The Right to the Screen
The right to the screen is the Henri Lefebvre — On AI volume's proposed extension of Lefebvre's framework to the production of digital space. Its argument: the most consequential spaces of the twenty-first century are no longer made of concrete and steel but of code, of interfaces, of the invisible architectures that organize the daily experience of billions. These spaces are currently produced by a small number of companies, located in a small number of cities, employing a small number of engineers. The inhabitants of these spaces have, at best, the right to use them or not use them. They have no right to participate in producing them. The analogy to urban displacement is structural: the Parisian worker displaced to the grands ensembles had the right to leave Paris, but the leaving was the choice to abandon economic life. The knowledge worker's relationship to the AI interface has the same structure — the right to refuse is the right to be displaced from the productive economy.
In the AI Story
The argument is developed most fully in Chapter 7 of Henri Lefebvre — On AI and draws on Mushkani et al.'s 2025 arXiv paper The Right to AI, which proposes a Lefebvrian framework for AI governance. The key analytical move is the distinction between governance (which operates at the level of conceived space, constraining what designers may build) and production (which requires inhabitants to have standing in design decisions themselves).
The right to the screen would require, at minimum: mechanisms through which the lived experience of inhabitants informs the redesign of interfaces; epistemic standing for forms of knowledge produced by inhabitation rather than technical expertise; institutional structures that support alternative design logics rather than leaving production entirely to competitive markets; and political recognition that digital infrastructure is infrastructure — not a consumer product — and subject to the same democratic claims that other civic infrastructure has historically required.
The argument faces sharp objections. Critics note that the analogy to the city is imperfect: cities are geographically bounded; the AI interface is global. Cities have local political institutions; the AI interface crosses jurisdictions. Cities have histories that give inhabitants legitimate claims; the AI interface has no comparable temporal depth. The volume acknowledges these disanalogies but argues that the structural question — who participates in producing the spaces that shape daily life — persists regardless of the differences in scale, geography, and history.
The proponents of the right to the screen do not claim it is currently exercised. They claim it is currently demanded by the structural consequences of its absence — burnout, task seepage, the colonization of pauses, and the erosion of the cognitive conditions that directing AI wisely requires. These consequences, on the Lefebvrian analysis, are not accidents of the current design but features of a spatial logic that excludes inhabitants from participation in producing the spaces they inhabit. Change the logic and the consequences change.
Origin
The term appears in Edo Segal's Henri Lefebvre — On AI foreword and is developed in Chapter 7. The underlying argument draws on Mushkani et al.'s 2025 proposal for a Right to AI, which itself extends Lefebvre's 1968 framework.
Key Ideas
Digital space is infrastructure. The AI interface organizes cognitive life at scale; it is not merely a consumer product.
Governance is not production. Regulation of designers differs from participation in design. The right to the screen demands the second.
The right to refuse is not enough. Opting out of AI is the choice to be displaced from the productive economy — a hollow right, like the nineteenth-century worker's right to leave Paris.
Lived experience has epistemic standing. The knowledge inhabitants produce by inhabiting digital spaces is real knowledge, and the feedback loop from inhabitation to design is what the right to the screen would institutionalize.
Debates & Critiques
Whether the analogy between city and screen holds is the central debate. Critics argue digital space lacks the geographic, historical, and political specificity that grounds the right to the city; defenders argue the structural question — participation in spatial production — transfers cleanly regardless of the differences in substrate.
Appears in the Orange Pill Cycle
Further reading
- Edo Segal, Henri Lefebvre — On AI, Chapter 7.
- Mushkani et al., 'The Right to AI,' arXiv:2501.17907 (2025).
- José Marichal, 'The Right to AI Potentiality,' New Political Science, 2025.