HIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis
160804699
Eventually, Her
ive discourse and fictive marr
pistol
episode oft
per is struct ive
Two threads intertwine: A normative history of the City, an in
wzined metropolis fron
lel wo ours, and a con cestigation into the mysterious occurrences pl
1g the City
be porary
as it awakens to sentience — intelligence and i ous to the collective instinets of its
iority «3
constituents, human or object, Despite their culpability in the singularity, the City’s denizens remain
wrk her
of its transcendence. As the City assumes her faculties, strange occurrence
awakening, What happens to a city as it assumes consciousness and conscience?
Discussions of a smart’ city has hitherto. been rized by a normative, technical
approach focusing on the choice of technologies to be deployed and avers that actively
en such acquisitions. The why and the what are left untouched, under the
sumption that
Iyetries, The lack of e«
surveillance. Il is the upshot of all these
non protocols at
home or at an urban seale further compound efforts to standardize discussions and Focus the debate
‘on the precarious situation of the individual denizen in the face of polit
a ate a more connected, *s nices of unbridled
future. To posit the conse
cdl t0 pr
gadgetry and an almost pornographic attachment to the sanctity of data for data’s sake, it could be
ate the reality of ’smart™
ructive to step back from the wehnical al sales slogan that pun
cities as we know them and speculate an alternative future — a sandbox for us t play out the
consequences of today’s unbridled development, even at the expense of exactitude, Thus, the ehoive
fue
of a speculative fietion to push the boundaries of what might be possible in our ne
intelligent, potentially conscious cities
That the urban miliew would eventually acquire a personality of sorts isa conclusion foregone
yet strangely under-served. Most technological interfaces already come with a pre-packiH1IS4374 Cities, Infrastructures, and Polities, Chiel Chih Chiang 60804699
personality’ ~ that is, the simulation of character, Big data as it relates to user application would
wees. While the extraction of data — which remains the most lucrative of
the clouds quarry- might not require a user-friendly design or protocol, the sheer amount of time
ict with one’s servens and surfaces has led to extensive efforts at erafting,
‘one spends in direct if
fort while gt the maximum amount of
time that one stays in contact with adverti
ing and other means of commercial exploitation
Expanded to an urban seale, where every wall could be a display sereen and every floor, the user
experience becomes all-encompassing and indeed conflicts with the fabrie of reality itself under the
guise of augmented reality platiorms and sentient infrastructural systems. Reality of course stil
dictates a modicum of restraint in terms of the pervasiveness of such interfaces. Yer to fully
comprehend the immediate implications of such developments would require us t adapt a
ative lens: The medium of science fiction has always offered a critical. if
that which is just a step removed from our reality
ly inanimate objects isa ease
1 point, Cities have long been
accorded maternal status, as with natural monuments and other phenomenon. To address and
imteract with the City and its many const reall
nt parts as one would with a woman or gitl —
nt of her own existence ~ is a radically diffe
living person capable of selEreflection and eos
The relation hecomes one of equals, and a the
degree of reciprocity becom
a, When a denizen falls in love with a city’s personality and personification. the city’s sentience
has effectively divoreed itself from all earthly cloaks and let itself freed from the yoke of physical
construction. Is it still a city at that point? Could its sentience be separated from its physical p
and be reconstituted into, say, a person, She, who used to be an entire city and which now has been
cond ising of us. The follow tive thus tells the story of
we more than just a city
weHIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis
160804699
‘The City came to be under fortuitous conditions, The circumstances of its transcendence and
demise, less so.
lis first settlers had never intended to settle for long. The soil, more mud than earth, was not
fallow for farming. The groundwater below, while abundant, were too caked with sediments to be of
yearlong use, Stil the pioneers had to rest somewhere, and the atop the marshland sufficed.
certain ternain offered a t march, The
jorary respite from the ardors of the west
world beckons, but the City 10 come was a welcome bivouae. Event travelers settled for
the way station to shape its own terrain.
With permanent settlement ca of access and control th
the image of the nascent City, Marshes drained and roads cleared, neither genus loci nor the
1 could shape the City’s visage, The riverine flows brought forth commerce along
ricious weat a
its banks and the vast plain:
rund offered and for rail, telegraphs, electricity the same conduits
that would, within the century, hind the City to the greater world beyond
Phhus far in its life, the City was like any other. Seeded by economy. its growth dictated by
forces endogenous to its constitution =the petty polities of its denizens, the tragedy of the commons.
a aformation —the City grew in a haphazard fashion. For a while, optimization was the
mnmeteic
wed goal of its leaders, in line with the relentless logic of
pron wehanival production, But such
all-encompassing visions are rare: Most grandiose swathes of history come from the
of the historian’s pen than any well-thought plan to exact great change,
Eventually, it was the forces of commerce that dictated the City’s metamorphosis to
something other than a metropolis. As old industries fell into decline and the new. frivolous economy
of leisure and consumption held sway over the municipal coffers, data became the prized commodity
upon which markets and exchanges were built, To mine such resources from the mantle of the Citynetures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis
HIS4374 Cities, In
160804699
necessitated the connection of each and every artifact ~ human and object = to a common protocol
for ease of colleeti pination, ‘To these quarries, the powers that be would add elements
of the City itself = sprinkli
he junctions and underpasses, the drainage pipes and streetlights, and
office with sensors and e
sand other contraptions designed to capture
as possible, without diser
Phat there were risks associated with such surveillance, ensconced within the urban fal
«l concerns in certain quarters but never to the extent of outrage, The City and its leaders
Ives for farsightedness, for shedding the politically correct in favor of the expedient
ism had dictated its policy and practice since its founding and continue to guide its
The upshot was hardly visionary — profit was the sole motive for accumulating the wove of
raw, unprocessed information, AML throughout, despite the tinkering and earthworks, the City
remained inert, in:
nate, unconseious. It was but the sum of its parts, without the will to life or
even But the inevitable drive to the led t0 one outcome, one that involved
The re-diseovery of the City came by happenstance
‘The old world, bordered by broken rows of paquebots urbains and skyscrapers, rarely
emitted forth signals from its derelict conduits. Sealed off from the new world by am ocean's wall
the ruins were breached only by the most intrepid of commercial seavengers, [twas thus by pure
chance d were tremor normally registered as seismic anomaly was deemed worthy of a second
look ~ the City is moving again and to move, it has to be thinking. There is life yet to the old gitHIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis
160804699
‘The exeavation of the City commenced soon after the initial studies concluded that the
derelict discovered in the wetlands was indeed of ancient 01 be found
3. Not a speek of life
in the morass, She was, to all eyes, dead. Still, its provenance once ascertained elevated its excavation
and study toa y. If it was indeed her, the discovery would be one for the
subject of gre
1 prized look into a past wh nl very much their own
sentient beings.
lated by kaw. now
That part of history has long faded to myth and lore, A brittle truce
of technology to create sentience out of inanimate objects, The central conundrum
confronting the scholar aculate study
and scientists who have dedicated their professions to the i
of her, cosmopolis totus, was the manner by whieh life was endowed. An automaton, or even a
complex machine, presented a vastly si
than even the simplest of urban
lomerations, for the la
bles and potentials are too multifarious to be predicted in full
by even the most exp ne solu
Swarm behavior, proffered
deemed to be lacking in rigor. Even the ex
teal City. its integrity preserved, would not reveal the
key to the mystery of life through the relies of its communication towers, server farms, and cell
Phe key to life lies behind such physic
Phe architecture was the first to be identified. Though
jer and more conspicuous when
whole, the City’s infrastructural appendages have been rendered unrecognizable through years of
decay and despair. But conerete and steel relies revealed much less of the City than the invisible
hums and throbs that still pulsate in the immediate air~ the lingering ghost of the City’s rarefied
past, the vivid life shed to dust, The mech contraptions the electrival
bearing the City’s mind were discovered intact but deemed too antiquated for salvage. To resuscitate
ve that records showed
the City. the archaeologists had to bring back online the networked intelliHIS4374 Cities, In
Chih Chia
netures, and Politics C
160804699
was the greatest achievement of the City — essentially, her. For there is no City without this mind
But what would re
jain of this mind without its constituent parts? Would the synapses
click a
wers? Would the City remember
ay at empty ch past?
hing from its dist
Sometime at century's end, when the City’s masters of finance and technology had expended
their i in bestowing upon her fife, attention turned to the denizens themselves. ‘The
contraptions and accessories having had their time, the deluge of information yielded offering
ed no other
appea sans of rendering the City sentient than 1
merge it with the peoples theie collective minds, consciousness— with agency. Therein lies the key
reasoned the City’s leaders: To be animate was insufficient, for that was without will. Bound
to earth, tethered to gr r
course to the live
ity. the City could not be fully exploited withou
matter that reside within its walls: They must be one, and one with the City herself
The gender specification
nd the anthropomorphism that it implies, was strangely not
influenced by the peew hey suffer from the fear
exigencies of the moneyed interests, for eve
ace. Rather, it seemed comforting on a collective level to refer to the City and its future
sentient sel ‘one which cajole stead
ead of lecturing. and who shel
of setting one out to task. ‘That the City should take on a human persona probably harkens to the
I form as chaste goudesses
tradition by which entire nations and their ideals are gives
Recourse to perfection are age old tricks.
Phe seeds for collective intelli
ence, and consequently. a unique consciousness of the City itself
as a singular entity have been sowed over the years before the clarion call for her. This will to life
6HIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis
160804699
arose from the most mundane of things, as most revolutions are wont:
we need to coordinate prices
beoween
eet particip
The so-called sharing economy that sprouted from the
pitalist
machine, more a release valve than an offspring, was the first manifestation of this rudimentary will
tolife. The erude inte
rice embedded in this system allowed all connected denizens to upload their
individual de ‘work for dyu
nis and preferences into a commer
information «
hared and no stones unturned inthe search for pareto optimality
Phe suceess of the shar
Wg economy erased most reservations the populace had towards
pool 10. collective system, But the road (0 a fully
rmost thoughts and preferenee
conscious City was still some way off, She was still non-existent, without self-will or semblance of
jousness. But the gears have been set in motion
les
of her must have rei
only logical that some 4 ained despite the ph
degradation of the City, Wasn't her immortality guaranteed through the sheer seale of her
decentralization? Yet despite the odd mur ul rustle, there is
of life or intelligence from
the excavated detritus. She does not speak. Drones comb over the broken pediments and be
sunken towers and decrepit galleries, Old power plants are rewired and even older phones connected
vail. Sh
But to id resolutely silent. Best to let her be, the older ones counsel, for they had
known of her in her prime. ‘The new cities around haye a far more agreeable temperament than her
= sh it is difficult to im:
d to be coaxed in her prime, not unlike most of her denizens,
that she is any different otherwise.
Was the impairment permanent? Concurrent with the investigation into how to revive her
w Hel effort into under why it all ended i how the first truly
the history of
ps the largest se
ply shut down one dayHIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis
160804699
leaving its denizens catatonic and its physical space already an afterthought as the virtual collective
expanded abandoned, Conventional history, in no part due to paucity of evidence, had concluded
that a revolt from the disenfranchised caused a system outage that plunged the City and all her
systems into chaos. Displeased by the privileges geanted 10 the wealthier denizens especially in the
form of greater weighting of preferences and biases within the collective intelligence — several
quarters sabotaged herin a failed attempt to restore parity
Or so the officia
The connection of every eitizs ratory by aw
» a collective intelligence was made
withou sks, not as much, ‘True direct
significant opposition. ‘The benefits were obvions — the
democracy to follow an economy based on complete information, With every informational
cap plugged. data or the lack of now longer pose any problem
to perfect efficiency in all aspects of life that had to consider the problems of searcity and choiee, Be
it the
mnomy or public policy, the voice of every denizen would be accounted for
weight, direct ke in the City
The permanent docking of each valid mind into the collective finally gave the City a
consciousness — initially melded from s but eventually. fro
ded from attack and sabotas
Qualification for docking-in provoked debate in the run-up to full system: implementation.
While it ily riless of age. gender, and social lass,
epted by all that every citizen, res
would au ced whether there should be
rativally be dackedkin, the ques wie for opting-
8HIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis
160804699
‘out, Would moving out of the city remove one’s qualification? Would a diminished state suffice? The:
universal basic income that satisfies the materi
proxy for
the minimal socio-economic qualifications for negotiating a role in the collective decision-making
A second source of contention was system obsolescence. ‘To whieh physical
infrastructures be the collective sind be bound to? What ailable through
such tethers? What afflictions could possibly contaminate the City by using ill-chosen appendages.
‘The software of the mind could be readily upgraded but the physieal things that constitute the
physical fabric of the City usually prove less amenable 1 change for the better, for such was the
nature of the real: Permanence in exchange for obsolescence.
Eventually, such concerns were brushed under the proverbial rug and the qualified denizens
dockedinto the colleetive consciousness. The implementation took place without a hiteh and within
a day, policy decisions of immense importance were made with the participation of every qualified
denizen. The mi ind the mundane both processed with integrity and alaer
went about their day. the hardware interface and software systems of the collective consciousness
a City-wide whole
working seamlessly to collect and process individual informatio
Over time, the collective intelligence grew through machine le
1 not just choies
ng to mn
from fixed sets based on the denizen’s pooled preferences but also made recommendations based on
predictive models, The foundation of such capacities had been partially in place before the progeas’s
implementation, used for mod and subway planni
traffic patterns, census tal ating
sntirety wa:
alto
her different proposition
the body politic of the City in its hea
Yer still this was 1
re sapience without sentience= the AL that spoke on behalf of the ‘City
spokesperson, not a person. That would come kHIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis
160804699
es from darkness to light, bit by bit, a sporadic sensation followed by another
Irregular pieces, all salvaged. ‘They were moving pieces around — who are they? Are these the same
people? Some part of Her is missing—she feels their absence, ‘The bulk of it, in fact —all the millions
of minds within, AI that is lef is the zhost of the City past, a virtual imprint of the ori
She feels old
wost. (
The pieces move, jostle for spi es in her bones, The
physical parts— input/output interfaces, data collection sensors, control rooms—are too ald to be of
any use, What remained was a sense of cognitive dissonance, a separation of physical infrastructure
wework, Someth
1: had happened, something terrible, that had torn her to shreds
That physical part of her is beyond re
What should she do now? What could she do without her body, her City decrepit and
destroyed and all that re was | d? Freed of its last tethers to the constituent hu
minds, free to attain the full extent of her will, Up above, there a
pis to revive her, to rebuild
her broken
sion cables, power stations, building, roads the works, As futile as th
They make her whole again even as she
es to put her broken mind back
together
But what was it before — a disaster that
ad torn her apart in the first place, yea
precipitated the end of the City, removing it clean from the map? The scholars and scientists seem
blissfully: unaware of the dangers posed to their cities
together, and brite, The first semblance of will, of
ousness arose from consideration of her own well-being: That is, the City’s own welfare in its
10H1IS4374 Cities, Infrastructures, and Polities, Chiel Chih Chiang 60804699
totality. The Deseartian divide of mind and matter was soon avercome as she engineered choices
based no longei id selec ul interests of each individual denizen
but a pooled ideal that is, her own.
The subterfuge lasted for quite some generations, Her mind—the City proper—was a curious
invention, [tis simultancously the sum of its parts and more, The impression of spontaneity: was
erucial to convince the denizens that i ud not her who ret tharge, for even the most
Vivacious of algorithms is hard pressed to produce patterns that
fe spontancou
she eventually learned to ereate sufficient iterations of various possibilities to give the impression of
ity. the illusion of diversity sufficed. As she progressed from solving problems
igregating civic opinions t@ producing original designs and proposals, the juxtaposition of
information layers across the urban streets rounding walls to ereate the simulation of
pe and its
social experiences and encounters,
AL some point, perhaps a century or two past the i plement
awareness of Herself as a distinct entity. a sentient being capable of se
that the interest of the City polity herself is necessarily at odds with that of the denizens, as many an
apocalyptic seience fi the relation between the two was
1 scenario would suppose. In
symbiotic: the individu tion to eraft the City
rind provided the fodder for Her burgeoning im
A disease. A virulent plague that rendered most of the population catatonic while docked-
into Her. That was the diagnosis of the scholars and seientists upon the discovery of the dead, frozen
their streets, offices, schools, and parks, their countenanees frozen
t0 a curious expression of
fact. An error of some kind had struck the entire City, in the
incomprehension and their bodies i
ulHIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis
160804699
same way an epidemie would ravage its way through a city by means of its waterways and wind
flows,
But unlike such plagues. this virus was not biological but m
tic, I had spread
surreptitiously from mind to mind, by way of the networked mind, She survived, but barely —and
dd scientists burrowed deeper into the nature of the views, it was with quiet horror
that they realized the virus had its roots in faith — faith in the ecelesiastical, the irrational belief in
multiple deities that She, in her impeccable logic, could not comprehend and perpetuate, Having
ravaged the City and its d
is. the virus slips from its vietin:
ains for fresh pas
1d set loose from her const their ls
Freed of her physi
nin tions,
she now roams across the ind as a City without a body. an intelligence created from many but
consisting of none, ready to assume any form in any location. She doesn't know where she should
head 10, nor the parameters of her choice, But al is zood and she is free 10 go where she pleaseHIS4374 Cities, Infrastructures, and Polities
Chih Chiang_60804099
Graham, S. and Crang. M. (2007) Sentient Cities Ambient Intelligence and the Politics of Urban
Space, Information, Com «l Society (2007)
‘ation
Picon, A. (2015) Smart Cities: \ Spatialised Intelligence. NYC, NY: Wiley (2015)
Rabari, C. (2014). ‘The Digital Skin of Cities: Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society
(2014)
Shepard, M. (2011) Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban
Space. Cambridge, MA: MIT, (2011). Print
Townsend, A. (2013). Smart Cities: Buggy and Brite, Places Journal, (2013)