Bus Inf Syst Eng 60(3):265–267 (2018)

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-018-0531-7

PROFILE

Interview with David Prendergast on ‘‘Mediating Between

Technology and People in Smart City Transformations’’
Tobias Brandt

Published online: 28 February 2018

Ó Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2018

David joined Intel in 2006 as Social Science Lead in the

Digital Health Group and Principal Investigator in the
Technology Research for Independent Living Centre. In
2011, he moved to Intel Labs as User Experience Lead and
helped set up and run the Intel Collaborative Research
Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities with Imperial
College and University College London until 2015. In
recent years David has focused on directing Urban Living
Labs and ‘Internet of Things’ research testbeds in London,
San Jose and Dublin. David left Intel in 2018 in order to
return to his anthropological roots.
David has also held the positions of Visiting Professor
Dr. David Prendergast of Healthcare Innovation at Trinity College Dublin and
[email protected] External Examiner to the Design Ethnography MSc at
Dundee University. His most recent volume ‘Ageing and
Dr. David Prendergast is a social anthropologist, musician the Digital Life Course’ edited with Chiara Garattini was
and photography enthusiast. His research over the last named a CHOICE ‘Outstanding Academic Title’ by the
20 years has focused on later life-course transitions and he American Library Association and was described as one of
has authored a wide range of books and articles on ageing, ‘the two most fascinating books on aging in the 21st
health, technology, and social relationships. David’s doc- Century’ by the Huffington Post.
torate, completed in 2002 at Cambridge University, was Fortune Magazine named David a ‘hero of the 500’ in
published as a monograph ‘From Elder to Ancestor, Old 2014 for his involvement in helping establish LauraLynn
Age, Death and Inheritance in Modern Korea’. David House, Ireland’s first children’s hospice.
subsequently worked on several major projects at the BISE: David, as a social anthropologist, you approach
Universities of Cambridge, Sheffield and Trinity College the phenomenon of digital transformations from a different
Dublin, including a history of the British Colonial Wildlife angle than IS research. What fascinates you about the
Conservation, paid home care services in Ireland, and an effect of IT on human relationships and social cohesion?
ESRC study into death, dying and bereavement in England Prendergast: The history of human civilizations has
and Scotland. been shaped by the relationship between society, technol-
ogy, and environment. For instance, buffalo jumps have
been used for over 6000 years by indigenous plains people,
Dr. T. Brandt (&) such as the Blackfoot in Canada. They reshaped the land-
Technology and Operations Management, Rotterdam School of
scape with hundreds of cairns, drive channels, and dis-
Management, Erasmus University, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50,
3062 Rotterdam, The Netherlands guised runners that would gradually change the course of
e-mail: [email protected] the herds and force them at full gallop over a cliff where

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they would be dispatched by waiting warriors. The car- design for ageing-in-place, we need to think beyond the
casses would later be efficiently processed by a nearby bricks and mortar of the home, to how we can successfully
camp, conveniently situated by a confluence of rivers and age as part of a community. Safe flexible transportation
trading networks. systems are incredibly important. A truly smart city thinks
The invention of both gunpowder and the printing press about the variegated needs of its citizens. As an ethnog-
rewrote political, geographic and military boundaries. New rapher who has interviewed hundreds of community
methods of glass manufacturing helped enable revolutions dwelling older adults, I have witnessed the hardship caused
in science and medicine, and in my own research area in by loneliness and social isolation. Another pressing issue,
Korea, the development of new irrigation techniques dra- as the 15–64 year old population substantially decreases
matically increased rice production and led to a population from 67 to 57% in Europe, will be the reduced numbers of
explosion that changed social customs, inheritance law and ‘invisible’ family carers. In the UK alone, six million
family practices. From the Industrial Revolution and Cot- caregivers are currently estimated to be saving the British
ton Mills of Lancashire through to what Klaus Schwab, NHS £119 Billion. It is only logical that we need to find
founder of the World Economic Forum, rather grandly calls ways to tangibly support such caregivers as well as lever-
the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it is not just fascinating age the potential of the older population itself. We need to
but critical to reflect on how society shapes and is shaped keep thoughtfully considering and discussing our health
by the inventions and innovations generated by human and social care systems, the role of the family, hybrid
ingenuity. Taking Schwab as an example, simply begin to models of care, including companionship care. Most of all,
consider the emergent social implications of ‘‘new tech- how do we keep people engaging as active members of
nologies that are fusing the physical, digital, and biological society? You’d be surprised at how few older people truly
worlds, impacting all disciplines, economies and industries, perceived themselves as old. This normally comes after a
and even challenging ideas about what it means to be terrible life course change – a bereavement, a bad fall, a
human.’’ critical health event or when someone feels like a burden.
BISE: Much of your recent work focuses on ageing in a People need to feel they are leading useful and meaningful
digital world. What challenges and opportunities do you lives.
see in this context resulting from smart city BISE: There is an ongoing discussion about the ‘digital
transformations? divide’ between more and less tech-savvy people, which is
Prendergast: Shifting population dynamics in the EU- often related to a divide between the old and the young, as
28 will see the proportion of its population aged 65–79 well as between rich and poor people. With the focus on
grow from 13.6% in 2015 to 16.5% in 2030 and 17.2% by smart cities, are we enforcing another divide between urban
2050. Even more dramatic will be the doubling of those and rural areas? How could we make the benefits of digi-
aged 80 ? from contemporary levels of 5.3% to 10.9% of tization accessible to everyone?
the European population by 2050. Imagine that, nearly Prendergast: Technologists often view the world in
11% of the European population aged 80 years or older. fairly simple, power neutral terms. The ambition, not
Yet we are paying relatively little attention to preparing our always achieved, tends to be to design technologies such as
societies for the coming age wave. It will bring both edge devices, cloud infrastructures and end to end Internet
opportunities and challenges. I still don’t understand why of Things’ platforms, to be modular, scalable and trans-
the heterogeneous category of ‘older people’ receives so ferable across contexts. From this perspective, many of the
little attention from policy makers, city planners or busi- things developed for a city should be also useful for a
nesses. Older adults in Europe have a combined spending smaller town or village. This said, of course inequities do
power of 3000 billion euro and in the past two decades exist. I usually prefer to think in terms of designing for
consumer spending among those aged 60 ? rose 50% communities rather than strictly cities, though there is
faster compared to under 30. We are going to have to advantage, not least in terms of purchasing power and
redefine our ideas of what constitutes old and pay greater access to infrastructure, when working with city managers
heed as researchers, governments and communities. and departments. In fact, to alter the lens slightly, I would
Technology is going to help, but it is, and can only ever be, suggest we deconstruct the idea of the ‘urban area’ as well.
a partial solution. In terms of smart cities, one of the key There are many groups and communities in urban areas
themes I built into the Intel Institute for Sustainable Con- that stand outside the discourse and focus typically asso-
nected Cities was making the invisible visible. By this, I ciated with ‘smart cities’. It was for this reason, that Intel
was not merely interested in mapping underground cables Labs colleagues of mine in London became involved with
or visualizing microscopic air quality particles, but also in the H2020 Organicity project. The aim of this was to create
how to understand and improve the hidden lives of city a high-quality urban IoT platform and make it available for
dwellers, and especially our older populations. When we use by groups such as start-ups, social and environmental

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innovators, and SME’s who would not normally have the environment. The interesting thing about cities of course is
resources or technical expertise to engage. I think many that ‘people’ as a unit of analysis may be a private citizen,
more experimental, educational, and enabling initiatives a city employee, community group, or business, to name
like this are required, in both rural and urban areas. just a few possibilities.
BISE: From your experience, what are some best BISE: The BISE community has a long history of
practices for achieving people-centric smart city transfor- investigating socio-technical systems, historically often in
mations and what are things to avoid? a business context. Over the past years, however, there
Prendergast: I think smart cities should be approached have been more and more calls for research with a societal
from a transdisciplinary perspective. That is, we should impact, and the digital transformation of urban life is just
utilize the skillsets and worldviews of many disciplines to one of the areas in which such an impact is possible.
tackle ‘wicked problems’ from a variety of angles. The key Having worked and engaged with the community, where
word here though is ‘problems’. A city is an incredibly do you think lie the greatest potential contributions in
large and complex organization, or rather collection of addressing this societal grand challenge?
organizations to deal with. Top-down approaches seem to Prendergast: Engineering community on different
frequently spawn top-down technology-driven solutions. projects for at least five years now and I think we have all
Personally, I prefer asking the question to stakeholders been delighted with the synergies and outputs from a col-
‘what is a particular need or issue you want to address?’ laboration between our disciplines. An ethnographic
whether they are city managers, stadium directors, park approach helps to unpick complexity and understand
keepers, or garbage collectors. This helps focus the con- nuance whereas I greatly value the rigor, systematic
versation and provides a manageable set of boundaries thinking, and modelling capabilities that BISE scholars and
within which to plan research, design prototypes and test in Design Science can bring to the table. Working as I often
the real world. A second practice I advocate is conducting do in ‘Living Labs’ and IoT Testbeds this is particularly
as much ethnography or in situ observation as possible useful once an artefact such as a prototype or change in a
before locking down your design or engineering require- socio-technical system is introduced into the equation. In
ments. Try to understand the layers of the problem set as fact, two of my recent projects, ‘building an IoT capability
well as the work flows, processes and limitations of its maturity framework for Smart Cities’ and ‘exploring how
different stakeholders. Also at this stage, consider whether to design autonomous vehicles for older adults’ were
the local challenge is something that is also an issue in greatly enhanced by having BISE postdoctoral researchers
other cities and markets. As a social anthropologist, I spend and thinkers working on them.
a lot of time talking and working with different ‘publics’ or BISE: David, thank you very much for your time and
communities of geography and practice across a particular for this interview.

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