Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

The Spectrum Of Control: A Social Theory Of The Smart City, Jathan Sadowski, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

There is a certain allure to the idea that cities allow a person to both feel at home and like a stranger in the same place. That one can know the streets and shops, avenues and alleys, while also going days without being recognized. But as elites fill cities with “smart” technologies—turning them into platforms for the “Internet of Things” (IoT): sensors and computation embedded within physical objects that then connect, communicate, and/or transmit information with or between each other through the Internet—there is little escape from a seamless web of surveillance and power. This paper will outline a social …