[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)