Avalanche - The Anarchist correspondence zine Avalanche-EN-13 | Page 9

devices that are always on and automatically connect
themselves to other devices, and the exploitation of
data that is taking place via up-to-date software from
the offices of information technology (IT) specialists,
form the basis for the new accumulated wealth of a few
IT companies. A new way of life is established, a new
“self-evidently” appealing modern organization of daily
life – associated with a certain stylishness, which at the
beginning only the rich can afford, but in the end will es-
tablish itself throughout the whole of society. Symbioti-
cally, the parts of the city which are already exclusive to
the rich are shaped by this and foster it. “Urban, green
and smart!”- this is how they describe not just the rich
areas, but the city as a whole, when they bid to host IT
companies and tech expos.
The omnipresent exchange of data provides for a nearly
gap-less view into the daily boredom of society – its
small routines, habits, and norms – and this is what pol-
itics and police are especially interested in. It’s not just
those who behave abnormally who stand out, those who
don’t follow trends or who even consciously try to avoid
them. The whole population provides a much more pre-
cise image of all its movements and habits; this is why
it can also be more easily managed and organized from
the top down. In the long run, not only can the black
sheep be identified, but also huge crowds of people can
be controlled and indirectly directed. In the transfor-
mation of mined data into statistic, a means is created
to administer millions of people, to regulate them and,
through permanent precautions and preventions, also
manipulate them. The smartification of daily life not
only aims at the economic success of the IT giants, but
also at the optimization of wage labour, at crime preven-
tion and a frictionless ruling, and an administration that
is invisible, decentralized, and possessed of an ecologi-
cally conscious image.
Together more intelligent?
Let’s have a look at the European Union’s project
“Smarter Together” which plans for the construction of
a smart city in certain quarters of Vienna, Lyon, and
Munich. In Munich, the project is concentrated in the
quarter of Neuaubing-Westkreuz and Freiham, and it
will, in the end, affect 50,000 people living there, as
well as those that move there in the future. Setting
aside that the project tries to emphasize its eco-friend-
liness and its openness to engagement by the popula-
tion, it also stands for comprehensive implementation
of car-sharing, share-bikes belonging to MVG, and a
plan to increase online sale of MVG tickets. Thus it will
affect nearly all aspects of mobility in the city. Addi-
tionally street lamps shall be installed everywhere that
only work when people pass by, and furthermore, these
people shall be listened to via Wi-Fi (their IP address);
these lamps will most likely eventually be equipped with
cameras. This new Wi-Fi network is the smart city’s
core concept. Furthermore, in this quarter, smart-me-
ters will be installed (to be followed by others through-
out the city) which document the energy consumption
of a home (in real time), evaluate how many people live
there, when and in which room which electronic devic-
es are used. Since today nearly every activity is con-
nected to an electronic device, an individual permanent
surveillance in real time is theoretically possible. This
is a project of population control at an enormous scale,
which also includes surveillance on the streets and the
overhaul and acceleration of mobility.
That this project also contains a renovation and a
heightening of the neighbourhood’s value shows that, in
the end, this project of the city is about capital invest-
ment, increasing the value of the quarter at the same
time as it subjects life as a whole to “economization”.
Thus an innovative experiment into how far one can go
already now in the gap-less technological control and
administration of the population… The companies that
profit from this project and that develop it (SWM, MVG,
Siemens, Fraunhofer, TUM, Securitas, Toshiba...) and
those that provide the power concepts behind it (IBM,
Google, Siemens, Microsoft, Amazon, Telekom, Bosch)
overlap not only in their interests but also in their loca-
tion – Munich. Step after step, the push for the smarti-
fication of the city shall transform it into a new Silicon
Valley, a laboratory and an economic power engine. It
is already obvious at this point that this process will
change not only infrastructure, but also the composition
of the inhabitants. The gentrification and displacement
process will accelerate fast, since the presence of at-
tractive smart employers increases the influx of yuppies
and rich IT scum. The construction of new smart yuppie
quarters and the offer of new living and working con-
cepts, focusing specifically on flexibilization (that is, the
merging of work and leisure time, of home and office, of
working colleagues and friends, and as well the mov-
ing between different cities) is another charm. Local IT
start-ups are financially supported by the city and by
the state, and the presentation and real establishment
of the hip and trendy AirBnB-Deliveroo-smoothie life-
style plays its part so that slowly but surely all poor city
dwellers will have to move. Finally the space will be
empty for the nouveaux riches and their lofts. So it is
that not only the composition of the inhabitants chang-
es, but also the dominant way of living, inhabiting, and
consuming in the city – in a direction always towards
the richer, trendier, smarter.
Total control
But for current concepts of domination like the smart
city, the significance of technology is not only econom-
ic, nor is it as just one among many control methods,
for it also has an ideological aspect, namely the ideol-
ogy that sees technology as cure for everything. Not
only as means, but as a goal in itself, a compartment
which through the omnipresent implementation has om-
nipresent power. Statistical method sees data, ready to
be mined, in even the smallest aspects of life that is
possible to extract/exploit, something that is also be-
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