ABSTRACT

Smart devices are invading everyday spaces like our bedrooms and living rooms, making it possible to conduct new participatory experimentations in the ‘real world’. An example is the National Housing Monitoring Network (Red Nacional de Monitoreo, ReNaM). By installing networked sensors in homes in different cities in Chile, ReNaM seeks to generate a large public database on the environmental behaviour of homes in real life conditions and throughout their life cycle, in order to make data-driven policies and regulations on sustainable building. In this article, we argue that experiments with digital innovations like ReNaM are moving towards a ‘sensor governmentality’ or a mode of sensitive regulation of household behaviour at a distance, recomposing the relationship that the State establishes with its population. However, we find that this sensor governmentality is multivalent, fragile and friction-loaded. We analyse different scripts present in ReNaM and the frictions that emerge between divergent ways of materialising this sensor network from above and below. Moreover, the real environmental conditions and behaviours that the experiment seeks to capture through sensors are always challenged by the multiple entanglements that sensor devices unfold in domestic spaces, suggesting that affective and collective possibilities in these real-world experiments should be considered.

摘要

智能设备正在入侵我们的卧室和客厅等日常空间，从而有可能在“现实世界”中进行新的参与性实验。一个例子是国家住房监测网络（ReNaM，国家监测网）。通过在智利不同城市的房屋中安装网络传感器，ReNaM寻求生成有关房屋在现实生活中及其整个生命周期中的环境行为的大型公共数据库，以制定以数据为驱动力的可持续建筑政策和法规。在本文中，我们认为，利用ReNaM等数字创新进行的实验正在朝着“传感器政府”或对家庭行为进行敏感调节的模式，从而重新构筑国家与人口之间的关系。然而，我们发现这种传感器的管理性是多价的，脆弱的且充满摩擦。我们分析了ReNaM中存在的不同脚本以及从上方和下方实现该传感器网络的多种方式之间出现的摩擦。此外，实验试图通过传感器捕获的真实环境条件和行为始终受到传感器设备在家庭空间中展开的多重纠缠的挑战，这表明在这些真实世界的实验中应该考虑情感和集体的可能性。