[SIGCIS-Members] Smart as a City: A Book Drop Day CBI Talk by Burcu Baykurt (free, online).

[Jeffrey Yost]

[CBI is thrilled to host this book drop day lecture by Burcu Baykurt on her
tremendously insightful and wondrous book!! I just had the joy of reading
and learning from the electronic edition--Jeff]Smart as a City: A Book
Release Day Talk by Burcu Baykurt
Tuesday, May 5, 2026 at 1pm Central/2pm Eastern

Online Event: Register at  Burcu Baykurt "Smart as a City" Lecture
<https://umn.zoom.us/meeting/register/XopTOViVRhSFbKl-B8sz7w#/registration>

Join us (online) at CBI for a presentation by Burcu Baykurt, Assistant
Professor of Media Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as
she discusses her book, *Smart as a City: The Politics of Test-Bed
Urbanism.*

------------------------------

Abstract: What does it mean for a city to be "smart"? *Smart as a City* draws
on ethnographic fieldwork in Kansas City, Missouri, where Google piloted a
citywide gigabit network and city officials launched several smart city
projects in the 2010s.

Through cases including public-housing residents’ quiet refusal of “free”
gigabit internet, the city’s turn to predictive analytics that largely
confirmed the obvious, and public–private strategies for managing failure
without naming it, the book reframes test-bed urbanism as a mode of local
governance that works through civic aspiration, deliberate ignorance, and
municipal politics. It argues that urban disparities are not an unintended
consequence of the smart city; they are the foundation upon which it is
built.
------------------------------

Bio: Burcu Baykurt is an assistant professor of media studies at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research explores how digital
infrastructures reshape and perpetuate urban inequalities. She is the
author of *Smart as a City: The Politics of Test-Bed Urbanism* and
co-editor of *Soft-Power Internationalism: Competing for Cultural Influence
in the 21st-Century Global Order.*
**   *   *   *   *   **
*Jeffrey Yost, Ph.D. *
*Director, Charles Babbage Institute for Computing, Information & Culture*
*Research Professor, History of Sci., Tech., Med., University of Minnesota*

*Just Code: Power, Inequality and the Political Economy of IT (Johns
Hopkins U. Press, co-edited w/ Gerardo Con Diaz)
<https://press.jhu.edu/books/title/12804/just-code> *
*Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry (MIT Press)
<https://amzn.to/3gqe4R6>*
*Studies in Computing and Culture book series, Johns Hopkins U. Press
<https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/series/studies-computing-and-culture>
*Co-Editor
(w/ Con Diaz)
*PI, NSF-funded CBI project "Mining a Useable Past: Perspectives,
Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy."*
*Blockchain & Society* <https://www.blockchainandsociety.com>* (crit. inq.
essays & resources)* (Founder/Leader)
*Interfaces: Essays and Reviews in Computing and Culture
<https://cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces> *Co-Editor-in-Chief (w/ Amanda Wick)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/attachments/20260423/665f9641/attachment.htm>