Smart City: the arrival of a New Democracy or Digital Totalitarianism?

Abstract

The main purpose of the article is to study technologies of a smart city to identify the prospects for digital democracy and risks of digital totalitarianism. The basic methodological optics is the discourse analysis, which involves the identification and comparative analysis of various concepts on the selected issues. The supporting methodology was the Case Study principles and the big data analysis capabilities of the Google Trends platform. The article makes a theoretical contribution to the understanding of the algorithmic nature of modern political power, which is the basis of urban technopolitics, as well as the complex configuration of Policy and Politics. Algorithms, as the fundamental basis of digital applications and smart city technologies, are beginning to permeate the entire life of a citizen, closely intertwining with the mechanisms of digital control, rating, political decision-making, extraction, filtering and sorting of information data. It is particularly emphasized that the traditional social reality is transformed into a sociotechnical reality (the phygital world), in which it is no longer possible to rigidly separate the social from the technical. The conclusions indicate that digital democracy is possible only on the principles of open source, while digital totalitarianism, on the contrary, excludes such a model. Without the inclusion of smart citizens, the process of discussion and political decision-making, digital democracy is simply emasculated into a good, but still narrow service on the part of the authorities. In addition, without comprehensive programs in the field of political education, there will be no digital democracy, no smart citizens, only a smart elite will remain.