On 29 April, the American sociologist and writer Nicole Aschoff took part in UIC Barcelona School of Architecture Foros 2020 lecture series with a videoconference entitled "Smartphones, Smart Cities, and the Digital Frontier". In this, Aschoff discussed how relationships, structures and ingrained ideas and activities using smartphones are at the centre of significant changes to capitalism, thus laying the foundations for a new paradigm of appropriation and exploitation. She explained "Smart phones have become a pervasive feature of modern life in the last decade.  However, our framework to assess the importance of these pocket computers often focuses on issues of addiction or self-presentation and ignoring the role smartphones play in the digital frontier.”

Nicole Aschoff is a sociologist, writer and editor. She is the author of the essays The Smartphone Society: Technology, Power and Resistance in the New Gilded Age and The New Prophets of Capital. Aschoff holds a PhD in Sociology from Johns Hopkins University and is currently the general editor of the Jacobin journal and editor-in-chief at the Boston Institute for Non-profit Journalism.

Foros is an annual series of lectures about architecture, this year is entitled Co-benefits. Foros 2020 seeks to reflect on the links and the cultural interaction between contemporary architecture and other art forms such as dance, sculpture, film, and comics.