Smart city and algorithmic governmentality: freedom and control in the information age

Abstract

Based on Michel Foucault's reflections in the late 1970s and the more recently developed notion of “algorithmic governmentality”, understood as a new regime of power and knowledge based on the collection, mining and crossing of large amount of data, this article intends to analyze critically the so-called “smart cities”, in which infrastructure and services are linked in a supposedly more streamlined and efficient way, finally offering the dreamed well-being and happy life. This utopia of social organization will be associated with a new form of political rationality and strategy of government by means of algorithms, which raise important and disturbing questions. In this work, we will highlight the ability of algorithms to govern us, in order to conduct our behaviors and structure the field of possible actions. And the focus of this article will be on the tension between freedom and control inscribed in this new governmentality, which acts more directly on data, relations and environments.