Without libraries what have we?: Public libraries as nodes for technological empowerment in the era of smart cities, AI and big data

Since 2014, a growing body of critical research has pointed out flaws in smart city development. It has been described as too technology-led and business-oriented, diminishing citizens' agency and causing digital divides. As the agenda keeps spreading, there is an urgent need to develop more participatory, inclusive and bottom-up approaches to balance interests of those currently in strong power positions, such as large corporations. Participatory design (PD) and participatory approaches in general have been suggested as a remedy, but they often tend to be local, small-scale and short-term. Therefore, their impacts are often modest as well. We suggest that we need to start thinking about ways to create scalable approaches that would grow the temporal and spatial impact of actions and practices that intend to increase citizens' understanding and control over new technologies, i.e. their technological agency. Without making sure that more people have adequate knowledge and sufficient control and mastery of technologies, societal discussion and ultimately, political decisions, are left to few experts. We explore the potential of public libraries to act as an ally and cooperation partner in participatory design and technology education in general, with a significant potential to broaden micro-level actions' impact. The paper consists of a broad literature review mapping the central challenges of current smart city development; this is followed with an introduction to the Finnish library system as a democratic project; finally, we present three examples of how libraries are carrying out technological education connected to emerging technologies, particularly to 3D printing, robotics and virtual reality. Our central argument is that there is a need to bridge micro-level actions, such as those connected to participatory design projects, with the macro-level technopolitical development by collaborating with meso-level actors and networks.

[1]  Igor Calzada.  (Un)Plugging Smart Cities with Urban Transformations: Towards Multi-Stakeholder City-Regional Complex Urbanity? , 2016 .

[2]  Federico Caprotti,et al.  The Smart City as Global Discourse: Storylines and Critical Junctures across 27 Cities , 2019, Journal of Urban Technology.

[3]  D. Boyd,et al.  CRITICAL QUESTIONS FOR BIG DATA , 2012 .

[4]  N. Brenner,et al.  Neoliberal Urbanism Redux , 2013 .

[5]  Shoshana Zuboff,et al.  Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization , 2015, J. Inf. Technol..

[6]  Jesper Simonsen,et al.  Challenges and Opportunities in Contemporary Participatory Design , 2012, Design Issues.

[7]  V. Frissen,et al.  Inclusion and exclusion in the Information Society , 2017 .

[8]  P. Vakkari,et al.  Perceived outcomes of public libraries , 2012 .

[9]  R. Hollands.  Critical interventions into the corporate smart city , 2015 .

[10]  Roger A. Clarke,et al.  Information technology and dataveillance , 1988, CACM.

[11]  Quick Susannah,et al.  Cross-European survey to measure users' perceptions of the benefits of ICT in public libraries , 2013 .

[12]  G. Prior,et al.  Cross-European survey to measure users’ perceptions of the benefits of ICT in public libraries: final report , 2013 .

[13]  Tone Bratteteig,et al.  User Participation and Democracy: A Discussion of Scandinavian Research on System Development , 1995, Scand. J. Inf. Syst..

[14]  Carlien Hillebrink,et al.  The future of the Dutch public library: ten years on , 2008 .

[15]  Anne Balsamo,et al.  Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work , 2011 .

[16]  M. Anusha,et al.  Big Data-Survey , 2016 .

[17]  Alan Wiig.  The empty rhetoric of the smart city: from digital inclusion to economic promotion in Philadelphia , 2016 .

[18]  Henry Etzkowitz,et al.  The Triple Helix as a model for innovation studies , 1998 .

[19]  R. Kitchin,et al.  Smart urbanism and smart citizenship: The neoliberal logic of ‘citizen-focused’ smart cities in Europe , 2018, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space.

[20]  J. Millard,et al.  Mapping Smart Cities in the EU , 2014 .

[21]  Steven Feldstein,et al.  The Road to Digital Unfreedom: How Artificial Intelligence is Reshaping Repression , 2019, KANT Social Sciences & Humanities.

[22]  Johanna Ylipulli,et al.  A smart and ubiquitous urban future? Contrasting large-scale agendas and street-level dreams , 2015, Observatorio (OBS*).

[23]  Mark Warschauer,et al.  Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide , 2002, First Monday.

[24]  Shaowen Bardzell,et al.  Making cultures: empowerment, participation, and democracy - or not? , 2014, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[25]  Timo Ojala,et al.  On Creative Metaphors in Technology Design: Case "Magic" , 2017, C&T.

[26]  R. Hollands.  Will the real smart city please stand up? , 2008, The Routledge Companion to Smart Cities.

[27]  A. Vanolo.  Smartmentality: The Smart City as Disciplinary Strategy , 2014 .

[28]  Marianne Kinnula,et al.  The Future Digital Innovators: Empowering the Young Generation with Digital Fabrication and Making , 2016, ICIS.

[29]  Matthew Zook.  Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life , 2012 .

[30]  Ilse Mariën,et al.  Digital inclusion and user (dis)empowerment: a critical perspective , 2014 .

[31]  Timo Ojala,et al.  VR Application for Technology Education in a Public Library , 2018, MUM.

[32]  BJ Fogg,et al.  Creating persuasive technologies: an eight-step design process , 2009, Persuasive '09.

[33]  O. Söderström,et al.  On alternative smart cities , 2017 .

[34]  N. Odendaal.  Smart City: Neoliberal Discourse or Urban Development Tool? , 2016 .

[35]  Olivia Conti.  Being digital citizens , 2016 .

[36]  O. Söderström,et al.  On alternative smart cities: from a technology-intensive to a knowledge-intensive smart urbanism , 2018 .

[37]  Xiao Qiang,et al.  The Road to Digital Unfreedom: President Xi's Surveillance State , 2019, Journal of Democracy.

[38]  Timo Ojala,et al.  Chasing Digital Shadows: Exploring Future Hybrid Cities through Anthropological Design Fiction , 2016, NordiCHI.

[39]  Ayona Datta.  New urban utopias of postcolonial India , 2015 .

[40]  Timo Ojala,et al.  Virtual Library: Blending Mirror and Fantasy Layers into a VR Interface for a Public Library , 2018, MUM.

[41]  S. Tefft.  Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide , 2002 .

[42]  Sasha A. Barab,et al.  Critical Design Ethnography: Designing for Change , 2004 .

[43]  Timo Ojala,et al.  Implementation of a Virtual Reality Interface for a Public Library , 2018, MUM.

[44]  Shoshana Zuboff.  Automatefin-fonnate: The two faces of intelligent technology , 1985 .

[45]  Andrea Caragliu,et al.  Smart innovative cities: The impact of Smart City policies on urban innovation , 2019, Technological Forecasting and Social Change.

[46]  Jesper Simonsen,et al.  Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design , 2012 .

[47]  Till F. Paasche,et al.  Smart cities as corporate storytelling , 2014, The Routledge Companion to Smart Cities.