U.S.-based geographer Brian Jefferson argues in a new book that “smart city” systems tech firms such as IBM have built in New York City and Chicago extend carceral management systems into urban spaces. He shows how “cellular towers, cooling equipment, environmental sensors, fiber-optic cables, local area networks, mobile devices, server rooms, and smart cameras” are engineered to allow governments and private technology firms to supervise entire communities in a manner that increasingly resembles carceral management. The Shawan “Safe City” shows that in less democratic contexts, such systems connect even more directly to mass detention systems.
Philosopher Gilles Deleuze suggests that contemporary societies are moving away from systems of discipline to systems of control. While in the past the material limits of schools, religious institutions, factories, and prisons trained people to be self-disciplined, in the digital age societies are shaped by flexible systems of codes and digital monitoring. Deleuze argues that this makes power more diffuse and difficult to identify. The example of the Shawan “Safe City” suggests that when material enclosures are reinforced by digital enclosures, power over human life can become deeply destructive for marginalized populations even while they appear to create greater freedom for protected populations.