Smart Cities, Smart Life

After smart phones, now come Smart Cities.

We are so used to have technology in our daily lives, either in form of comfort appliances or security measures. Internet is something so intrinsically connected to our professional and personal life that it is inevitable its use in research, monitoring and control of people - according to Mindflash.com, roughly 45% of employers now reportedly use social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to screen potential employees (and, of course, keep monitoring them); The Telegraph says that Britons spend an average of 15 hours a week online, and the average American spent 32 hours per month in 2010 (note that by average there’s no distinction of online activity by age group or gender).

Both the Shetland Islands Council and Corby Borough Council - among the smallest local authorities in the UK - have more CCTV cameras than the San Francisco Police Department. The borough of Wandsworth has the highest number of CCTV cameras in London, with just under four cameras per 1,000 people. Its total number of cameras - 1,113 - is more than the police departments of Boston [USA], Johannesburg and Dublin City Council combined.

Ok; the Big Brother is watching us, but what else?

Cities tend to reach for progress and the use of technology is inexorable in the pace for the future.

Vehicle-interlock systems that disable automobiles when sensors detect an inebriated driver have been around for some years now and, because people cheat the system (of course they do), a face recognition program is being developed by engineers of the University of Windsor with the use of biometrics.

In Paris, three years ago, 100 people volunteered under the Citypulse project to monitor ozone and noise levels of different areas in order to gather data to prevent and solve present and future problems, making the city a better place to live.

In U.S.A., a new bill (Senate Bill 1813, known as MAP-21) passed by the U.S. Senate in March calls for “mandatory event data recorders” to be installed in all new passenger motor vehicles sold in the U.S. from 2015 on, for recording data before, during, or after a crash.

Everything seems wonderful so far; what’s the matter?

As Amara Angelica eloquently explained on her article about these black boxes, “Maybe the black box in the future will eventually monitor everything happening in the car, with real-time feeds to Homeland Security?” That’s when I ask: where is the limit between security monitoring and privacy invasion? I remember the airport full-body X-ray scanners polemic – I still travel by plane and, every time, it is still uncomfortable.

I am a big fan of science fiction predictions of the future, and there are two that come to mind about that: one is Spielberg’s film Minority Report and the police division of Pre-Crime and the other is the book 1984 by George Orwell which coined the so common term Big Brother (which I have even used on this very article).

Am I going too far by making a link here?

Smart Cities will collect data of all kinds - cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipelines etc - and use it to connect and control every aspect of life with massive operating systems that will run these cities in their entirety; now, who’s gonna provide all this apparatus and withdraw its benefits? The market is estimated to be worth $16 billion by the end of the decade and big companies like IBM and Cisco are already on it. Yep; the future is going to be owned by monopolies – not breaking news in any society, either capitalist or socialist.

So, technology came to help us to live a better life, I agree; everyone wants some degree of comfort and to be at ease. The problem comes when you get too dependent on it, or when it controls you. How smart are You?