that require tons of water to be colded due to the heat the computation equipements produce, and that have to be maintained by a labor force composed by a human security, servers, secretaries, etc in poor labor conditions.
Finally, but not less important, all these procedures would not be possible without the aid of the politics, who are responsible of signing legal agreements that allow data centers to exist, to be a priority over the human settlements, who exent data centers of developing a sustainable well-paid economic activity with the promise of generating jobs and a local economy increase.
Image source: https://images.app.goo.gl/DkPsmRYttnXeaPb66
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TEMPORALITY, AI & SOCIAL INNOVATION
Technology has endowed us with thousands of benefits and the most recent innovation of Artificial Intelligence has been no exception. AI accelerates our daily lives with instant responses, real-time updates,, and automation, that badly leads into a constant state of urgency and anxiety amoung the users and consumers.
Let’s compare it with a mobility technology. In the past, traveling from Europe to America would require around a week of travel in a transatlantic (consider a case in which the ship doesn’t crash with an inceberg and sinks), but nowadays this travel can be done in a 9 hours flight, so somehow, with the evolution of technology, we have managed to time travel and convert a one week travel into a 9 hours travel, and as a result, our time perception around this travel has changed. The same happens with AI and the way we perceive a search online.
We are living in a temporal polycrisis, in which the technological dysynchrony is leading us to a social acceleration where we do not control our time on and off screens.
Image credit: Shutterstock
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MISINFORMATION OF REALITY IN URBAN DESIGN
In Mexico, a public works construction project usually raises controversy due to the factors and actors involved in it. Since corruption has been one of the most common companions of a lot of politicians through mexican history, a construction project will sound the population red alerts, who are interested to know if the taxes money is actually going into the development of the public works or if is it going into the pockets of corruption. At the same time, projects that would provide benefits to the general public might get stained with fake information distributed by certain groups that would not benefit from this works.
Similiar situations may happen around the globe, which puts us as urban designres in a complicated position of having to address with misinformation, involiving social, environmental, economical and political spheres of the urban life. Fantasies of a small part of humanity rest on the Nightmares of others. We are trapped inside a lopsided imagination of those who monopolize power and resources to benefit the few at the expenses of the many.
Image source: Mendieta, E. (2023, March 23). San Pedro lanza convocatoria para proyectos del Presupuesto Participativo 2023. Grupo Milenio. https://www.milenio.com/politica/comunidad/san-pedro-inicia-recepcion-proyectos-presupuesto-participativo
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CRITICAL DESIGN LAB
Through the use of a Critical Design methdology and a Design Fiction approach, we were invited to be part of a pop-up bizarre bazaar presenting a creative, collective, collaborative and provocative digestion of our key learnings from the course in the form of stories of change in a state of climate emergency, which portray how cities can change in a state of climate emergency using artefacts of digital cultures from possible near futures.
Critical Design (Dunne & Raby, n.d.):
The use of design fiction and speculative design proposals to challenge assumptions and conceptions about the role objects play in everyday life.
Design Fiction (What Is Design Fiction?, n.d.):
The practice of creating tangible and evocative prototypes from possible futures, to help discover and represent the consequences of decision making.
In a collaborative effort between Paul Strobel, Francisco Ferrer and me, we created the story of Project Haven, a dystopian future proposal that looks to attend the increasing housing crisis through the use of virtual reality technology.
Before the Future’s Bazaar activity, we developed sketches of prototypes based in keywords related to the Digital Cultures and from the story we created.
At the end and as a team we presented a VR sit that allows you to have a house and provides you with the physical sensations of live in your own refuge, a robot companion for living in your virtual reality and meal tabs that contain all the necessary nutrients for your existence.
Finally to conclude the course, we reflected on the importance of imagination and team work for the development of projects. For me it was amusing and amasing to see what we were capable to prototype from scratch, using and our imagination. Thinking of the future has never been so fun!
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REFERENCES
Dunne & Raby. (n.d.). https://dunneandraby.co.uk/content/bydandr/13
What is design fiction? (n.d.). Near Future Laboratory. https://nearfuturelaboratory.com/what-is-design-fiction/
