[Themaintainers] Talk: Aesthetic Values in the Maintenance of Urban Technologies (Sanna Lehtinen) Maintenance & Philosophy of Technology SIG

[mark young]

*Dear all,Hope this email finds everyone well. We’d like to share the zoom
link for the next session of the SPT Maintenance and Philosophy of
Technology group on Thursday 10th November (1800-1915 UTC+1). In this
session, we're excited to welcome Sanna Lehtinen (Aalto University) who’ll
be presenting her work exploring the relationship between practices of
maintenance and urban aesthetics. If you’d like to receive the zoom link
for the talk please email me at mark at markthomasyoung.net
<mark at markthomasyoung.net>. The schedule for the remainder of the year
follows below,*

Mark

*Aesthetic Values in the Maintenance of Urban Technologies*

Sanna Lehtinen (Aalto University)

*Thursday 10th November (1800-1915 UTC+1)*

*Abstract:* How technologies make cities look and feel is not a question
that is too often asked. We take the presence and state of technologies in
the urban lifeworld largely granted. In some cases, urban technologies can
become even emblematic of cities, fetishized for their connotations with
the urban lifeform and advancements in science and technology. Urban
technologies mirror those societies that are using them, thus also changes
in their uses and operations are likely to change when societal values
change. Postindustrial development in the Western countries and the more
recent sustainability concerns are examples of this, making some urban
technologies either redundant or available for further, new types of uses.
Sometimes traces of the past times are left to cities as mementos of the
past as in the cases when factory pipes have become aesthetically an
important part of the city even when no longer in use. Not all technologies
are valued equally though and some, such as public telephone booths (with
some notable exceptions as in London), quickly disappeared after the mobile
phone was adopted to use. The changes in the societal context bring
attention to the strategies of maintenance and to what extent aesthetic
norms and values are present in the decisions over maintenance of different
forms of urban technologies. Recently, approaches from care ethics have
been applied to aesthetics and in the chapter, this insight is used to
assist in understanding how the maintenance of urban infrastructures could
be based on the notion of care. The care ethical horizon opens a new,
empathetic way of thinking about what type of world and cities we will
leave to the future generations of humans and nonhumans alike. The care
aesthetics perspective underlines ownership, responsibility, and
collaboration in maintaining those structures that maintain complex
lifeforms in cities. This requires also defining, discussing, and
deliberating aesthetic values so that they would be better aligned to
support different, more general goals. The chapter brings together ideas
from contemporary urban aesthetics, philosophy of the city, and philosophy
of technology to study how aesthetic values are taken into consideration in
the maintenance decisions and strategies of contemporary urban technologies.

(In order to avoid confusion regarding the timing of the talks - the
following table clarifies when the talks begin in different locations)

Amsterdam 6:00pm
London 5:00pm
Toronto (New York) 12:00pm
San Francisco 9:00am

*Maintenance & Philosophy of Technology SIG - Remaining Schedule for 2022:*


December 8th 2022        (18-1915 UTC+1)
Simon Penny (UCI) "Making Maintenance Possible Again: Finding Ethical and
Sustainable Paths Through Consumerism, Disposability and Inbuilt
Obsolescence”
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