In 2008, the New Museum presented Nextcity: The Art of The Possible, a panel moderated and introduced by Everyware author Adam Greenfield, organized by Rhizome as part of the New Silent series. It featured presentations by Stamen Design, J. Meejin Yoon, and Christian Nold, artists whose works blur the boundaries between art, design and technological development.

The panel addressed how emergent digital technologies are rapidly changing both the face of our cities and our daily experience of them - whether invoked in the production of architectural form, the representation of urban space, or our interface to the locative and other services newly available there. In the modern world, dynamic maps update in real time; garments and spaces deform in response to environmental, biological and even psychological conditions; we find our very emotions made visible, public, and persistently retrievable. Somewhere along the way, we find our notions of public space, participation, and what it means to be urban undergoing the most profound sort of change.

The New Silent was a series of programs, presented by the New Museum and organized by its affiliate organization Rhizome, that explored contemporary art engaged with emerging technology and examined the ways digital technologies alter our lives and experiences of urban spaces. The series comprised screenings and performances, as well as a critical conversational strand, which brought together leading scholars, artists, critics, and public figures to illuminate the complex interactions between technology, culture, and creative practice. Named for the generational theories of Neil Howe and William Strauss, the New Silent presented artists working at the furthest reaches of technological experimentation as well as those responding to the broader aesthetic and political implications of new tools and media.