ABSTRACT
This chapter follows the path of innovations in data management and artificial intelligence into the bureaucratic culture and development of Kansas City, Missouri. It documents the blurring of boundaries separating public goods from private interests through an orienting framework of “innovation speak.” Blurred distinctions between the two come from collaborations among officials, entrepreneurs, and tech companies seeking new ways to embed big data into urban decision-making. What is revealed is a development framework marketed as disruptive digital innovation, which actually rests comfortably on traditional forms of mathematical realism and a bureaucratic logic of unity. It is argued that the technical action that follows from digital innovation speak deepens bureaucratic techniques of disembedding decision-making from lived experience and leads to the distortion of the material effects of platform capitalism.
