Writing - Media & Mediation

Digital objects are only of value if they are able to affect our habits and habitat. On one hand, this could take the form of a game that one plays that causes one to configure a room in a particular manner. It could take the form of engagement with a social media platform that causes one to dress in a particular manner, attend specific events, and socialize with a select set of friends. On the other hand, such digital objects could lead to more profound affects on the physical world. They could take the form of a ransomware attack that shuts down a pipeline, a social media campaign that results in electing a person to serve in government, or the use of a natural resource such as water, wind, or solar power to maintain digital infrastructure. In what follows, the definition of physical and digital object will be explored, the objects that currently dominate our world will be briefly highlighted, and how new hybrid physical-digital objects with an enhanced capacity to affect change in the world might be created.

The purpose of this exploration is ultimately to set up a framework by which digital objects can become more actively aligned with physical objects so that each can take advantage of their respective capacities. Doing so would be to expand upon the trend that connects things to the internet in order to enhance their interoperability, capacity to maintain the physical world, and ability to serve users through machine learning and artificial intelligence. In these cases, it is generally the case that the physical comes to serve the digital. In what follows, a more balanced and reciprocal relationship will be explored. This investigation will ideally help us uncover how a platform that bridges the digital and physical might come into existence in order to actively construct a new type of relationship that will ultimately restore some of the value to physical space that digital objects may have diminished through online retail, virtual work, and time devoted to digital networking activities that have little positive impact on the physical world. In the process, this new relationship will ideally be one that supports enhanced sustainability and equity of the built environment.

Through examining where American Culture, broadly speaking, is produced and consumed as well as how it has been captured by narratives to enhance power structures that drive polarization, this book argues for the merits of a user-owned cultural network and how it might be created. Developing such a network at the intersection of the digital and physical would take attention away from digital platforms that drive polarization and create a route by which users of digital networks profit directly from owning those networks rather than being exploited by those networks. It would support a new space for cultural work for those who have more free time due to automation while also creating a more robust exchange between various types of cultural producers and consumers directly around cultural elements rather than around polarizing topics. The result will lead to a space, conversation, and set of cultural objects and experiences that are more focused on the physical, human, and spiritual challenges facing the country rather than on dwelling in digital spaces that have increasingly become echo chambers.

Digital screens have become a pervasive presence in our lives.  We carry them in our pockets, are guided through cities by those installed to help us navigate transportation services, and often begin and end our day receiving news and entertainment.   During the work day, they have become one of the primary points of engagement.  This is true not only in professional and service oriented occupations, but manufacturing, logistics, construction, and maintenance.  In the context of those engaged in the design, construction, and maintenance of the built environment, the screen has become the primary surface via which design occurs, contractors are increasingly constructing buildings with a paperless job-site, augmented reality on mobile tablets is being used to validate accuracy of construction, and tablets have become pervasive in operating and maintaining buildings once they are complete.  At the same time, screens are integrated into the finished product to support the end users.  On one hand, there are no significant challenges for the designer to address as this occurs.  Architects have no trouble integrating screens, building management systems, and new generations of IoT products.  Product designers have thrived in the context of a consumer culture that has enhanced the demand for their work.  BIM, 5D design and planning, and other digital technologies have been embraced by many of the most cutting edge architects as tools that can help them to streamline the design process and deliver more accurate drawings and finished building products that ultimately save their clients time and money.  In doing so, these designers see an easy symbiotic relationship between their work and the growing range of apps and technologies serving the built environment, energy, water, waste, and mobility sectors.  They see little conflict in venture-backed tech companies creating products that will deeply influence the urban form, how we live, and how we relate to our built environment.

The purpose of this essay is to explore a series of strategies for urban redevelopment under the term “Mediated Urbanism.”  The audience is both specific and broad.  In a narrow sense, the audience is those who are concerned with the future of the American City and who are committed to taking concrete steps towards its improvement.  These people are both those with the training to do so as well as those who control sufficient capital to directly invest in the work required to transform the city and create enhanced ecological sustainability, new initiatives driving economic growth, and a strong local culture organized around art, common space, and shared interest in maintaining a productive city.  Those who want to invest in the future of the city and those with the capital to do so, however, are dispersed across a wide range of disciplines and geographies.  Very often, the boundaries that result lead to obstacles to collaboration.  As a result, new approaches that, in particular, require collaboration across boundaries often have a limited chance of occurring.  Mediated Urbanism is a means of addressing this broad group and pulling them together around a shared ambition through the straightforward notion of collaborating on using “media” to transform the urban environment.