Technological Solutionism Research Articles

Fixing motorisation: The logics of infrastructure solutionism in Bengaluru

Cities often deploy infrastructure-based solutions to tackle problems such as congestion caused by increasing motorisation rates. Such solutions include the introduction of complete streets or improved public transit systems. However, these solutions are often viewed as ‘quick fixes’ that are expected to resolve issues with ease. This article examines this phenomenon, which we call infrastructure solutionism, through two case studies in Bengaluru, India – re-shaping public transportation to attract car users through demand management, and redesigning major streets to accommodate varied users through parcelling. Through these case studies, it becomes evident that infrastructure solutions did not address the problems caused due to motorisation. Building upon the literature on technological solutionism in Science and Technology Studies, this article unpacks rationalities of infrastructure solutionism by examining material, valuational and expectational commitments mobilised through each case, and suggests that such solutions appear to be concerned with city image building, rather than addressing the chokehold of automobilisation.

What problems is the AI act solving? Technological solutionism, fundamental rights, and trustworthiness in European AI policy

ABSTRACT Artificial intelligence (AI) policy has been a key topic in public and political discourse for some time. Mobilizing Bacchi’s ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ framework, we critically explore the policy responses to AI presented by the European Commission, the problem representations that are assumed within and justify these particular responses, and the wider effects of such problematizations. We find that EU AI policy constitutes the technology as both opportunity and threat, and that these problematizations demand a specific policy response – the risk-based categorizations of the AI Act – that allows these different imaginations of AI to cohere. In addition, we argue that one effect of these problematizations is the enactment of particular versions of Europe and Europeanness. In proposing a specific policy solution, European AI policy enacts not only AI but an exceptionalist notion of Europe as a policy actor and coherent political community.

Performative place branding and Brazilian smart cities: the strategic character of smart city positioning

Purpose This paper aims to address what it means to brand a city as “smart”. In other words, what ideas, understandings and actions are mobilized by the discourse of smart cities in a particular context. Design/methodology/approach Taking a brand interpretive approach, this paper uses deconstructive criticism to understand the performativity of smart cities within the Brazilian Charter for Smart Cities and to expose hegemonic power structures and the various colonizations that disenfranchise consumers and citizens of the Global South. Findings This paper finds that the branding of smart cities within the Brazilian Charter for Smart Cities is largely performative and rhetorical in nature. The authors identify those dimensions of the smart city that are materialized by this branding performance. For example, the authors identify how the Charter calls forth issues around technological solutionism, sustainability and social inclusion. At the same time, the analysis draws attention to the dimensions of smart cities that are disguised by such performances. Research limitations/implications The implications of the work suggest that the authors need to understand the designation “smart city” as a branding performance. More research is required in context to determine in exactly what ways smart city projects are being implemented. Practical implications Rather than adhering only to the rhetoric of smartness, cities have to work hard to make smartness a reality – a smartness constructed not just on technical solutions but also on human solutions. That is, the complexity of urban issues that are apparently addressed in the move to smartness demand more than a technological fix. Originality/value The research offers a novel lens through which to view smart cities.

Reimagining the inevitable: how metaverse imaginaries construct understandings of privacy and surveillance

ABSTRACT Previous research on consumer privacy has heavily emphasised an individualistic perspective, focusing on protection against individual harm and the importance of privacy self-management. In today’s data-driven society, understanding the collective nature of privacy and its connections with increasing surveillance and larger societal harms is important. By employing media analysis of textual data, we explore how sociotechnical imaginaries of the metaverse constitute perceptions of surveillance and privacy. The findings identify four rhetorics that underpin metaverse imaginaries, with some reinforcing the prevailing surveillance ideology (inevitability and technological solutionism) and some challenging it (decentralisation and collaboration). This article contributes to the privacy literature in consumer research by illuminating how privacy is given sociocultural meaning as part of the surveillance ideology and by extending the literature on the problematisation of individualised consumer privacy. We argue that the way these imaginaries are constructed has implications for how privacy and surveillance will unfold in the future.

Tracing the smart virus in a smart city: a discursive analysis of Singapore’s early pandemic surveillance response

ABSTRACT What happened to the smart city’s seductive promises of technological solutionism during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic? This paper traces the discursive circulation of the smart city in Singapore during the pandemic, based on a critical corpus-based analysis of 361 newspaper articles and 8 speeches from April to May 2020. Drawing from a discourse analysis, smart technological solutions were paired with a moral mandate of public health with little initial attention to privacy. The “smart” label creates a discursive path toward a technical frame, in which a smart virus is constructed to be necessarily solved by a smart solution. Further, the state legitimizes surveillance through a specific “will to combat,” limiting other paths of causality and co-opting civil liberties into its surveillance mechanisms. Newer technologies and ever-growing data collection mechanisms require continued conversations about privacy and civil liberties both with and among key stakeholders.

Practices on Aarogya Setu: Mapping Citizen Interaction with the Contact-Tracing App in the Time of COVID-19

The usage of contact-tracing applications has been synonymous with ensuring one's health security and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. These contact-tracing apps have been scripted differently by each country, within design choices of centralized vs. decentralized architecture, closed vs. open-source protocol and collecting location vs. proximity data features. The distinct script of contact-tracing apps caters to the contextual background of each country with a presupposition about on-ground and consistent usage of the app. The article explores the ways in which citizens in India negotiate the usage of the Aarogya Setu digital contact-tracing app. It reveals citizens' on-ground practices of adopting or evading the app usage, besides reflecting on the broader institutional shortcomings that shape the scepticism towards technological solutionism in critical health exigencies. Three such practices are identified and thematically presented as resistance by early deletion, resistance by selective adoption and constrained adoption. The findings steer concerns regarding user-friendly designs and revisiting governance structures before deploying any technological solutionism by the state. Here, the paper attempts to reverse the gaze and explore how citizens'(in)effective adoption of the Aarogya Setu app not only responds but also challenges the norm of digital contact-tracing solutionism.

Stabilizing translucencies: Governing AI transparency by standardization

Standards are put forward as important means to turn the ideals of ethical and responsible artificial intelligence into practice. One principle targeted for standardization is transparency. This article attends to the tension between standardization and transparency, by combining a theoretical exploration of these concepts with an empirical analysis of standardizations of artificial intelligence transparency. Conceptually, standards are underpinned by goals of stability and solidification, while transparency is considered a flexible see-through quality. In addition, artificial intelligence-technologies are depicted as ‘black boxed’, complex and in flux. Transparency as a solution for ethical artificial intelligence has, however, been problematized. In the empirical sample of standardizations, transparency is largely presented as a static, measurable, and straightforward information transfer, or as a window to artificial intelligence use. The standards are furthermore described as pioneering and able to shape technological futures, while their similarities suggest that artificial intelligence translucencies are already stabilizing into similar arrangements. To rely heavily upon standardization to govern artificial intelligence transparency still risks allocating rule-making to non-democratic processes, and while intended to bring clarity, the standardizations could also create new distributions of uncertainty and accountability. This article stresses the complexity of governing sociotechnical artificial intelligence principles by standardization. Overall, there is a risk that the governance of artificial intelligence is let to be too shaped by technological solutionism, allowing the standardization of social values (or even human rights) to be carried out in the same manner as that of any other technical product or procedure.

REVOLUTIONARY DISCOURSES IN A TIME CAPSULE: A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF CANONICAL, INTELLECTUAL LITERATURE CONCERNING THE SOCIAL IMPACT AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INTERNET.

Whilst the internet’s development can be traced back to the 1940s (Turner, 2006; Flichy 2015), the rhetoric of a digital revolution primarily emerged during the early 1990s and mid-00s and was often produced by the US-based academic community which has been intrinsically involved with the advancement of the internet. The dominant conceptualizations put forward in their popular, scholarly writings about the technology’s past and future, became authoritative in our academic understanding of the internet’s social impact and significance. Subsequently, notions like ‘the electronic highway’ were adopted in legislative and popular discourse which, in turn, influenced how the internet was understood, designed, and used on a broader, societal level. Notable authors of these influential texts - Howard Rheingold, Nicholas Negroponte, Sherry Turkle, and Geert Lovink - wrote their findings based on their own experiences with internet initiatives and from their particular theoretical backgrounds and positionality. Most importantly, these texts present valuable information as if coming from a time capsule; often framed with a rhetoric of transformation, the writers themselves contribute to the idea of a revolutionary internet following optimistic notions of digital utopianism and technological solutionism, situated in a particular Zeitgeist. The aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of how these revolutionary notions developed over time and what their grander impact was on our contemporary conceptions, in and outside the influential American context. This is achieved by conducting a critical, historiographical analysis of canonical, intellectual literature about the early internet and thus re-contextualizes it as historical traces itself.

Digital Technologies for the Future of the Water Sector? Examining the Discourse on Digital Water

Global climate change increases the uncertainty about water, its availability and quality. Thus, the water sector is being transformed to react to the rising water demand as well as climate change and water quality issues and is transitioning into its so-called „fourth revolution“: aiming towards a more sustainable and resilient management of water, whilst simultaneously encountering the mega-trend of digitalisation. Through adopting digital technologies, the sector has the opportunity to address the 21st-century water risks early on as the new technologies will increase the knowledge of water supply, water demand and other water data which can be used to inform public policy or new investments.In this paper, I critically examine the discourse on digital water and how it is expressed, through the lens of Political Ecology. This is enriched through insights of Science and Technology Studies (STS). The discourse on digital water is characterised by two distinct argumentative pathways: On the one hand, technological solutionism presents digital technologies as the only solution to the challenges within the water sector, and on the other hand, socio-technical imaginaries of the future which constitute digital water as a new pathway within the water sector. This portrays a positive and optimistic future for the development of the water sector which is achieved through the implementation of digital technologies.

BIOMETRIC CITIZENS in smart cities

Abstract This article addresses the socio-cognitive conceptualizations of the notion of ‘citizenship’ within the space of smart cities. It discusses how smart cities expos are endowed with ideological bearings that mark a shift in these conceptualizations. This ideological shift is explored in the policy releases of Barcelona expo media centre 2019/2020 as retrieved from the Smart City Expo World Congress website. The framework accounts for the socio-cognitive aspects that are brought to the smart expos’ discussions, reframing it within the paradigms of Posthumanism and neoliberal urbanism. It is found that citizenship within smart city discourse is characterized by series of subjugating conflations between biovalues and biometrics, the body, technology, and the city and the citizen. These subjugations are discovered by contesting the metaphors of CITIZEN-FOCUSED URBANISM, VULNERABLE CITIZENS, and TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTIONISM with their reframed counterparts of BIOMETRIC CITIZEN, INFRASTRUCTURE CITIZENSHIP, and TECHNOLOGICAL PATERNALISM.

Sensing inequity: technological solutionism, biodiversity conservation, and environmental DNA

Sensing inequity: technological solutionism, biodiversity conservation, and environmental DNA

Protective abandonment: Risk, data, and surveillance of nuclear workers post Fukushima

During the coronavirus disease-19 pandemic, Fukushima marked the 10th anniversary of its nuclear disaster of 2011. And although pandemic scientists around the world used technological surveillance to predict risks, the experiences from the Fukushima health crisis call into question such technological solutionism. The Japanese government and electronic companies had placed nuclear workers under intensive health surveillance for decades, but the health data rarely helped workers to protect themselves. Rather, the government has often used the data to decline workers’ claims for medical compensation. I call this contradictory consequence of data Protective Abandonment, the systematic disposal of people through the promise of protection. Data are collected through surveillance, for the purpose of risk management, but the information ends up protecting only the existing political economic systems. Crucially, data collection disguises protection and hides the unequal distribution of care. I argue that protective abandonment may become a common experience in today’s data-driven societies.

Communications Infrastructure, Technological Solutionism and the International Legal Imagination

This article considers the role played by communications infrastructure within the international legal imagination. It engages with contemporary debates regarding the power of corporate digital platforms and their model of information capitalism. An international legal historical perspective is adopted in order to contextualise international law’s present infrastructural turn and connect current debates over big tech with their precursors. The history of international legal engagement with the development of communications infrastructure reveals a recurring pattern of looking to technological infrastructure for solutions to global problems. This can act to empower private actors and contribute to an ongoing absence of meaningful international legal regulation of communications. The contemporary interest in infrastructure, and its implications in terms of fostering the private power of big tech over global communications, is in many ways a return. But it could also take account of alternative visions for international law which were present at key moments during the League of Nations era and the Cold War. Connecting current debates with those earlier moments in international legal history can help to highlight and counter continuing patterns of technological solutionism within the international legal imagination.

Screens, streams, and flows: Implications of digital platforms for aquatic citizen science

Mobile applications are developed and deployed to streamline various aspects of aquatic citizen science, including data collection, storage, sharing, and analysis. Frequently framed as the outcome of technological innovation, the “platformization” of community-based water monitoring (CBWM) involves a negotiation of technical, logistical, organizational, social, and political considerations, and the specific configurations of these intersecting factors have implications for public engagement in freshwater science and monitoring. Based on a review of the literature in platform studies, we identify challenges and risks that “platformization” may pose for citizen science. These risks include extractivism and commodification, scaling tensions, and technological solutionism. We then present five components of the “platform ecosystem of CBWM,” which we derived following a review and analysis of methods, tools, and equipment used by CBWM groups listed on two citizen science inventories (SciStarter and CitizenScience.gov). Choices about platform uptake and design have implications not only for the kinds of data that are collected, but for the nature of the participation that they elicit from volunteer participants.

What Confucian Eco-Ethics Can Teach Us about Solving the Dilemma of Interpreting the Concept of Sustainability

Sustainability is at the heart of the concept of the common home. By prioritizing sustainability, we can create a better common home and ensure the well-being of present and future generations. However, there is a dilemma in the interpretation of sustainability, which is mainly characterized by the irreconcilability between “weak sustainability” and “strong sustainability”. The dilemma is partly rooted in some Western philosophical traditions such as the Western separatist mindset, anthropocentrism, and technological solutionism, which have contributed to human subjugation. This paper proposes Confucian eco-ethics to resolve this dilemma. First, Confucian eco-ethics embraces the holistic worldview of “anthropocosmic” that establishes an ontological understanding of the interconnectedness and interdependence between humans and nature, which transcends the Western dichotomy of subject and object and resolves the dualism between human beings and nature. Second, Confucian eco-ethics advocates “pushing oneself to all things” and considers human beings and nature as an ethical community, which emphasizes the ethical responsibility of human beings to protect nature, thus remedying the dilemma that anthropocentrism and ecocentrism have too little or too much responsibility for nature. Third, Confucianism endorses benevolence as a core value for managing technology to achieve sustainable development, and it favors a comprehensive approach that combines technological innovation, values reform, and institutional reform to solve ecological problems. To do this, we analyze the Dujiangyan Water Hydro-Project Hydraulic Project as a case study to illustrate the practical feasibility of Confucian eco-ethics in achieving sustainable development. The conclusion suggests that Confucian eco-ethics can enrich and expand sustainability theory, offering an alternative pathway for a better common home.

Silicon Valley's Team: The Golden State Warriors, Datafied Managerialism, and Basketball's Racialized Geography

Abstract: This essay examines how the Golden State Warriors' multimedia empire invites viewers to embrace Silicon Valley–driven transformations of space and body that appropriate value generated by Black, Brown, and working-class communities for the benefit of a wealthy, white ownership class. These transformations form part of the tech industry's imperializing adventures in bodily and societal improvement through the intertwined processes of disruption, technological solutionism, datafication, and financial speculation. First, we show how the Warriors promote analytics, wearable technology, surveillance, and white managerialism as keys to success on and off the court. We then turn to the team's 2019 move from Oakland's Oracle Arena to San Francisco's Chase Center, which offered investment and networking opportunities for Silicon Valley elites while making the team less affordable and physically accessible to its traditional Black and working-class Oakland fanbase. Ultimately, we argue that the Warriors promote Silicon Valley processes of wealth extraction by obscuring where and how value is generated, both within the labor relations that define the Warriors' sports organization and in the gentrification of the Bay Area and the commodification of Black Oakland for an increasingly non-Black fanbase.

Technē: Christian Visions of Technology

Technē: Christian Visions of Technology

Algorithmic governance, code as law, and the blockchain common: Power relations in the blockchain-based society

“Code is law” became a buzz term in Web3 and blockchain reality. Despite the term being already used much earlier by Lawrence Lessig in the year 2000 in his book titled “Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace,” when the internet and Web2 were emerging, the rise of smart contracts and complex algorithmic power made the term genuinely resonate with the (idealised) Web3 reality. The entrainment of technological solutionism in the brains of members of society gives an impression that a world governed by algorithms will be a fairer one. However, research has shown that many members of society are not standard statistical representations of the majority and whilst algorithmic governance leaves room for “standard deviation,” individuals that fall outside this standard deviation are, in fact, very disadvantaged. There are numerous research papers as well as popular science books that address the issue of algorithmic bias and unfairness in Web 2. The proponents of blockchain and web3 technology argue that with a DAO-governed, decentralised society, problems of biased algorithmic governance are solved as power and decision-making are decentralised, and members use their governance tokens to collectively decide on the law encoded in the smart contracts that are the ultimate law enforcement apparatus. Web3 promises a shift of power from governments and corporations to people and token holders, arguing it will make a Web3-governed society fairer. This paper is based on decoding this promise and using Althusser’s model of a state apparatus to show how the power relations changed in Web2 and Web3 realities. It shows that Web3 promises of the code becoming the law were already present in the Web2 discourse and discovers a model of an ideological apparatus power struggle between states and Web2 giants. Next, the power relations in the blockchain society are researched, starting from the idealised model of decentralised, token-holder governed power, which regulates the governments and corporations, to a discussion on what the actual power relations and struggles might result from encoding the law in the smart contract. Research shows that in Web3, “code is law” society. There will be power struggles and opposition on a vertical and horizontal level. The vertical struggle is the power enforcement (originally in the hands of the state in Althusser’s (1970) model between the code and individuals, governments and corporations not willing to conform with the code-enforced law or falling outside the standard deviation of statistics-based AI algorithms hence being disadvantaged by the smart contract enforced laws. The horizontal power struggle is based on what Althusser describes as the ideological apparatus. Here, the struggle is based on a fight between individuals (the society), corporations, and the state for code-modifying resources and/or leverage over the governance token holders. Overall, the paper argues and shows that blockchain-based “code is law” reality does not solve the issue of unequal power relations within societies but only as any technological revolution shifts the power relations and power struggles between existing and new actors. Unlike the founder of Polkadot, Gavin Wood states that blockchain, DAOs, smart contracts, and Web3 overall do not result in the new social sphere with revolutionised power relations. Where Web3 is now is much more similar to where Web1 and Web2 were 25–30 years ago—Creating a new space for social interactions and discourse yet being stuck within the same social sphere and uneven power relations that have governed our societies for centuries.

Technology solutionism in paediatric intensive care: clinicians’ perspectives of bioethical considerations

BackgroundThe use of long-term life-sustaining technology for children improves survival rates in paediatric intensive care units (PICUs), but it may also increase long-term morbidity. One example of this is children who are dependent on invasive long-term ventilation. Clinicians caring for these children navigate an increasing array of ethical complexities. This study looks at the meaning clinicians give to the bioethical considerations associated with the availability of increasingly sophisticated technology.MethodsA hermeneutic phenomenological exploration of the experiences of clinicians in deciding whether to initiate invasive long-term ventilation in children took place, via unstructured interviews. Data were analysed to gain insight into the lived experiences of clinicians. Participants were from PICUs, or closely allied to the care of children in PICUs, in four countries.ResultsThree themes developed from the data that portray the experiences of the clinicians: forming and managing relationships with parents and other clinicians considering, or using, life sustaining technology; the responsibility for moral and professional integrity in the use of technology; and keeping up with technological developments, and the resulting ethical and moral considerations.DiscussionThere are many benefits of the availability of long-term life-sustaining technology for a child, however, clinicians must also consider increasingly complex ethical dilemmas. Bioethical norms are adapting to aid clinicians, but challenges remain.ConclusionDuring a time of technological solutionism, more needs to be understood about the influences on the initiation of invasive long-term ventilation for a child. Further research to better understand how clinicians, and bioethics services, support care delivery may positively impact this arena of health care.

Innovating urban governance through ‘Challenges’

ABSTRACT In recent years, urban “Challenges”—competitions that solicit and reward novel solutions to urban policy problems—have become embedded within a wider program of governance innovations presented to city governments as effective means to solve complex urban problems. This paper offers an overview and critical evaluation of the uses of Challenges in contemporary urban governance innovation, based on an extensive analysis of existing Challenges and related practitioner and promotional literature. Situating Challenges within the increasingly prominent urban governance innovation trends, we suggest a fourfold categorization for understanding the diverse positionings, motivations and objectives at play in the application of Challenges. We present a critique of the prominent logics of projectification, technological solutionism and competition associated with Challenges and conclude by offering coordinates for more intensive and contextually-specific analyses of the Challenge phenomenon.