Minor urbanism: everyday entanglements of technology and urban life

Abstract

In the complicated intercourse between technology and culture, the models and metaphors we deploy in projecting visions for how this relationship will – or should – evolve are essential to the process. The tendency towards envisioning stable, seamless, uniform and universally available media, communications and information systems, and infrastructures is as old as the field of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) itself, as are critiques identifying the blind spots of these visions. As an alternative to the most recent iteration of these visions – cloud computing – I introduce the notion of ‘minor urbanism’, a conceptual vehicle for understanding the complex assemblages of actors, practices and situations brought into being by real-world ubicomp. I then describe the emergence of ‘white-label’ ATMs as an example of such an assemblage, one that articulates an alternate ontology for describing contemporary entanglements of people, technology and space in the context of everyday urban life. I conclude by introducing a work of design fiction that richly illustrates these entanglements and indicates a strategy by which the public imaginary of near-future urban technologies can be shaped along these lines.