Digital technologies are changing cities in all kinds of ways.
From the advent of open data that makes information newly available to citizens, to the runners or cyclists who use fitbits or apple watches to measure and monitor themselves; from buses and taxis that use GPS and online booking, to teenagers who gather on whatapp; from the curation of virtual exhibitions to the display of urban graffitti on instagram, digital technologies are appearing in urban enviroments in all kinds of guises.
But what are the actual implications of these technologies for city life? How do digital technologies affect different people’s experience living in a city like London? How are digital technologies mediating, transforming, extending and rearticulating what it means to be someone who lives, works, plays or creates here? What kind of re-imaginings of life in the city are digital technologies making possible? Who or what is utilising digital devices in the city and to what ends?
These are the kinds of questions that digital anthropologists seek to answer...
From the advent of open data that makes information newly available to citizens, to the runners or cyclists who use fitbits or apple watches to measure and monitor themselves; from buses and taxis that use GPS and online booking, to teenagers who gather on whatapp; from the curation of virtual exhibitions to the display of urban graffitti on instagram, digital technologies are appearing in urban enviroments in all kinds of guises.
But what are the actual implications of these technologies for city life? How do digital technologies affect different people’s experience living in a city like London? How are digital technologies mediating, transforming, extending and rearticulating what it means to be someone who lives, works, plays or creates here? What kind of re-imaginings of life in the city are digital technologies making possible? Who or what is utilising digital devices in the city and to what ends?
These are the kinds of questions that digital anthropologists seek to answer...
