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The collection and circulation of data is now a central element of increasingly more sectors of contemporary capitalism. This article analyses data as a form of capital that is distinct from, but has its roots in, economic capital. Data collection is driven by the perpetual cycle of capital accumulation, which in turn drives capital to construct and rely upon a universe in which everything is made of data. The imperative to capture all data, from all sources, by any means possible influences many key decisions about business models, political governance, and technological development. This article argues that many common practices of data accumulation should actually be understood in terms of data extraction, wherein data is taken with little regard for consent and compensation. By understanding data as a form capital, we can better analyse the meaning, practices, and implications of datafication as a political economic regime.

Smart urbanism has, over the last decade or so, grown to become a major research area within the social science of cities and digital technology. This critical commentary aims to outline a new framework for analysing the urban political economic dynamics currently unfolding through different combinations of power, technology and capital in cities. Rather than simply spreading via one static model of smart urbanism, the practices and purposes for rolling out digital technology in cities continue to evolve in important ways. I integrate the established research on smart urbanism with emerging work on ‘platform urbanism’, thus providing a coherent and forward-looking analysis of how various techno-political trends are connected yet distinct. In broad brushstrokes, over the last decade the urbanisation of technology capital has happened in concurrent phases, with each one seeking to take hold over a different aspect of the city: oversight of city governance, operation of city services and ownership of city space. I conclude by linking this political economic analysis to questions about fundamental shifts in urban sovereignty as technology companies move beyond treating the city merely as a place to extract value from and start thinking of it as also a space to exercise dominion over. 在过去十年左右的时间里，智慧城市化已经发展成为城市社会科学和数字技术的一个主要研究领域。本批评性评论旨在概述一个新的框架，用于分析当前通过城市权力、技术和资本的不同组合而展开的城市政治经济动态。在城市中推广数字技术的实践和目的不断地发生着重要的演变，而不是简单地通过一个智慧城市化的静态模型传播。我将对智慧城市化的既有研究与“平台城市化”的新兴研究相结合，从而提供了一个连贯的前瞻性分析，说明各种技术政治趋势是如何相互联系又相互区别的。概括地说，在过去的十年里，技术资本的城市化是同步进行的，每个阶段都试图掌控城市的不同方面：城市治理的监督、城市服务的运营和城市空间的所有权。最后，我将这一政治经济分析与有关城市主权根本性转变的问题联系起来，因为科技公司不再仅仅将城市视为一个提取价值的地方，而是开始将它视为一个行使主权的空间。

This article argues for engaging with the smart city as a sociotechnical imaginary. By conducting a close reading of primary source material produced by the companies IBM and Cisco over a decade of work on smart urbanism, we argue that the smart city imaginary is premised in a particular narrative about urban crises and technological salvation. This narrative serves three main purposes: (1) it fits different ideas and initiatives into a coherent view of smart urbanism, (2) it sells and disseminates this version of smartness, and (3) it crowds out alternative visions and corresponding arrangements of smart urbanism. Furthermore, we argue that IBM and Cisco construct smart urbanism as both a reactionary and visionary force, plotting a model of the near future, but one that largely reflects and reinforces existing sociopolitical systems. We conclude by suggesting that breaking IBM’s and Cisco’s discursive dominance over the smart city imaginary requires us to reimagine what smart urbanism means and create counter-narratives that open up space for alternative values, designs, and models.

Recent geographical attention to smart places has underlined the key point that smart places are made: crafted incrementally over time and woven through existing sites and contexts. Work on analysing the crafting of ‘actually existing’ smart cities has turned to describing and characterising the processes through which smart cities are made and, within this, the interplay and relative significance of accidental versus purposeful smart cities has come to the fore. Drawing on the concept of dispositif to capture the simultaneity of piecemeal and opportunistic change with deliberate strategy, this paper furthers these debates using examples of two places within the Sydney Metropolitan Region, Australia: Newcastle and Parramatta. Through their analysis we identify the evolving interplay of a priori drivers, ad hoc initiatives and post hoc strategies evident in the crafting of smart cities. Understanding the emergence of actually existing smart cities, we conclude, is sharpened and strengthened by the concept of dispositif, through its attention to processes characterised by nonlinear, overlapping and recursively combined drivers that are not without purposeful, strategic intent. 最近对智慧场所的地理学关注凸显了智慧场所营造的关键点：随着时间的推移，智能场所逐渐形成，并通过现有的地点和环境编织而成。分析“实际存在的”智能城市的工作已经转向描述和表征智能城市的形成过程，在这个过程中，偶然与刻意的的智能城市的相互作用和相对重要性被凸显出来。本文以澳大利亚悉尼大都市区内的两个地方（纽卡素和帕拉马塔）为例，利用意向的概念来捕捉渐进的和机会主义的变革与深思熟虑的策略的同时性，从而进一步展开这些争论。通过对它们的分析，我们发现在智慧城市建设过程中显而易见的先验驱动因素、临时举措和临时战略之间不断演变的相互作用。我们的结论是，通过关注非线性、重叠和递归组合驱动因素（这些驱动因素并非没有目的和战略意图）的过程，对实际存在的智能城市的出现的理解因意向概念而变得更加敏锐和强化。

The smart home technology industry promises energy savings and lifestyle improvements. However, there is little evidence that smart home technologies will reduce home energy use overall, and there are a range of emerging detrimental social impacts that require further attention from researchers, policymakers and practitioners.

The self-proclaimed usurper of Web 2.0, Web3 quickly became the center of attention. Not long ago, the public discourse was saturated with projects, promises, and peculiarities of Web3. Now the spotlight has swung around to focus on the many faults, failures, and frauds of Web3. The cycles of technological trends and investment bubbles seem to be accelerating in such a way as to escape any attempt at observing them in motion before they crash, and then everybody moves on to the next thing. Importantly, Web3 was not an anomaly or curiosity in the broader tech industry. It articulates patterns that existed before Web3 and will exist after. Web3 should be understood as a case study of innovation within the dominant model of Silicon Valley venture capitalism. Our focus in this article is on understanding how the movement around Web3 formed through an interplay between (1) normative concepts and contestations related to ideas of “decentralization” and (2) political economic interests and operations related to the dynamics of fictitious capital. By offering a critical analysis of Web3, our goal is also to show how any even potentially progressive (or as we call them “expansive”) forms of Web3 development struggle for success, recognition, and attention due to the wild excesses of hype and investment devoted to “extractive” forms of Web3. In the process, they provide us a better view of how different arrangements of technopolitics can exist at the same time, side-by-side, in complicated ways.

Recent reporting has revealed that the UK Biobank (UKB)—a large, publicly-funded research database containing highly-sensitive health records of over half a million participants—has shared its data with private insurance companies seeking to develop actuarial AI systems for analyzing risk and predicting health. While news reports have characterized this as a significant breach of public trust, the UKB contends that insurance research is “in the public interest,” and that all research participants are adequately protected from the possibility of insurance discrimination via data de-identification. Here, we contest both of these claims. Insurers use population data to identify novel categories of risk, which become fodder in the production of black-boxed actuarial algorithms. The deployment of these algorithms, as we argue, has the potential to increase inequality in health and decrease access to insurance. Importantly, these types of harms are not limited just to UKB participants: instead, they are likely to proliferate unevenly across various populations within global insurance markets via practices of profiling and sorting based on the synthesis of multiple data sources, alongside advances in data analysis capabilities, over space/time. This necessitates a significantly expanded understanding of the publics who must be involved in biobank governance and data-sharing decisions involving insurers.

Addressing the problems caused by AI applications in society with ethics frameworks is futile until we confront the political structure of such applications.

In this article we analyse the significance for critical logistics studies of a neglected chapter in industrial relations history, the introduction of so-called ‘Engineered Standards’ into the Australian food and groceries sector in the late 1980s and early 1990s. We argue that this episode was decisive in establishing the conditions which have allowed algorithmic management to flourish in Australia in more recent years. We argue for the significance of this episode as responding to a crisis in the corporatist organisation of Australian industrial relations during the neo-liberal ‘Accord’ era. Engineered Standards, we argue, constituted a decisive ‘break’ within Australian logistics, establishing a new technical, managerial, and discursive order.

Some of the largest tech companies in the world, not to mention a stream of smaller startups, are now our roommates. Homes have become the target for smart devices and digital platforms that aim to upgrade old appliances, like refrigerators, and provide new capabilities, like virtual assistants. While smart devices have been variously championed and demonized in both academic literature and popular media, this article moves critical analysis beyond the common—but still important—concerns with privacy and security. By directing our attention to the wider political economy of datafication, it reveals the increasingly influential, yet shadowy, role of industries outside the tech sector in designing and deploying surveillance systems in domestic spaces. Namely, the FIRE sector of finance, insurance, and real estate. When Amazon and Google moved into our homes, they also let in a suite of uninvited third parties.