Being Human in Digital Cities

How is life in digital cities changing what it means to be human? Cities are the preeminent site of technological development – from extractive datafication to increasing AI control – as well as centres of enhanced connectivity through which people experience, decode and adapt such technologies. In this perceptive book, Myria Georgiou reveals a new configuration of social order taking shape in today’s cities. The digital order, as any hierarchy, serves to privilege some while dehumanizing others. Yet, fundamental humanist values of dignity, autonomy and freedom are alive and well in the city of tech. This drives corporate, media and state actors to downplay market-driven, technocratic imperatives as they seek to reassure distrustful citizens. Mobilizing positive sociotechnical imaginaries of diversity, sustainability and openness, they promise digitally mediated human progress. At the same time, urban citizens and municipalist movements propose alternative pathways to humane cities as they navigate new opportunities afforded by digital environments. Investigating the dynamic workings of technology and power from a transnational and comparative perspective, this book reveals the contradictory claims and struggles for the future of digital cities and their humanity. In doing so, it will enrich understandings of digital urbanism, critical data studies and critical humanist studies.