Why distance matters: The relatedness between technology development and its appropriation in smart cities

摘要

How does the distance between the development and adoption of technology determine its affordance? By referring to the sociomateriality literature, I discuss why the corporate-driven push of technologies into smart cities can lead to ineffective outcomes. This review paper then argues that technologies should be locally built, with a stronger connect between the humans in cities and the technologies being developed and implemented, in order to achieve technological affordance. Finally, I identify a number of research avenues to understand technology-human connect in smart cities.