A City Is Not a Computer
Shannon Mattern · Places · 2017
But where? Can we point to the chips and drives, cables and warehouses — the specific urban architectures and infrastructures — where this expanded ecology of information management resides and operates? I’ve written about the challenges of reducing complicated technical and intellectual structures to their material, geographic manifestations, i.e., mapping “where the data live.” 22 Yet such exercises can be useful in identifying points of entry to the larger system. It’s not only the infrastructural object that matters; it’s also the personnel and paperwork and protocols, the machines and management practices, the conduits and cultural variables that shape terrain within the larger ecology of urban information.