Recent scholarship in digital geographies has highlighted the possibilities for alternative visions of digital futures contesting the logics and everyday practices of contemporary technocapitalism.
Barcelona has emerged as a key site for counter-hegemonic visions, driven by the progressive municipal government's rejection of the corporate smart city model and the emergence of a network of grassroots initiatives promoting “technological sovereignty” (TS).
Yet, if and how these visions are able to produce new forms of subjectivity in relation to digital systems has remained an important open question. Critical scholars have highlighted how technocapitalist logics produce subjects as knowable and programmable through data profiles, as responsiblized digital citizens contributing data as a form of civic participation, and as stratified in gendered and racialized hierarchies of technological knowledge and agency.
In contrast, this paper explores the production of unruly digital subjects in Barcelona through TS initiatives that work to re-embed the digital in the social, contest hierarchies of technological expertise, and promote forms of collective reflection and experimentation.
LYNCH, Casey R., 2020. Unruly digital subjects: Social entanglements, identity, and the politics of technological expertise. Digital Geography and Society. Online. 1 January 2020. Vol. 1, p. 100001. [Accessed 20 January 2023]. DOI 10.1016/j.diggeo.2020.100001.
[…] In contemporary technocapitalism particular privileged subjects—overwhelmingly white, middle-class and wealthy men with formal technical training—are positioned as leaders of the “digital revolution” making key decisions about the future direction of technological development. The remainder of the population is positioned as “users” or consumers, the grateful beneficiaries of innovation anxiously awaiting the next “big thing,” whose personal data feed new forms of algorithmic governmentality and control.
Recent scholarship in digital geographies has highlighted the possibilities for alternative visions of digital futures contesting the logics and everyday practices of contemporary technocapitalism.
Barcelona has emerged as a key site for counter-hegemonic visions, driven by the progressive municipal government's rejection of the corporate smart city model and the emergence of a network of grassroots initiatives promoting “technological sovereignty” (TS).
Yet, if and how these visions are able to produce new forms of subjectivity in relation to digital systems has remained an important open question. Critical scholars have highlighted how technocapitalist logics produce subjects as knowable and programmable through data profiles, as responsiblized digital citizens contributing data as a form of civic participation, and as stratified in gendered and racialized hierarchies of technological knowledge and agency.
In contrast, this paper explores the production of unruly digital subjects in Barcelona through TS initiatives that work to re-embed the digital in the social, contest hierarchies of technological expertise, and promote forms of collective reflection and experimentation.
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LYNCH, Casey R., 2020. Unruly digital subjects: Social entanglements, identity, and the politics of technological expertise. Digital Geography and Society. Online. 1 January 2020. Vol. 1, p. 100001. [Accessed 20 January 2023]. DOI 10.1016/j.diggeo.2020.100001.
[…] In contemporary technocapitalism particular privileged subjects—overwhelmingly white, middle-class and wealthy men with formal technical training—are positioned as leaders of the “digital revolution” making key decisions about the future direction of technological development. The remainder of the population is positioned as “users” or consumers, the grateful beneficiaries of innovation anxiously awaiting the next “big thing,” whose personal data feed new forms of algorithmic governmentality and control.