Weeknotes 310 - proxy citizens and robotic things as social catalysts

Doing a workshop made me sharpen some thoughts and learn more about rockets and robotaxis and reflective stories.

Hi, y’all!

Are you looking forward to Dutch Design Week? It is a thing here in the Netherlands, and always good fun. A mix of professional crowds and curious others mixing around all types of design. And art. I will be engaged in a session on Tuesday of the Network of Applied Design Research and discussing and reflecting on the progress on the extension of the WijkbotKit, that I tested at the session at the workshop at Society 5.0 Festival last week. See triggered thoughts below.

I also intend to visit the Design + AI symposium on Tuesday and Wednesday; this year for the first time embedded in the Dutch Design Week. Expect a great program again.

The Creative Industry dinner on Wednesday, Design Innovation Session on Friday, and PONT meetup are on the agenda, and in between I hope to have time to visit the regular exhibition, and Manifestations.

Last but not least we organize a ThingsCon Salon as part of the Dutch Design Week program, kicking of the exhibition “Generative Things” with objects from the near future of things. Sen has planned for a great futuring session. Check the listing here, or go to the RSVP on Meetup.

I realized that this week feels like an almost archetypical week. Next to writing this newsletter, I met on new networks (DiSIL, Digital Social Innovation Lab in Rotterdam), met with students I am coaching, had meetings and lots of emails prepping ThingsCon (the evening work :), visiting a seminar. We will be present with Wijkbot on Wednesday, the open day of Afrikaanderwijk Cooperatie. And I started a new research project at Civic Interaction Design research group of Amsterdam UAS on civic & protocol economies that I will share more about later.

Triggered thought

I was wondering if I should write here a bit about Tesla's We, Robot event. I really want to explore why humanoids are not so interesting. In that sense, the presented robotaxis are more worth checking out; it also feels like another round of broken promises (see below in the news section).

There is a nice link with the thoughts triggered through the workshop at Society 5.0 Festival with the Wijkbot (Hoodbot), both while preparing and the work the participants did—the link to think about the role of citythings that are nearby robotic things more than robots. What I tried to establish with a different approach for the workshop was moving away from seeing robotic things as objects with a function, to objects that are shaping interactions. Interactions of the things with the citizens, and maybe even more the interactions between citizens.

Without going into the details of the workshop—there are other places and moments to do—it turned out to be very well possible for the groups to discuss what social interaction to unlock with the Wijkbots. For example, sharing food tasting and different coffees to connect people of different cultures.

We aim to have the Wijkbot as an active artifact for thinking through prototyping. We also aim to have it not only as an endpoint but as a platform for capturing the burning questions others can iterate on.

The core idea is that these robots should act as interfaces within the social fabric, especially in digitally connected neighborhoods. Rather than being functional machines, they could become conversation accelerators. This leads to the notion that robots could take on different roles in the community, acting as companions or guides for the people living there.

In essence, robots should become a part of the neighborhood, functioning almost like proxy citizens. This concept of "proxy citizens" is fascinating—it allows us to explore how robots can embody roles that make them feel like an extension of the human community, contributing to social connections.

In lots of the explorations with Wijkbots, I aim to look at the relationships the citizens will have with the neighborhood robots and what the perceived relationship and ownership with hoodbots operating as proxies of their own roles in that neighborhood. I expect that a new balance might emerge, but new social structures, hierarchies, and roles might also emerge. In that sense, connecting these explorations to more fundamental research on technology, autonomy, and agency would be interesting. That is for another time.

Read the full newsletter here, with

• Notions from last week's news on Human-AI partnerships, Robotic performances, Immersive connectedness, and Tech societies
• Paper for the week
• Looking forward with events to visit

Thanks for reading. I started blogging ideas and observations back in 2005 via?Targetisnew.com. Since 2015, I have started a weekly update with links to the news and reflections. I always capture news on tech and societal impact from my perspective and interest. In the last few years, it has focused on the relationship between humans and tech, particularly AI, IoT, and robotics.

The notions from the news are distributed via the weekly newsletter, archived online?here. Every week, I reflect more on one topic, a triggered thought. I share that thought here and redirect it to?my newsletter?for an overview of news, events, and more.

If you are a new reader and wondering who is writing, I am Iskander Smit. I am educated as an industrial designer and have worked in digital technology all my life. I am particularly interested in digital-physical interactions and a focus on human-tech intelligence co-performance. I like to (critically) explore the?near future?in the context of?cities of things. And organising?ThingsCon.?I call Target_is_New my practice for making sense of unpredictable futures in human-AI partnerships. That is the lens I use to capture interesting news and share a paper every week.

Feel invited to reach out if you need some reflections; I?might be able to help out!