I attend to the dialectics between precarity, urban sociality, and digital technology (le numérique) in Kinshasa. Tech engineers, and those aspiring to become one, dream of solvent futures. They share a desire to leave various forms of precarity behind and attempt to produce new urban futures by means of tech skills and digital technologies. Especially the lack of trust in urban others is considered a problem solvable with mobile phone applications and other kinds of software. Kinois tech inventiveness draws on an interpretation of the city as a social space of entrapment. The proposed solutions consist of a strategy that I call “short-cutting” of social relations, a method that involves replacing a human intermediary with a machine. Unfortunately, tech capitalism sets its own traps for Kinshasa’s tech engineers. The very particular forms of precarity from which these ingénieurs want to escape are perpetuated in the digital sphere; would-be digital innovators remain trapped.

中文翻译：

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金沙萨的数字创意和城市陷阱：解决不稳定问题的实验

我关注金沙萨的不稳定、城市社会性和数字技术 ( le numérique )之间的辩证关系。技术工程师和那些渴望成为其中一员的人梦想着溶剂期货。他们都渴望摆脱各种形式的不稳定，并试图通过技术技能和数字技术创造新的城市未来。特别是对城市他人缺乏信任被认为是可以通过手机应用程序和其他类型的软件解决的问题。Kinois 技术的创造力借鉴了对城市作为陷阱的社会空间的解释。提议的解决方案包括一种我称之为社会关系“捷径”的策略，一种用机器代替人类中介的方法. 不幸的是，技术资本主义为金沙萨的技术工程师设置了自己的陷阱。precarity的非常特别的形式从这些ingénieurs想逃避在数字领域的延续; 潜在的数字创新者仍然被困。