Helen Nissenbaum, Kazys Varnelis: Situated Technologies Pamphlet 9 - Modulated Cities: Networked Spaces, Reconstituted Subjects (2012)

The Situated Technologies Pamphlets series explores the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture and urbanism. How is our experience of the city and the choices we make in it affected by mobile communications, pervasive media, and other “situated” technologies?
In Situated Technologies Pamphlets 9, Helen Nissenbaum and Kazys Varnelis initiate a redefinition of privacy in the age of big data and networked, geo-spatial environments. Digital technologies permeate our lives and make the walls of the built environment increasingly porous, no longer the hard boundary they once were when it comes to decisions about privacy. Data profiling, aggregation, analysis, and sharing are broad and hidden, making it harder than ever to constrain the flow of data about us. Cautioning that suffocating surveillance could lead to paralyzed dullness, Nissenbaum and Varnelis do not ask us to retreat from digital media but advance interventions like protest, policy changes, and re-design as possible counter-strategies.
Publisher Architectural League of New York, Spring 2012
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license
ISBN 978-0-9800994-8-5
56 pages
PDF