IPPSO Transdisciplinary Legal, Public Policy, and Design Research on Immersive Phygital Public Spaces in Smart Cities
Physical and digital worlds are converging and digital overlays become an intrinsic part of the urban landscape. The IPPSO project explores socio-technical futures of phygital spaces and engages with possible implications for human rights. It aims to enable policy relevant debates about immersive technologies by using design methodologies.
Smart city technologies, predominantly utilizing computational models, have the potential to revolutionize urban life through the harnessing of big data, biometric technologies, and AI. With the infusion of immersive technologies into this matrix, urban dwellers are introduced to the “phygital” realm – a convergence of the digital and physical worlds where digital overlays become an intrinsic part of the urban landscape.
The progression from non-immersive to immersive smart city technologies raises profound human rights concerns. Immersive technologies can, even inadvertently, jeopardize fundamental civil and political freedoms like privacy, autonomy, equality, and free speech. By their very nature, these immersive technologies permit unprecedented levels of surveillance and data collection that may impinge on individual anonymity and autonomy. Furthermore, by granting this extensive power to operators – from local governments in Germany and the EU to tech conglomerates – there’s a real danger of reshaping the democratic fabric that underpins these societies.
While scholars have started probing the privacy dilemmas posed by immersive technologies and the potential manipulative essence of mixed reality, a more comprehensive exploration into their interaction with the tangible urban milieu is needed. Most research is geared towards the abstract concerns of digital data – its collection, storage, and the nuances of consent. A more holistic inquiry into the tangible impacts of such phygital spaces on societal norms, perceptions, and the democratic social contract in the context of Germany or the EU is still pending.
Partners
The project is carried out in collaboration with the Bezalel Academy for Arts and Design Jerusalem and the Israel Democracy Institute.
Funding
IPPSO is funded by the VolkswagenStiftung in the program Transformational Knowledge on Democracies under Change – Transdisciplinary Perspectives.
