S05E20 of Connection Problem: Getting Smart Cities right

It’s been a bit of a crunch week here, with lots of writing and paperwork to sort out, projects ramping up, exciting opportunities opening up.

Oh, and heads-up: Next week I'll be traveling for a short vacation and won’t be sending a newsletter but rather engage in some serious disconnecting. Or, more eloquently:

"Wander here a whole summer, if you can. Thousands of God's wild blessings will search you and soak you as if you were a sponge, and the big days will go by uncounted.”

— John Muir

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Personal-ish stuff

Tomorrow, we’ll be hosting a ThingsCon Unconf in Berlin. Can’t wait.

Also, we haven’t been actively developing new products for Zephyr Berlin, but a recent trip to a local materials shop has triggered a bit of an itch to start some experiments with either Dyneema or merino — both lovely, interesting materials. So we’re toying with some ideas, and sourcing some samples. Not sure where it’ll lead, if anywhere, but that journey is one of the best parts of the project 🙌

Getting Smart Cities right

I’ve been digging into Smart Cities from a rights and responsible tech angle (policy, tech, data rights, etc etc.) for a while now. In fact, depending on how you look at it for something like 8 years, if you want to start with me co-chairing Cognitive Cities Conference in 2011. (The website is still up!?!)

So it’s lovely to see a lot of these threads come together in a number of projects I’m working on right now: Developing an analytical framework, better metrics, some policy recommendations. Looking at machine decision making in cities, and more generally, and how the landscape compares between Europe and North America.

Lots going on, lots to do: It’s an exciting time in this space that is oh so vendor-dominated when it really should be citizens-first.

I can’t yet share most of this, but I hope I can soon. The final results of all these projects will be public for sure, but I think many bits and pieces won’t have to wait until the final stages. Open processes ftw.

In the meantime, Sidewalk Labs is facing ever-more pressure in Toronto. The BBC titles, not so subtly, The Google city that has angered Toronto. A good starting point for thinking about the challenges of these data driven systems are collective data rights, as argued here by Martin Tisné.

Because it turns out that nobody wants a Smart City because it’s a Smart City. Citizens want all kinds of things — better service delivery, higher quality of life, economic opportunity, serendipity, and many others — but Smart Cities in their current, pretty old school model can only deliver against a small subset of these needs: namely, increased efficiency, and some sensing. That’s not enough. For an excellent rant on this very old school thinking about Smart Cities, I highly recommend the well informed, highly enjoyable episode 4 of Underfutures (Ghost Smart Cities) in which Scott Smith and Greg Lindsay discuss Smart Cities while sitting in Masdar City, yesterday’s future city if ever there was one.

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Amazon misses a historic chance, goes toxic instead

Amazon, in many ways, always struck me as one of the less opinionated tech companies. More than others, they kinda-sorta offered what people asked for - not like Google, who re-invented whole paradigms or Apple who tells people what they should like or Facebook who just imposes their own rules.

And yet, Amazon just resisted change in the oddest, (literally!) most toxic way possible: While the enlightened world is finally moving fast towards an understanding that we need radical change to prevent cataclysmic climate change, Amazon resists major steps towards a green future (or, more bluntly, any future). Amazon just had the perfect opportunity to go emissions free, siding with their own employees and the public, who both had campaigned for it; and also to ban selling facial recognition software to law enforcement.

Two chances to do the right thing and be a leader in the right direction — and they let both go to waste. What a shame. Full disclosure: I hold a small amount of Amazon shares; and this, right here, sucks. (Note to self: check if/how it’s possible to actually cast votes as a share holder.)

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Currently reading: How to Do Nothing in the Attention Economy (Jenny Odell), Exhalation (Ted Chiang)

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If you'd like to work with me in the upcoming months, I have very limited availability, so let's have a chat!

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See you in two weeks, right here in your inbox. 👋

Yours truly,
Peter

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Who writes here? Peter Bihr explores the impact of emerging technologies — like Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence. He is the founder of The Waving Cat, a boutique research, strategy & foresight firm. He co-founded ThingsCon, a non-profit that explores fair, responsible, and human-centric technologies for IoT and beyond. In 2018-19, Peter was a Mozilla Fellow. He tweets at @peterbihr. Interested in working together? Let’s have a chat.

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Pictures: My own.