Ambient Intelligence in the City Overview and New Perspectives

This text attempts to address deficits in the way ambient intelligence conceives of and designs for urban environments. It begins with an overview of issues surrounding ambient intelligence in the city, followed by critical voices and examples of alternative ambient intelligence systems. The text argues for the inclusion of pervasive sensing issues into urban planning, in particular to negotiate between private and public interests. 1 Overview and motivation and limitations Ambient intelligence has the potential for improving urban life specifically and the commonwealth in general. As artists and architects working in and with ambient intelligence, our hopes and anxieties towards ambient intelligence are not primarily in the technical domain. Our interest lies in re-making urbanity with pervasive technologies as a means to invigorate urban life. For this we need to take a break, after almost two decades of ambient intelligence related research, and recalibrate all instruments. We use the term ambient intelligence, coined by Philips to describe a future in which people are surrounded with networked sensors embedded in everyday objects that respond to their needs in a loose manner. We are not particularly concerned with the demarcation lines between ambient intelligence, ubiquitous computing, calm computing, pervasive computing and amateur computing. From our perspective efforts emanating from all of these fields modulate urban life and their effects overlap and reinforce one another. Marc Böhlen University at Buffalo, Dept. of Media Study, 231 Center for the Arts, e-mail: [email protected] Hans Frei Zürich, e-mail: [email protected]