Datacity, the theme for Amber Conference 2010

For the first time in history the World’s urban population has outnumbered its rural counterpart. Cities have become the predominant habitat of humanity. The requirements of rapidly growing cities, coupled with the contemporary technological possibilities bring about new urban reality that is data. amberConference takes up the relationship between city and data as its theme: "New technologies play an ever-increasing role in the social life and administration of cities in various forms and functions. Branded as "smart cities", modern urban spaces are now equipped with cctv cameras, GPS and mapping systems, computerized infrastructure management systems along with the ever-multiplying number of personal electronics and gadgets all operating on global digital communication networks.

With objectives ranging entertainment and administrative strategy to pure profit and public security, this network of networks tracks and traces anything that is processed digitally and continually creates a massive circulation of digital data that emanates from the operation of very many animate and inanimate things in the city. The city and its data are now heavily implicated in each other from aesthetic, technological, political, economic and sociological angles."