Blog Post 1 - The Projective City

Communitech has provided a place within the Waterloo Region for individuals to discuss the present and future of technology. Thus, the reason for them having David Mallon, chief analyst at Bersin - a sister company based within the United States for Deliotte. Here, he touched on the topic of the “Future of Work and Learning,” which appear to be illustrative of Boltanski and Chiapello’s “the projective city.” This metaphorical model sets out to describe the current state of the new technological world, where everything is interconnected. I believe that connections can be made with Mallons view, “ learning the equivalent of a master’s degree every 10 years to keep pace with changing knowledge demands.” This is due to the fact that with the emergence of recent technological forces in the job sphere, people will need to shift their knowledge and skill set to the constantly growing technological market. This means within the workforce, people need to become adaptable to move among different projects within their field. One way individuals are able to keep themselves adaptable, is by constantly affirming connections they have within the workforce. By doing so, it enables a world of possibilities in an ever growing market. As technology advances the authors point out “refers to a firm whose structure comprises a multiplicity of projects associating a variety of people, some of whom participate in several projects. Since the very nature of this type of project is to have a beginning and end, projects succeed and take over from one another” (Boltanski & Chiapello, pp. 105), which connects well with what Mallon is trying to explain within his talk. Adding to a phrase by Marshall Mcluhan “we don’t earn a living, we leaning a living.” Instead of trying to change with the way technologies moves, we need to become flexible within this new society where technology remains at the center and learn to adapt with it in all aspects of our lives.
While referencing back to Mallon’s discussion in Waterloo, the discussion about the Waterloo Region Tech Sector foreshadows a projective city right at home. The growing mini hub of technological innovation, creates a place for industries and companies to share like minded ideas with one another to help propel them into the next job. By creating a space for like-minded individuals, the Waterloo Region is building up its innovative tech environment where these new requirements can be met.
Referencing Castells’ typology of network power, the type of power that would be the best approach to learning would be networked power. Resulting in social actors having the power over other social actors in the network. Such as in the projective city, where social actors work with one another to create greater connections. In doing so, they create forms and processes of networked power that are specific to each network. Thus, the individual connections made are specific to that current project, once the project is completed a new network is created where they are able to create networked power.
Overall, while considering David Mallon’s speech at Communitech one is able to make connections between his conversation and Boltanski and Chiapello’s the projective city. In doing so, it foreshadowed the future for technological hubs like the Waterloo Region.

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