Trust and influence in the digital city (informal presentation and discussion)
Sean Chester
Thursday 27 April, 16h00-17h00 at Z33

From sensors that count parking availability to the micro-monitoring of cigarette smoke in prohibited areas, the city is fast transforming into a simultaneous producer and consumer of data. Our experience as participants in the city is inconspicuously shaped by that data whilst we unwittingly generate more of it; moreover, as our behaviour is influenced by what our smart devices advise, we reinforce the prevalence of trends that the underlying algorithms assume. Thus, the city experience changes according to a sort of blind, collective self-determination. Yet, given the ease with which a short-lived photograph can spread virally minutes after it was captured, an individual can exert more widespread, targeted influence than even “Big Data”. Join algorithm engineer and researcher Sean Chester for a presentation and discussion around this cyclic inter-dependency between how we interact with the city and how the city advises us to interact with it.