Espacios públicos en el orden digital: el rol de las TIC en sus usos y apropiaciones sociales

• Autores: P. Sebastián Cortez Oviedo
• Directores de la Tesis: Ana Falú (dir. tes.), Ana Laura Elorza (codir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC) ( Argentina ) en 2019
• Idioma: español
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en: hdl.handle.net
• Dialnet Métricas: 4 Citas
• Resumen
  • español

    Esta tesis promueve un debate innovador en el campo urbano-arquitectónico acerca de lo digital. Desde una perspectiva transdisciplinar se busca caracterizar los fenómenos del paradigma comunicacional y su Cuarta Revolución tecnológica; en particular, cómo sus discursos y plataformas inciden en la apropiación social y la configuración de los espacios públicos, promoviendo una experiencia emergente de lo urbano que incidiría en la ciudad como idea, lugar y espacio.

    A partir de este posicionamiento, se problematiza los espacios públicos desde los procesos culturales y dinámicas sociales del Orden Digital de la Sociedad del Conocimiento. Particularmente, cómo los discursos comunicacionales serían capaces de instituir y habilitar otras dimensiones y espacios de lo público a partir de los consumos tecno-culturales, que se expresarían en nuevas dinámicas de accesos, usos y apropiaciones sociales, tanto de las TIC como de estos espacios. El trabajo presenta como unidad de análisis esta discusión teórica, contrastada por observaciones empíricas sobre determinadas plataformas digitales (Google Maps, Safety Pin) y la tendencia glocal Pokémon Go. Es una investigación interpretativa y procesual, que procura abordar la dimensión simbólica de estos espacios denominados públicos, tensionando su discurso hegemónico en la Arquitectura y cuyas reflexiones proponen (re)pensarlos como categoría y lugar de las interacciones socio-urbanas.

  • English

    By the end of the 20th Century, postindustrial society’s cultural practices enforced a new social and political paradigm. Given the new technologies available at the moment, the globalization of such practices was possible. During the 90s, under this recently born socio-productive paradigm and with the aid of Telecommunications, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) became a rather relevant conceptual and ideological instrument to the third phase of the industrial development in which digitalization was, at the same time, a tool and what made it possible. In the beginning, this emerging revolution in communications was known as Information Society. Later on, throughout the first decade of the 3rd millennium such denomination changed to a more complex concept to acknowledge the idea of an Information and Knowledge Society (IKS). The Internet as a product and a service of the 3rd technological revolution developed fast enough to make the world seem a smaller and more (dis)connected place. Firstly, this dynamic had an impact on the processes of production —especially, the tertiary ones—, but then thanks to the technological convergence it also manifested itself in cultural expressions and its urban practices.

    It is at this point where this research becomes relevant. Researches on the ICTs were carried out by different areas of knowledge, and their possibilities; Social Sciences took a particular interest, given that it did not take long before the importance of these devices was accredited within the new social order. In the field of Architecture and Urbanism, ICTs had an impact too. They were regarded as new means and tools at the service of architectural projection which also changed the way this discipline is regarded and performed. However, few are the studies that question these technologies beyond their instrumental nature, yet they are instead interested in their role as real actors of what’s urban.

    This thesis puts a question to public spaces within the theoretical frame of the IKS, altogether with its digital order, cultural practices and social dynamics. In particular, how the technocommunicational discourses would be able to institute and enable other dimensions and spaces of the public from the techno-cultural consumption, which would be expressed in new dynamics of access, uses and social appropriations, both of the ICTs and the urban spaces. This paper poses a theoretical discussion which also includes empirical approaches to support it. It as well intends to promote an innovative debate within the field of Urbanism, about the influence of the revolution in communications in the urban habitat. This research focuses on data processing and interpretation, as well as it addresses the symbolic dimension of the so-called public spaces.

    Moreover, the paper´s final assessments propose to (re)think such spaces as idea, category and the frame in which socio-urban interactions are held.

    Public spaces are considered a broad term defined only from a multidimensional perspective. It was first used as a political category in the 60s, whereas its consolidation as a place per se finally occurred during the 90s. Nowadays, this concept is the main concern in most of the debates taking place within the field of Urbanism. Although they were thought to be places for exchange and encounter, taking into account that they have been appropriated by movements seeking to raise awareness and resistance, they are now the land of tension and dispute. In this context, the IKS’s digital order and its ICT’s techno-cultural devices are enabled to act freely and have a deeper incidence. What’s digital would have an influence in urban aesthetic experiences and in the (co)habitation of public spaces, which would manifest through new logics of usage and appropriation.

    The new limits and social expressions of that influence would be anchored to the commercialization processes of what’s urban. It is here where the transmedia storytelling and cultural consumption propose a (re)thinking of the city as idea and space. From the perspective this thesis poses, city and public spaces are related categories, which are also viewed as reciprocal and dialectic concepts. Thus, throughout this research the notion of city will be questioned from a digital point of view assuming its rhizomatic and glocal systemic where public spaces weave a grid of signified and significant places that help subjects in the creation of their urban identity.

    This research focuses mainly in the questioning of these symbolic-spatial processes. To that end, it expands on a series of theoretical and conceptual discussions about what’s public as it intertwines different illustrative examples to support them. The research’s theoretical framework is structured on the basis of a dialog among authors from different fields of knowledge such as Urbanism, Social Anthropology, Sociology and Semiotics, which builds up an interdisciplinary process that is very necessary in this conceptual construct. Regarding the methodological framework, altogether with such an interdisciplinary dialog and the empirical observations used to approach the IKS’s digital order; this research also integrates strategies from the ethnographic method to carry on its study. Concerning the empirical framework, besides the illustrative examples mentioned before, the research studies the usage of ICT’s techno-cultural devices in the central area of the province of Cordoba, Argentina. The devices of interest here are those linked to the cultural consumption of the age group named millennials, e.g. the glocal tendency Pokémon Go. The analysis of this experience is complemented with the study of geolocation applicative such as Safety Pin and Google Maps, which allows to understand the game’s subjectivities on a territorial basis and to put in evidence systems, nodes and intensities of what’s public.

    This paper is divided into five chapters. Each of them focuses on a different and specific issue, but the five are thought to address and unravel the main thesis. The first chapter introduces the research problem, exposes the hypothesis, objectives and the paper’s structure. Chapters two, three and four represent the research’s theoretical and empirical nucleus. They develop the following nodes: Information and Knowledge Society’s Digital Order; Public Spaces as Concept, Social Device and Cultural Consumption and The Empirical Observations on The Glocal Tendency Pokémon Go. To finish, the fifth and last chapter contains final reflections and recommendations on the research thesis and it is structured around three main questions which do not precisely pretend to bring this discussion to an end but opens the door to a future debate on the imminent fourth technological revolution, the technological convergence, 5G, The Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).