Adam Greenfield

Born in 1968, Greenfield worked in interaction design and was head of design direction for service and user interface at Nokia before devoting himself to writing on technology and the city from London, where he has taught at University College and the London School of Economics. Everyware (2006) anticipated ubiquitous computing, sensors and screens in every object and on every corner, and the ethical questions it would bring, when the smartphone barely existed.

Against the Smart City (2013) is the pamphlet that opened the critique of the smart city: from the brochures of Songdo, Masdar and PlanIT Valley he showed that technology companies were selling a city without politics, without conflict and without inhabitants, governed by a dashboard, and that this vision was at once naive and dangerous. His motto, the smart city is the one that already exists, with its disorder and its neighbours, has guided Barcelona, Amsterdam and other cities that reformulated their programmes.

Radical Technologies (2017) examined one by one the technologies that promise to transform everyday life, from the phone to the blockchain and automation, and asked whom they serve and what alternatives exist, and Lifehouse (2024) proposes infrastructures of mutual care in neighbourhoods for the crises to come. He is reproached for pessimism; his contribution is to have returned politics to a debate companies presented as technical.