Author: iskander

Thanks for tuning in for this new monthly update on Cities of Things. I am at the moment on my way to Munich to officially kick off the field lab Cities of Things MUC-AMS (Munich-Amsterdam) that have been in the planning and shaping for the last year. I will definitely keep you posted in the coming months on this initiative. On this website, you can find some background information.

A signature part is looking into the impact of mobility on the cities. We have different partners involved in this and there is a natural link. I like to have exploration on a broader development, the way new generations treat possession which can be seen in the way we treat bikes (and other goods that we used to possess).

Due to my holidays, I write this post a bit later than usual. Welcome to the new subscribers! Every month I take one article in the domain of Cities of Things that trigger thinking about one aspect that is part of the Cities of Things elements of living together with intelligent things in cities that shape our city life so to say. That can be a new insight or a connection to one of the core aspects. This month I like to dive into one of the latter categories. One of the concepts I ran into while doing research at Delft University of Technology is the co-performance as described by Kuijer and Giaccardi in 2018. It reflects on a notion that we grow into a form of collaboration with technology that is based on shared goals, on a certain leveled interest almost. At least that is what I especially take out of it.

Thanks for subscribing. In this monthly newsletter I dive deeper in one of the articles that relate to Cities of Things that I collected in my weekly updates of last month. This month I explore the relations of DAOs and Cities of things.
Check also the website Cities of Things to be update on latest research and other activities. Like the master graduation thesis from Peicheng Guo on predictive behaviours of vacuum robots.

A lot is discussed about DAOs, the decentralized autonomous organization, and last months a couple of interesting articles passed by. In A Prehistory of DAOs Kei Kreutler is looking into what to learn from different earlier types of organizations: “DAO comes from imagining how features of decentralized technology, such as global digital assets, censorship resistance, and automated actions, will change how organizations operate.” It is mainly an organizational form for shaping organizations and processes to deal with decision-making. A basic element of the DAO is the governance mechanism and operating principles. In further exploration, interesting connections are made with gaming environments and a form of guilds. All focused though on the organization of humans in organizations.

Looking back into the future; the last year I had to think more than once on a project we did back in 2013 on the future of e-commerce; Shopping 2020. It would be nice to have a look into the trends we projected back then to see what became true or not, not to prove ourselves right, but more to learn from the thinking patterns. Thinking about this and exploring the articles of June that might be the base for this month’s look-back update, I could not deny the rise in attention for the metaverse for some time now. A new promise for future forecasters from consultancies especially those with a technology focus. As often, without planning to do, links between the stories pop up… First, let’s go back to the shopping future.

This post is a monthly update that I have sent to all subscribers of the Cities of Things newsletter.

Looking back at last month there were two interesting articles that deserve a closer look in relation to the Cities of Things. It connects to some of the basic concepts, and triggers deeper exploring that I probably do later.

One of the core concepts that inspire Cities of Things is the relationships we as humans have with the technology that gets more agency, will make their own decisions, will have more responsibility in taking decisions. The things that are becoming citizens. Things are still representing systems of designed agency, often by organizations. They might however become more learning creatures on their own. We strive for a harmonious society living together with these things, where we can perform in co-performance with the things reaching a shared goal, using each-others best characteristics.