Living in Digital Public Space

Putting digital technology at the heart of public space

This project explores how digital technology is already part of public space and the everyday life that takes place there.  Conventional descriptions of public space - in terms of the built environment and the related social relations - limit our understanding of the relationship between digital technology and public space, because it situates digital technology as an external, intrusive force.  Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the diverse public spaces of Melbourne, Australia, I hope to demonstrate how by understanding public space in terms that are open and processual digital technology can be situated as always already part of public space.  This will allow researchers and practitioners concerned with public space to overcome the need to define and delineate the digital in terms of discrete elements - devices, software, applications, algorithms - and to instead focus on the relations between the different technologies, as well as the other things and processes, that make up the different ways that people experience public space.

Contact: Robert Lundberg

Email: robert.lundberg@monash.edu