Update on august 30: I found in the Internet the map of cities that have been/are being invaded…

The text literally says: For the exclusive use of the Fire Brigade.

In the urban landscape, as in technological innovation, there is a constant tension between the originally intended usage of artifacts and spaces, and the creative modes of use that grow out of the daily interaction with them.

There are two approaches to this tension: the coercive approach, designing in a way that prevents different usages (mis-usages?) and, when design by itself is not enough, adding norms and rules, and the extensive approach, enabling, by design, the capability to add new modes of use that can extend the original intent.

Both of them have advantages and drawbacks: it is very difficult to completely prevent different usage models unless you resort to a heavily normative (policed) system; the best technological example being the completely unsuccessful attempt to prevent the sharing of music and, in general, content on the internet. But it is also quite difficult to ensure that the proliferation of new modes of use does not have a negative impact on the capability to deliver the original intended functionality…

In this image (taken in the Brick Lane area of East London) different layers are visible: the elevated train bridge structure dates from the industrial revolution era, the street sign in English and Bengali denotes the immigration flux in the second half of the twentieth century, the one-way signal indicates the necessity of traffic regulation related to street congestion, and the graffiti and stencils the current process of trendification (the phase prior to gentrification?) of the area.

The chronological relation between these layers may not be as straightforward as in the case of geology or archeology, where, basically, deeper means older; but there are also time cues, such as the rust in the Bengali street sign that can be read to understand how the different layers relate and overlap in the historic evolution of the city.

We have an image of the UK as one of the societies with a high level of concern on the protection of privacy. It is one of the few countries in Europe where there are no identity cards of any form issued by the government, and when, once in a while, an identity card initiative is proposed, it faces so much opposition that it gets dropped by politicians. The proliferation signs warning of CCTVs in operation is, at least superficially, opposite to this image.

Maybe the perception of the abundance of CCTVs was caused by the legal requirement to warn citizens of their existence, making CCTV signs quite ubiquitous in the London city landscape, but it certainly produced some estrange situations, like this CCTV sign besides a big graffiti (or street art?). Usually, the painting of street art such as this is somewhere in the fringes of legality, so the image makes you wonder what was first: the CCTV or the graffiti, and how those symbols of different lifestyles and attitudes ended up side by side in the street.

Beyond the curious image there is a whole reflection on how surveillance technology can change our habits and attitudes about the public space. Up to which extent do you change your behaviour when you know that CCTV is operating in a certain public space?, is the proliferation of surveillance warning signs going to trivialize it or, on the contrary, is it going to act to create social reaction to the technology?. And, of course, what happens when there is the possibility that some kind of surveillance is being done without any information signs?…

Panopticon or 1984, the fact is that surveillance based distopias are, today, part of our collective imaginary, so this is going to be an area of friction between technology capabilities and social expectations and concerns…

Found by my 6 years old son in a pedestrian street in Covent Garden, London (and the day was my 42nd birthday, so maybe that’s why I was feeling old…)