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Interview on the Ethics of Mapping Slums

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I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Michael Nagenborg and Isaac Oluoch on their work in the ethics of mapping slums. The transcript and the video are published in the inaugural issue of the Philosophy of the City Journal, Philosophies of the City.

Some of the questions we discussed are: How is the use of artificial intelligence changing the practice of mapping deprived living areas? What does it mean for inhabitants and urban planners that machines are participating in the interpretation of spaces? What can philosophers contribute to such issues?

Inaugural Issue: Philosophies of the City

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We are super proud to present the first, inaugural issue of the Philosophy of the City Journal, titled Philosophies of the City: https://ugp.rug.nl/potcj/article/view/41253.

Paper in Journal of Human-Technology Relations

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Very excited about my new publication in the Journal of Human-Technology relations: Selfie and World: On Instagrammable Places and Technologies for Capturing Them

Here is the abstract:

Instagrammable places are designed to be photographed for Instagram. This leads to the homogenization and commodification of the world to suit the app’s affordances. It is worth asking why Instagram users are so motivated to play along when only a miniscule fraction of them can monetize their pursuits. I argue that Instagram and its accompanying form, the selfie, touch upon a basic human need for meaning-making: for narratively organizing one’s experience of the world, and reversely for performing a narrativized identity in a meaningful world. The app establishes what Don Ihde has called a hermeneutic and an alterity relation to the world, by superficially contributing to an understanding of the world based on one’s own co-constitutive agency of framing and selecting features of the world to be photographed and shared, and by performing this agency to an audience.

Publication in the British Journal of Aesthetics

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It’s very exciting to share my most recent publication, “Park Aesthetics Between Wilderness Representations and Everyday Affordances”. It appeared in the British Journal of Aesthetics, published by Oxford University Press and one of the top 25% most highly rated journals in philosophy.

Here is the abstract:

Scholars criticize privileging aesthetics over social and ecological considerations in park design. I argue that the real culprit is not aesthetics, but aestheticism. Aestheticism treats aesthetic objects as if they were ontologically distinct from everyday objects. Aestheticism in park design—treating parks like artworks to be admired like paintings—dovetails into treating parks like representations of a romanticized wilderness: of pristine, untouched landscapes. I argue that aestheticism is a means of constructing an ontological distinction between the beholder and the beheld, for landscapes are not truly pristine if they are sullied by human presence. As an alternative, and while drawing on the works of John Dewey and Yuriko Saito, I argue for a continuity between everyday objects and aesthetic objects. I also draw attention to the question of whose every day is privileged and propose to introduce Wittgenstein’s concept of multi-aspectivity in the analysis of everyday affordances.