connected | responsible

Envisioning the digitally sentient city was the mission of the Cognitive Cities conference I attended on February 26 and 27th in Berlin.The conference brought together the brightest minds from urban planning, politics, academia, technology, and design to debate the future of cities and tech’s influence on urban life.  Over the dense two days we delved into everything from democratic data visualization to the virtual layer added to cities to promote collective knowledge sharing.

Adam Greenfield, the founder of URBANSCALE kicked off the conference with his emphasis on  the active and responsible role of the citizen. He requested that the citizen of the connected city transform from a dweller to a creator: an active individual able to curate and protect a public space that is not objected to private interest. Greenfield demanded that public objects that process and collect data must possess great democratic qualities. Further,, Greenfield wonders, who is served by digital technology in the public space: the world at large or the individual? Greenfield closed on a quote from Laurence Lessing stating, “It is the responsible use of technology and the non-exclusion of the individual to maintain public space, even if the power resides in code.”

Another disruptive highlight was Danie Jost, Science Advisor and Senior Research Fellow at the World Trade Institute (WTI), University of Bern, who shared magnificently entertaining yet challenging thoughts in her talk titled “Bananas, Pineapples, and Mangoes – norm creating structures”.  Looking at the non-existence of structure as such, Jost emphasized the power of information shaping expectations and identified cities as hubs of serendipity – by just fusing even more into an eagerly attentive crowd.

photo credit to @tamjpn

Greater operational scope was curated by Sami Niemelä , Creative Director from Helsinki, who shared reflections on urban information design and public sense making through interface design. Cultural innovator Juha van’t Zelfde introduced the Urbanode, Vini Tiet from real estate developer ICADE shared insights on the current status of cognitive buildings and Georgina Voss, manages the Homesense Project took the crowd on a consumer safari of the last decades leading up to the connected home.  How can technology snug into the home, is one of the questions driving her research, aimed at the “domestic user” that is still somewhat “clumsy around technology”, a clear advocacy for the bottom up approach in design research and implementation.

OpenGov activist Ton Zijlstra, one of the leading minds behind the FabLab movement in the Netherlands presented “spice up your city: just add openGov” in which she calls for more transparent governmental institutions and an even greater availability of data for immediate action on issues of public concern. Quoting cases of urban participation, he highlighted the power of data to activate rather than just inform citizens.

 MIT Boston: SENSEable City Lab’s Dietmar Offenhuber introduced projects that greatly display the willingness for involvement and responsibility from civil society. MIT’s Trash Track project, followed the travels of domestic waste with GPS tracking. The data required a great quantity of items tagged and was carried out with support of the population at a truly urban scale.

The entire conference gave a utopian vision of the future city filled with connectedness and smart embedding. Sharp, witty and dynamically driven by Ben Hammersley, the entire day felt like a dream of connectedness, future scenarios and smart embedding - which in fact as a utopia is right at our doorstep and not a sci-fi notion any longer. Big kudos go to a driven, connected and insightful team of organizers special credits to Igor of Third Wave, Edial  of Yourneighbours and Markus and all the others involved creating a striking two-day event in Berlin. After a splendid two days of brain candy and future scenario planning, I strongly recommend the responsibly connected citizen to attend the 2012 edition of Cognitive Cities.