Živeči laboratoriji in veliko podatkovje v praksi: Stratumseind 2.0: Diskusija živečega laboratorija na Nizozemskem

Living lab projects – as a platform and methodology for technology testing and experimentation – are becoming common practice in (smart) cities around the world. As a relatively recent phenomenon, however, they are underresearched and lack a widely recognised definition and theoretical framework. The proliferation and growing importance of such technological projects that increasingly shape life in the city, demands a more thorough analysis and disentanglement of the practice and the concept. In order to address this need, the contribution first presents a living lab in practice – the Stratumseind Living Lab (part of the larger Stratumseind 2.0 project) in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The Stratumseind Living Lab, a smaller project in a middle-sized and upcoming European city, which includes local and global technology companies and employs big data analysis, serves as an illustrative example of a living lab, its operation and its promises. The second part of this contribution examines academic literature on living labs and briefly analyzes the operation of the Stratumseind Living Lab project in view of its promises, particularly pertaining to big data. Based on the examination of theory and the practical example, the contribution concludes that such technological projects carry with them a wide range of social, political, ethical and legal concerns (including increasing surveillance in urban areas, issues connected to privacy and data security, a neoliberal form of city governance and the transformation of public space into quasi-public space), which the parties of such projects are either not aware of or simply do not take seriously enough. The pace of development and rollout of living lab (and smart city) technologies, which is proceeding well ahead of wider reflection, critique and regulation, is thus foolish and dangerous, requiring additional interrogation of the vision and implementation.