For last year’s installment of the long-running FutureEverything conference, the organizers invited Motherboard to come play in Manchester, England, a city that feels like both an urban and digital sandpit. From found art in Google Street View to tracking anti-social behavior in your vicinity, to the simple act of “checking-in,” FutureEverything – and its founder Drew Hemment – shows that technology can be as sinister as it is enabling. If the increasing presence of technologies in our everyday lives can lead to estrangement or control, they can also, as some of these technologists are demonstrating, create a whole new way of thinking about and remaking the city, from the smartphone up.Cities are already networks, just not very smart ones. As technologist Adam Greenfield pointed out to us, “If the entire city is going to be addressable, and scriptable and query-able, then we should be thinking about what kinds of networked cities we want to be living in.” Greenfield and many other urban digital thinkers will be trying to inspire that kind of thinking over the next few days in New York, at the first annual Festival of Ideas for the New City. Rem Koolhass, the grand poobah of architectural sci-fi, will be on hand to open an OMA installation about preservation; Jaron Lanier, the grand poo-pooer of gadget life, will deliver a keynote on Friday as part of a session featuring Greenfield, Natalie Jeremijenko and McKenzie Wark, entitled—what else—The Networked City.