[above image from iStock]
Sarah Grant
Ph.D. Student in Social and Cultural Analysis
Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Concordia University
On frigid winter days, thousands of New Yorkers make 311 calls about inadequate apartment heating. The New York City heat code requires landlords to keep a daytime indoor temperature of at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit from October through to the end of May, but enforcement can be elusive (Donovan, 2022). Many tenants, who often come from neighbourhoods with high proportions of individuals of colour, find themselves without adequate heat, whether it’s due to outdated heating systems or, at a more sinister level, landlord harassment and negligence. The outcomes can be far more severe than mild discomfort: One study found an association between a lack of heat and structural fire in New York City (Stanton et al., 2023). In January of 2022, nine children and eight adults perished in a Bronx fire that was started by the kind of space heaters that tenants use when they don’t have adequate heat.
Heat Seek was launched in 2014 to empower tenants and hold landlords accountable. For a decade, Heat Seek operated as a non-profit civic tech provider. It equipped New York City tenants with web-connected sensors to record temperatures whenever they dropped below the legally required threshold. This technology enabled tenants to take action against landlords by organizing with other tenants, presenting data as evidence in housing court, or sending certified letters. Operating as a registered 501 charity, Heat Seek’s developers described themselves as “civic hackers” on a mission to “make NYC more livable for all.”
However, Heat Seek dissolved as an organization in Spring 2024 due to a lack of government and philanthropic funding. This was not the end for the web-connected sensor, however. The technology was officially adopted by a city program that requires landlords with a pattern of negligence to install temperature sensors for monitoring by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), which typically brings all violations forward to the housing court.
Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), which asserts that both human and non-human actors shape the outcomes within a network, illuminates why the Heat-Seek system had the potential for institutionalization: The system is essentially a production process that quantifies thermoception (temperature sensation) and transmits it through a broader assemblage of humans and things.
How thermoception becomes a shared object
The web-connected Heat Seek sensors transform the personal experience of discomfort into an object for consumption by public authorities. It represents a neurobiological process called thermoception as a series of digits in a heat log, a detailed hourly account of temperature. The tidy rows of numbers substitute for a complex neurobiological process of temperature sensing that also overlaps with food consumption. Organisms sense temperature through specialized channels in cell membranes that are activated by high and low temperatures. The heat-detecting channel is associated with the same channel that makes chilli peppers taste hot, and the low-temperature channel is associated with the same channel that gives mint its coolness properties. Researchers propose that the sensation of moderate temperature involves a balance of neuron input (Thermoception, 2017).
In the biological sense, the Heat Seek sensor can be understood as an object that acts as a prosthesis for specific human nervous system functions. This might be too simplistic of a framing, however. Thermoception can also be understood as a “nexus of intersecting practices” involving influences on human experiences of affect that are not confined to the biological level (Lara, 2015). Studies have found that perceptions of outdoor temperature vary by culture. In addition to cultural factors, there are economic and technological influences. Comfort was a commercial product of the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning industry – their needs for plant design drove the science of comfort in the 20th century (Nicol and Roaf, 2017).
Historical, economic, and political forces have also shaped heat code standards in New York City. 68 degrees Fahrenheit was first established as the minimum temperature threshold in 1918. Indoor heating had become a political issue because more affluent high- and middle-class tenants were starting to live in centrally heated apartments, where they had no control over the temperature of their living spaces. In 1942, due to fuel rations from the war, the threshold was lowered to 65 degrees, with bodily comfort being pitted against the pressures of fuel conservation (Wright, 2023). This was justified by officials as the point where health was not jeopardized, but “some discomfort or suffering might be required” (Wright, 2023). The temperature was brought back up to 68 degrees in 1956 after the effects of the dangers of portable gas and kerosene heaters became apparent.
Thus, the number 68, which is the product of a political process, is a baseline comparison for a simplified simulation of a complex neurobiological and socially constructed sensory experience. This reductionist approach may be necessary for the sensor to join various actors in an assemblage. In this sense, the web-connected sensor could be best described, building on Hayles (Smart and Smart, 2017), as a type of distributed cognition among tenants, the HPD, and other key actors.
Organizing thermoception into a Western hierarchy of the senses
On its own, the sensor is merely an object that is not embedded in any social process. It needs to work with other non-human actors. Remote servers and data analysis/visualization software transform temperature readings into evidence, which, in turn, puts the information in the hands of powerful individuals. The temperature readings are presented as an hour-by-hour account of indoor vs. outdoor temperature, displaying a measure of each hour the temperature falls to illegal limits as set by the NYC Housing Code. Through this process, temperature signals are translated into a format that is acceptable for enforcement and judicial contexts.
The transformation of thermoception into a visual form is critical due to the primacy Western culture places on vision as both a sense (Howes, 2022) and a standard of proof. Vision, commonly used as a Western metaphor for knowledge, is also tied to the Latin word “videre,” which means to see, know, or observe. Videre is also the “root word for evidence” (Halpern, 2015). According to Deleuze’s interpretation of Foucault, “visibilities are sites of production,” and this is where agents are transformed “into objects of intervention for power” (Halpern, 2015). Building on Deleuze’s ideas, it becomes clear that the visual log of temperature readings transforms thermoception into a pattern where a judgment can be applied. In this way, the sensor program can be seen as organizing thermoception into a Western hierarchy of the senses that prioritizes vision to be presented as evidence.
The networked sensor: a matter of social justice?
The New York City heat sensor program and the Heat Seek initiative don’t fit neatly into scholarly tech justice framings. In their treatment of data justice, Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein (2020) assert that data for co-liberation is characterized by members of minoritized groups working in the community, with money and resources managed by members of minoritized groups, and data owned and governed by the community. Likewise, community control is a vital element of liberatory design, as emphasized by the design justice principles outlined by Costanza-Chock (2020). It is unclear whether the Heat Seek system fits these parameters. According to HeatSeek.org, the Heat Seek sensor was developed by William Jeffries after he tinkered with a sensor until it achieved a graphical output. This account suggests that only his personal senses shaped the sensor’s design and not that of a community. While Jeffries had personally had experiences with a lack of heat when he moved to the East Village, it is unclear whether he belongs to the marginalized groups that typically struggle with heating issues in New York City. Community control typically involves participatory design with community members through workshops, focus groups, and other co-creation processes. There is no mention on HeatSeek.org of whether the community’s perspectives were formally considered in the design of the technology. Given the cultural and social complexities of thermoception, many important elements were likely overlooked.
The community never technically owned Heat Seek, although the technology featured prominently in tenant organizing. Financial assistance was provided through an incubator for social entrepreneurs and nonprofits. On the other hand, Heat Seek was meant to challenge the power of landlords and hold them more accountable, and data justice projects are characterized by challenging power because they “acknowledge structural power differentials and work towards dismantling them” (D’Ignazio and Klein, 2020). According to a Heat Seek impact report, the most common outcomes from the Heat Seek initiative were tenant organizing, HP Action (an order for the landlord to make repairs), and supporting a rent strike.
When analyzing the city’s uptake of the sensor technology, two opposing narratives emerge. In the first, reading the situation through Foucault’s lens, the institutionalization of the Heat Seek system evokes images of Panopticon-like top-down surveillance. Applying this framework, the sensor represents the eyes of the HPD, placing negligent landlords under direct surveillance and bi-weekly inspections so that they can be disciplined if a pattern of neglect emerges. By focusing on evidence generation specifically, the application does not lead to deep systemic changes within the legal system. As D’Ignazio and Klein point out, racial minorities are required to provide a stronger burden of proof. Research shows that people in positions of power accept anecdotal evidence from other privileged people but demand more statistics from minority groups. This raises questions about whether Heat Seek reproduces this unequal expectation.
The second narrative is one of progress in achieving policy changes through design justice. Costanza-Chock highlights how disability justice activists have driven the adoption of accessibility requirements in public places, creating a new normative standard that benefits populations who tend to get overlooked (Costanza-Chock, 2020). However, all elements of Costanza-Chock’s design justice model focus on design as the locus of change. The example of Heat Seek offers design justice advocates a way to consider how non-tech design elements influence progress from a social justice perspective. Indeed, Heat Seek was embedded in the legal system from the get-go: Jeffries partnered with his mother, who had worked as a public defender, which opened Heat Seek up to a network in the justice system. Another element to consider when evaluating whether the city’s adoption of the system continues to uphold principles of social justice is that tenants are notified in advance, given instructions on accessing the data generated from the heat sensors, and informed of their right to refuse to have the sensors installed. In the institutionalized version of Heat Seek, tenants are still empowered actors in the network, although perhaps they are being pushed to the periphery.
As Heat Seek shows and ANT proposes, a network is ever-changing. Consider Latour’s observations: “We can already conclude that the social, as usually defined, is but a moment in the long history of assemblages, suspended between the search for the body politic and the exploration of the collective” (Latour, 2005: 247). Heat Seek’s transformation—from a hacker’s project in an apartment to a tenant advocacy tool to an official HPD tool—exemplifies this movement between the body politic and the collective.
Bibliography
Costanza-Chock, S. (2020). Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need. MIT Press.
D’Ignazio, C. and Klein, L. (2020). Data Feminism. MIT Press.
Donovan, L. (2022, March 7). For NYC Tenants with Inadequate Heat, Enforcement Can Be Elusive. City Limits. https://citylimits.org/2022/03/07/for-nyc-tenants-with-inadequate-heat-enforcement-can-be-elusive/
Halpern, O. (2015). Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason Since 1945. Duke University Press.
Farewell to Heat Seek: Reflecting on a Decade of Housing Justice Tech. (June 26, 2024). HeatSeek.org.https://heatseek.org/blog/2024/6/25/farewell-to-heat-seek-reflecting-on-a-decade-of-housing-justice-tech-1
Howes, D. (2022). The Sensory Studies Manifesto: Tracking the Sensorial Revolution in the Arts and Human Sciences. University of Toronto Press.
Lara, A. (2015). Affect, Heat and Tacos. A Speculative Account of Thermoception. The Senses and Society, vol. 10, no. 3, 2015, pp. 275–97.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford.
Nicol, J. and Roaf, S. (2017). Rethinking Thermal Comfort. Building Research and Information, vol. 45, no. 7, pp. 711–16.
Smart, A. and Smart, J. (2017). Posthumanism. University of Toronto Press.
Stanton, E. et al. (2023). Association of Structural Fires in New York City with Inequities in Safe Heating for Immigrant Communities. JAMA Network Open, vol. 6, no. 3.
Wright, R. (2023). 68 Degrees: New York City’s Residential Heat and Hot Water Code as an Invisible Energy Policy. Environmental History, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 711–37.
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