There’s More Than One Kind of “Smart”: Big Data, Affect and Empathy in the City

Abstract

Most conceptions of the smart city envision uses of technology that improve urban efficiencies, such as control of environmental variables and urban infrastructure. When smart city algorithms venture into areas related to the measurement and control of human behaviour, popular responses are often fractious. In this chapter, I discuss the reasons for such visceral responses and, in the context of Albert Borgmann’s “device paradigm,” I offer one potential positive use of the collection and use of such data to inject effective human context into the urban fabric and thereby to improve collective empathy and compassion.