Not Even Our Bridge
June 12th, 2011 | researchmaterial
The little bot Tom Armitage made to inform on the activity of London’s Tower Bridge has gone. It operated through a Twitter account, and it appears the City Of London has caused Twitter to reassign the username to them as an “official” account.
A few months ago, I said in Berlin, “Cognitive cities require the approval and collaboration of city authorities. The same people who make flyposting illegal.”
It’s sad, and somewhat annoying – especially for Tom – but a better example that these streets are not our streets won’t be found in Britain today.
(That doesn’t mean there won’t be one tomorrow, or that there wasn’t yesterday.)
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- 25. Flyposting Is Illegal (warrenellis.com)
- 23. Whose Streets (warrenellis.com)
[...] marks a bad day for Twitter. Meanwhile, comics writer Warren Ellis says it’s a great example of conflict between the owners of a city and those who inhabit it. Others question the appropriateness of the original application. The BBC’s Rory Cellan Jones, [...]