POSTGRADUATE
INTERLUDE
Smart Cities, Big Data,
The Internet of Things,
and Digital Rights
CALL FOR RESPONSE
PROVOCATIVE PROPOSITIONS
CAN YOU RESPOND?
OUTPUT FORMATS
Terms like Smart Cities, Big Data,
and the Internet of Things are
shaping a future of our homes,
cities, and our lives.
Srishti is inviting multidisciplinary
and interdisciplinary responses from
all you final year bachelors, and
postgraduate students.
Each student team can choose to
respond to the proposition in any
one or combination of the following
formats:
But questions remain.
• You will have three weeks to
respond – from 28th November to
17th December.
1. Written forms such as policy papers,
technical white papers, design
fiction, Wikipedia page entries, and
manifestos
• Whose future is it? Is it a
singular future?
• Whose data is it? If and how can
data be democratized?
• What and Where is Smartness?
What determines Smartness of
an inhabitable space?
Srishti invites responses from final
year bachelors and postgraduate
students along the lines of one of
these provocative propositions:
1. Time in the Age of Ecumenopolis
2. Whose City, and Whose
Smartness?
3. You are Your Data
• You will present your response to a
panel of experts and general public
in a public seminar format – from
19th to 22nd December.
• If selected for curating, you will
present your responses to public
at large as the culmination of the
seminar.
2. Visual and audio-visual forms such
as posters, animations, films.
3. Interactive forms such as
installations, smartphone and device
applications, Do-it-Yourself kits.
• All responses will be published on
an open digital platform.
4. Physical forms such as products,
wearable devices, sculptures, and
artifacts in general.
• Selected responses will have an
opportunity to publish in Srishti’s
peer-reviewed academic journal,
“Unbound”.
In addition to this, each student group must
work on and deliver a 2500-3000 worded
research paper, positioning their response,
and articulating their contribution to larger
ongoing discourses.
4. Digital Undivide
TIMELINE FOR SUBMISSIONS.
November 28, 2016
Nov 29 ~ Dec 17, 2016
Dec 19 ~ 22, 2016
Form interdisciplinary &
inter-institutional teams
(3-4 per team). Pick a
proposition to respond
Respond in whatever
forms suitable to the
team. (Refer the section
on outputs).
Public Conference
Present and participate
in the culminating
seminar to a panel of
experts, scholars, and
practitioners.
Register your team
1. Register teams – Nov 28
2. Submission of abstract –
Dec 5
3. Notification – Dec 9
4. Submit your position
paper with work-inprogress images – Dec 13
5. Submit your final work –
Dec 17, 2016
[email protected]
POSTGRADUATE
INTERLUDE
Smart Cities, Big Data,
The Internet of Things,
and Digital Rights
PROVOCATIVE PROPOSITION – 1
Time In the Age of Ecumenopolis
Overview
As the world is increasingly connected, time zones are gradually blurred. Globalization means outsourcing labor, which
means outsourcing traditional working hours from one’s life. The service economy of traffic jams, immediate WhatsApp
messages with relatives across vast territories, money transfers that take 10 minutes to arrive. Information is sent up
to the skies to satellites that codify our existence on loading times, downloading files, uploading attachments. Speeds.
Seasons pass by us at a time when tomatoes are available all year round, we can stream Christmas movies in July, and
Google maps can tell us whether we will reach that meeting faster by bus or on foot. This is the dominant notion of time.
Time is intangible but experienced. Time is malleable, dynamic, multiple. It flows through cultures. It is often organized
around satellites (lunar calendars), stars (Julian Calendar), constellations (zodiac, nakshatra), and our relationships to
them seen in our practices. Time is framed by events and freed by the unpredictable, the unknown, the disruption.
There is a difference in the structures with which we measure time and how we engage with and experience time. Beyond
Einstein’s theory of time, a burning stove, a loved one. Beyond yesterday, today, tomorrow…
Questions
• In the Indian context, there are people and places that simultaneously engage in multiple notions of time. Where and
how can we observe them?
• What different methods can we use to record these complex understandings of time?
• What are these other notions of time and how do they respond to ‘smartness’?
[email protected]
POSTGRADUATE
INTERLUDE
Smart Cities, Big Data,
The Internet of Things,
and Digital Rights
PROVOCATIVE PROPOSITION – 2
Whose City, Whose Smartness?
Overview
Smart has become the new buzzword. Our phones are Smart. Our homes are becoming Smart. And now our cities want
to be Smart. Some of the Smart features of the new cities are going to be ‘planning for the unplanned’, transit oriented
development, e-groups for participatory discussions, Smart Solutions to infrastructure and services, and so on. These
features are an outcome of design strategies like retrofitting, redevelopment, greenfield, and pan-city. And all of these
ideas are rooted in the methodology of ‘creating a challenge or a competition’ to select the Smart city. Policy makers,
implementers and other stakeholders at different levels are the capacity builders of this new space. Thus, the Smart City
development is going to be defined by Smart people and Smart solutions. But the definition of ‘Smart’ remains unknown
and unexplained in all of this understanding. The beneficiaries and the nature of the benefits remain undefined. Most
importantly, the relevance and justification for the advent of this new ‘Smartness’ takes a back seat.
Questions
• Where is the ‘Smartness’ situated? Is it in the digital infrastructure of sensing devices and algorithms collecting and
analyzing big data? Or is it in the physical infrastructure of roads, metros, flyovers, and footpaths?
• Where are the biological and geological infrastructure of trees, parks, lakes, and tanks situated?
• How does the cultural infrastructures of art galleries, heritage sites, auditoriums, and theaters? Or is it in people and
their communities?
• What about the margins and intersections? And what about the communities that are considered to be marginal in
our cities? How about a smart city for cows?
• Can you imagine and conceptualize smartness in the intersection between the physical, digital, social, cultural,
biological and geological infrastructures of a city?
• What if smartness lies in the way marginal populations of a city, for e.g. the disabled, the gender queer, the aged, the
poor survive the attempts to make their city smart?
[email protected]
POSTGRADUATE
INTERLUDE
Smart Cities, Big Data,
The Internet of Things,
and Digital Rights
PROVOCATIVE PROPOSITION – 3
You Are Your Data
Overview
Cell phones, credit cards, Biometrics, Aadhar card, social media, fitness trackers, the World Wide Web are some of the
recent services that most of us have taken for granted within the last two decades. These data driven technologies have
become the connective tissue that links products, services and systems together in an attempt to making it all a “seamless
user experience”. By using these services, we have become generators of data. Huge data. Big data. All these data are
about us: Who we are, what we do on a daily basis, what are our dreams and aspirations, whom do we love and / or have
a crush on, are all out there, being analyzed by lines and lines of code. We become our data.
The growth of these networked communications has accelerated the emergence of the ‘always-on’ 24X7 society whose
premise is that anything can be made to happen anytime. As more and more people are getting connected via these
technologies they are, conversely becoming part of a collective database which in turn may be analyzed to reveal patterns,
trends, and associations, especially relating to human behavior and interactions with products, systems, and services.
Also, along with the convenience of access at our fingertips comes the not so comforting idea of being accessible to
mostly invisible forces, which in turn shape our experiences and existence.
Questions
• How can you visualize the hidden aspects of data generation, analysis and consumption? Who is the data generator,
who analysis, who consumes, and who benefits?
• What if our data transactions and their implications across physical, digital and social spaces were transparent and
visible to us?
• Can you enable people to not only be data generators, but also analyzers and ‘smart’ users of their own personal data?
• Can citizens be entrepreneurs of their own data?
[email protected]
POSTGRADUATE
INTERLUDE
Smart Cities, Big Data,
The Internet of Things,
and Digital Rights
PROVOCATIVE PROPOSITION – 4
Digital Undivide
Overview
If and how does a smart city work for a person with no access to a mobile phone, let alone a smart one? To access public
wifi, a person needs to have a mobile phone to receive the One Time Password to register. To do cashless transaction, a
street-side vendor has to own a smartphone connected to internet. Soon to communicate to the city council or the traffic
police or ambulance services, one might need a smartphone application; they appear to be more responsive on twitter
and facebook than on calls. But what about those who do not have a mobile phone, or those who do not want to own and
use a mobile phone?
The solution to most of the internet governance and access to public digital services has been to bridge the so-called
digital divide; digital divide being the unequal gap of access to, use of, and ownership of information and communication
technologies. Digital Undivide, on the other hand is to imagine ways and possibilities to see digital technology not as a
monolithic interface to public services, but merely one of the other ways that citizens can interact with public bodies
and services.
Questions
• Can you envision a public service that anyone can access and engage with? What if a person merely picks a public
phone to get access to a city’s ‘citizen care’ network?
• Are such visions of non-monolithic public services feasible and sustainable? Or are they mere utopia dreamed up by
people living in ivory towers?
[email protected]