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Make Way for the ‘One-Minute City’ > Micro Hyper-Local at The Street Level

Social Engineering SMART CITIES: There is emerging evidence that smart cities are not the egalitarian utopias we want them to be.

Let's get to it before it's too late - there is a logical argument to be made over the ideology used. Smart city advocates - like city officials here in Mesa - talk about monitoring and data streams to promote that ideology - but we could definitely use another more familiar name "Surveillance".

HYPER-LOCAL: Here's an example from the next post on this blog of all that Happy-Talk:

WHERE THIS IS GOING > Key Priorities: Next 18 to 24 Months
City of Mesa Smart City Master Plan
10-Page Power Point Presentation
What is A Smart City?
In short, a Smart City is one in which the latest technologies and data-driven insights are leveraged to improve the quality of life, civic engagement, economic development, service delivery, and community vibrancy for its citizens, businesses and visitors.
A Smart City is actually about people versus tech itself.
A Smarter Mesa is where modernized communications infrastructure, Internet of Things (IoT) connected smart systems and data work together to provide responsive solutions that enhance the live, work & play experiences of people in our community.

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The danger lies with the quantity and quality of personal and private data that is being collected without consent or, in many cases, knowledge of the subjects by the public.

Collection Of Massive Amounts Of Public Data Is Now The Norm

INSERT: The digital techniques that smart-city fans adore are flimsy and flashy—and some are even actively pernicious—but they absolutely will be used in cities.
 They already have an urban heritage.
When you bury fiber-optic under the curbs around the town, then you get internet.
When you have towers and smartphones, then you get portable ubiquity.
When you break up a smartphone into its separate sensors, switches, and little radios, then you get the internet of things.
These tedious yet important digital transformations have been creeping into town for a couple of generations.

At this point, they’re pretty much all that urban populations can remember how to do.

_______________________________________________________________________________ >

 

              

 

Is there a dark side to smart cities based on surveillance and control?         

Information Age

"There may be a darker side to smart cities hidden behind the optimistic marketing that paints a colourful metropolis leveraging the ubiquity of IoT, geospatial data, automation and machine learning to provide better services and the more efficient allocation of resources. This, in turn, it’s repeated and repeated and repeated  leads to better places for citizens to live, work, and play.

 

After nearly 20 years of the War on Terror we are now blind-folded to the dangers of the all-seeing state. There is emerging evidence that smart cities are not the egalitarian utopias we want them to be. And it seems that the disconnect starts with the competing requirements of administration and citizenry.

“But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
George Orwell, 1984

One of the leading proponents of smart cities seems to be the leveraging of technologies for a form of social control, reminiscent of Black Mirrors Nose Dive (S3E1). The Chinese system of ‘Social Credit’ is designed to monitor every part of a citizen’s life, recording consumer, social, legal and financial behaviour.

> Few people outside the conspiracists believe the majority of smart city initiatives in democratic societies are guided by bad intentions. But the motives and pressures on city administrators inevitably change over time and freedoms are rarely recovered easily.

The danger lies with the quantity and quality of personal and private data that is being collected without consent or, in many cases, knowledge of the subjects.

1 In cities where our every movement is monitored and a variety of recognition technologies are used to identify us, smart city initiatives ask us to trade our privacy for largely undefined and ultimately mutable aims. The burghers of the West have been progressively trading privacy for the illusion of security.

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Benjamin Franklin

But smart cities are more invasive than the current CCTV and ANPR monitoring we accept as normal. And the dangers are equally nebulous and potentially less recognisable than those of the War on Terror.

 

2 ‘We become our own self monitors’

In our homes smart sensors report on when we wake, how long we wash and what we consume – the arrival of wearables heralds a new wave of health and emotional data. Our homes are sensors, our appliances are sensors, we are sensors. All this data will be available via the neural network of the smart city to be analysed by the algorithms of machine learning. As we become our own self monitors, the bias of technology adoption and capability towards the more prosperous, there is a real danger that it may lead to misrepresentative data that could exacerbate inequality rather than narrowing it.

3 The danger lies with the quantity and quality of personal and private data that is being collected without consent or, in many cases, knowledge of the subjects.

 

 

Pole-Mounted Surveillance. . ."we are not without unease about the implications of that surveillance for future cases..."

ONE DAY YOU MAY WAKE-UP > Take in this future-cast scenario ". . .One day, in a not-so-distant future, millions of Americans may well wake up in a smart-home-dotted nation. As they walk out their front doors, cameras installed on nearby doorbells, vehicles, and municipal traffic lights will sense and record their movements, documenting their departure times, catching glimpses of their phone screens, and taking note of the people that accompany them. . ."

 

WHAT WAS ONCE CONSIDERED IMPOSSIBLE IS NOW MUNDANE:

That is the reluctant conclusion of a recent case reviewed in Techdirt

 

WAKE-UP

 

 ". . .It backstops this reluctant conclusion by saying the courts and the nation's lawmakers will need to do more to protect citizens from increasing surveillance as technology continues to advance and high-powered surveillance tools not only become ubiquitous, but deployed by citizens themselves for their own use. . .

 

These future Americans will traverse their communities under the perpetual gaze of cameras. Camera-studded streets, highways, and transit networks will generate precise information about each vehicle and its passengers, for example, recording peoples’ everyday routes and deviations therefrom. Upon arrival at their workplaces, schools, and appointments, cameras on buildings will observe their attire and belongings while body cameras donned on the vests of police and security officers will record snippets of face-to-face or phone conversations. That same network of cameras will continue to capture Americans from many angles as they run errands and rendezvous to various social gatherings. By the end of the day, millions of unblinking eyes will have discerned Americans’ occupations and daily routines, the people and groups with whom they associate, the businesses they frequent, their recreational activities, and much more. . ."

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This might be the most alarming:

Collection Of Massive Amounts Of Public Data Is Now The Norm

Date: November 13, 2018

This story was originally published by Strategic Partnerships, Inc

Many still think of Smart Cities as a futuristic possibility but, in most metropolitan areas, the rush to initiate smart city technology is happening in real time. While citizens may not be ready for this, technology and the internet of things (IoT) appear to be inevitable.
There is concern, however, because without transparency and proper data management, the expansion of IoT technology leaves both city and citizen data vulnerable.

As ransomware attacks and technological outages over the past year have demonstrated, many local governments lack policies, procedures and secure oversite to handle the large amount of public data that is being gathered.

Concerns about hacking and a surveillance state are nothing new, but mitigating risks and calming public concerns about data privacy should be at the forefront of smart city conversations. If IoT integration is inevitable, and it likely is, local governments must establish policies and procedures that ensure data protection and network security.

The digital techniques that smart-city fans adore are flimsy and flashy—and some are even actively pernicious—but they absolutely will be used in cities.
 They already have an urban heritage.
When you bury fiber-optic under the curbs around the town, then you get internet.
When you have towers and smartphones, then you get portable ubiquity.
When you break up a smartphone into its separate sensors, switches, and little radios, then you get the internet of things.
These tedious yet important digital transformations have been creeping into town for a couple of generations. At this point, they’re pretty much all that urban populations can remember how to do.

 

INSERT: QUESTION: When - if ever before - was
Mesa A Smart City?
TIME TO RE-BRAND THAT! Hire a consultant 
In 2018, the City of Mesa engaged ThinkBig Partners, LLC to assist in the development of a Smart City Master Plan. Most importantly, this effort included engaging our citizens, businesses and the public as we identified the key strategies & priorities for building a smarter Mesa!

https://www.mesaaz.gov/about-us/smart-city-draft-2

 

Here are the meeting details taken from http://mesa.legistar.com/LegislationDetail  

WHERE THIS IS GOING > Key Priorities: Next 18 to 24 Months
City of Mesa Smart City Master Plan
10-Page Power Point Presentation
What is A Smart City?
In short, a Smart City is one in which the latest technologies and data-driven insights are leveraged to improve the quality of life, civic engagement, economic development, service delivery, and community vibrancy for its citizens, businesses and visitors.
A Smart City is actually about people versus tech itself.
A Smarter Mesa is where modernized communications infrastructure, Internet of Things (IoT) connected smart systems and data work together to provide responsive solutions that enhance the live, work & play experiences of people in our community.

 

 

 

Smart City Mesa? When Are Sensors Collecting Your Data - Huh?

Like the opening line in a video from a CNBC video uploaded to YouTube in February 2017 - 20 months ago -  that is included in this announcement from Mesa Now, "Chances are that some  cities may be getting smarter by the year. Chances are just as likely that some cities are not. 
This workshop is all about the city TRACKING EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME collecting data - your data that you own.

. . . You probably don't know it - this workshop will tell you what's been done already that you probably don't know.
It's true that Mesa mayor is sometimes way-out-there in his own mind with sugar-plum coated visions beyond reality of things and "Big League Dreams" to become a world-class city 
But comparing this conservative most-suburbanized city in America - with only a population of 480,000 - where we live with three of the world's greatest cities   Singapore, Dubai and Barcelona - is just not playing in the right ball park in the city's Field of Dreams.

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HHH

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01 APRIL 2021 > A SMART CITY STRATEGIC PLAN

PRESS RELEASE from Mesa's Digital Newsroom: "A Smart City Strategic Plan" for Downtown: Kiosks for Citiizen Engagement

Another thrilling story from Mesa Now was posted yesterday on April Fool's Day to publicize one more momentous milestone along the path of "The Salvation Train" east of The Gilbert Road Valley Metro Lightrail Transit Center:

Mesa installing downtown kiosks as key part of dynamic citizen engagement platform 

April 1, 2021 at 3:09 pm
As part of the City of Mesa’s Smart City strategic plan, the City has partnered with Smart City Media to install ten dual screen smart digital kiosks throughout downtown Mesa and along the light rail corridor east to Gilbert Road. The digital kiosks will each offer two 55-inch touch screen displays with "way finding" functionality for people to locate specific businesses or receive Mesa focused content such as event promotions and safety alerts.
"The new kiosks amplify our efforts to engage residents and visitors in innovative ways, while supporting our business community and highlighting the great amenities in Mesa's downtown," Mayor John Giles said. "The resources provided through the kiosks will connect our residents, businesses, visitors and stakeholders in one common thread."
Each kiosk offers multi-language support.

The kiosks are connected to the City of Mesa's Wi-Fi network and there is a companion mobile application for both IOS and Android. . ."

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