Smart city, transhumanism and alternatives
Elisabeth Voss
Smart City and transhumanism follow patriarchal fantasies of dominance over all living things. In contrast, there is "room for many worlds" in the pluriverse. What conclusions can be drawn from these contrasts?
Everyone is talking about Smart City, but what is it actually? The smartization of the city encompasses all areas of life: Housing, transportation, supply/logistics, communication, health, "security", public administration, etc. Transhumanism goes one step further, humans and digitally controlled machines are to merge - it is the end point of patriarchal feasibility fantasies of domination over all living things.
This digitalization affects everyone. Smart City and transhumanism are not technical topics, but social ones. This is about powerful interests, because total digitalization is a profitable business area with destructive effects on people and nature. The opposite pole can be found in diverse ideas and practices of life-affirming self-organization, which often see themselves as feminist. This pluriverse resists the equalizing ideas of progress and development. It is "a world in which many worlds fit", as the Zapatista say.
After an input, which is essentially based on the book "Pluriversum - A Lexicon of the Good Life for All", I would like to discuss with the participants whether these ideas can be used to develop perspectives for the "battle for minds" and for everyday resistance.
The book is available online free of charge here: https://agspak.de/pluriversum/
Elisabeth Voß, NETZ für Selbstverwaltung und Kooperation Berlin-Brandenburg e.V.