The open, public process of associating virtual media objects and other types of information to actual locations in the city, whereby people are enabled to construct and contribute to this information layer, rather simply consuming pre-authored content.
Published in Chapter:
Extreme Informatics: Toward the De-Saturated City
Mark Shepard (University at Buffalo, USA)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 13
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-152-0.ch029
Abstract
What happens to urban space given a hypothetical future where all information loses its body, that is, when it is offloaded from the material substrate of the physical city1 to the personal, portable, or ambient displays of tomorrow’s urban information systems? This chapter explores the spatial, technological and social implications of an extreme urban informatics regime. It investigates the total virtualization of the marks, signage, signaling and display systems by which we locate, orient ourselves, and navigate through the city. Taking as a vehicle a series of digitally manipulated photographs of specific locations in New York, this study analyzes the environmental impact of a pervasive evacuation of information–at various sites and scales–from the sidewalks, buildings, streets, intersections, infrastructures and public spaces of a fictional future De-saturated City.