Friday, January 29, 2016

The truth about smart cities: ‘In the end, they will destroy democracy'

A woman drives to the outskirts of the city and steps directly on to a train; her electric car then drives itself off to park and recharge. A man has a heart attack in the street; the emergency services send a drone equipped with a defibrillator to arrive crucial minutes before an ambulance can. A family of flying maintenance robots lives atop an apartment block – able to autonomously repair cracks or leaks and clear leaves from the gutters.

Such utopian, urban visions help drive the “smart city” rhetoric that has, for the past decade or so, been promulgated most energetically by big technology, engineering and consulting companies. The movement is predicated on ubiquitous wireless broadband and the embedding of computerised sensors into the urban fabric, so that bike racks and lamp posts, CCTV and traffic lights, as well as geeky home appliances such as internet fridges and remote-controlled heating systems, become part of the so-called “internet of things” (the global market for which is now estimated at $1.7tn). Better living through biochemistry gives way to a dream of better living through data. You can even take an MSc in Smart Cities at University College, London.

Yet there are dystopian critiques, too, of what this smart city vision might mean for the ordinary citizen. The phrase itself has sparked a rhetorical battle between techno-utopianists and postmodern flâneurs: should the city be an optimised panopticon, or a melting pot of cultures and ideas? Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Smart Nation: Singapore's vision to connect 'everyone to everything...
  2. Is India's 100 smart cities project a recipe for social apartheid?
  3. Facebook's future plans for data collection beyond all imagination...
  4. London's bins are tracking your smartphone...
  5. Welcome to 'the Internet of Things'
  6. Facebook will now track users' finances in addition to social contacts...

No comments:

Post a Comment