The Guardian interviews Benjamin Bratton:
What can be done to foster and encourage more social entrepreneurs and innovators?
…I don’t believe that innovation ultimately comes down to people’s attitudes so much as to systemic opportunities for ideas to actually take root and scale. Part of the reason that the internet was able to support innovation from so many different places is that it was built on standard platforms and protocols that allowed each point-of-reception to also be a point-of-production. Because of platform neutrality –this is an ideal version, I realise– something that starts in one location can scale to become a global technique with less interference.
What if cities worked the same way? For me good urbanism means a healthy and playful mix of programs, of chance encounters, of interesting relationships with strangers, of cooperative experiences that are not dictated by shopping and entertainment, or worse, by security.
As bits and atoms interweave more closely into digital urbanism, this could produce very dull and lifeless spaces, with everyone locked into a “Groupon phenomenology” of point-chasing and accumulation, like autistic squirrels. Or it could turn the global city –our shared site condition– into a different sort of game, one with much more interesting and generative rules. “Beneath the pavement is a beach.”
Read the full interview at the Guardian.
