[00:01.640 --> 00:03.780]  So, thank you very much.
[00:04.220 --> 00:05.580]  My name is Benjamin Dean.
[00:05.800 --> 00:08.600]  I'm a fellow for cybersecurity at Columbia University.
[00:08.980 --> 00:12.220]  I'm also the president of my own company, Iconoclast Tech.
[00:12.400 --> 00:16.820]  I advise companies on impending waves of technological change and their consequences.
[00:17.460 --> 00:23.040]  Welcome to our panel this evening on smart cities and blockchains, new techno-utopian dreams or nightmares.
[00:23.420 --> 00:29.160]  To start with, I'll ask Burcu and James to introduce themselves, and then I'll give you some background on the subject.
[00:31.020 --> 00:32.780]  Hi, I'm Burcu Baykurt.
[00:32.940 --> 00:39.380]  I'm a doctoral student in communications at Columbia University, and my research is on smart city experiments in the United States.
[00:40.260 --> 00:43.040]  Hi, my name is... you can hear me, right?
[00:43.260 --> 00:43.720]  No!
[00:46.320 --> 00:49.280]  In the meantime, hi, my name is James.
[00:50.480 --> 01:09.960]  I am an adjunct professor at NYU's ITP, and I have worked in the early stage startup space for my entire adult life, and I very occasionally get to write about interesting trends going on in that general ecosystem.
[01:12.640 --> 01:14.700]  And, yeah, I guess that's about it.
[01:14.900 --> 01:15.340]  That's me.
[01:15.600 --> 01:15.740]  Hey.
[01:17.400 --> 01:20.880]  So, to start with, this panel is not a Luddite panel.
[01:21.380 --> 01:24.720]  We are not just dismissing new technology out of hand.
[01:24.720 --> 01:36.980]  It's just that, with each bout of hype around new technology, we tend to forget the misuses and missteps of the past when we've tried to recreate societies using new technology.
[01:37.760 --> 01:48.220]  My hope is, through this discussion, we can be a bit more deliberate in who we develop technology for and cognizant of the ways in which technology will almost certainly be misused.
[01:49.480 --> 01:53.120]  The word utopia comes from Thomas More's book of 1516.
[01:53.520 --> 01:56.600]  We've come to define utopias in one of two ways.
[01:57.220 --> 02:01.620]  An ideally perfect place, especially in social, political, and moral aspects.
[02:01.920 --> 02:05.500]  Or an impractical, idealistic scheme for social and political reform.
[02:05.500 --> 02:17.640]  These dual definitions belie the issues with utopian visions, once they seem close and within hand, and at the same time, wildly idealistic.
[02:18.200 --> 02:25.220]  Throughout history, technologies have played a key and recurring role in inspiring and enabling utopian attempts.
[02:26.520 --> 02:39.460]  My hope is, in the next ten minutes, by examining some of the history around techno-utopianism, that we might find some lessons about the probability of success of future technologies, like smart cities and blockchains.
[02:39.780 --> 02:42.140]  We might avoid some of the missteps of the past.
[02:43.060 --> 02:47.060]  So, to start with, I'm going to take you back in time to the 1930s.
[02:48.520 --> 02:56.540]  Henry Ford, the famous industrialist of the Ford Company, had a problem with his automobiles.
[02:56.620 --> 02:57.960]  It was that he needed more rubber.
[02:58.600 --> 03:02.940]  So, his solution to the problem lay in the jungles of Brazil.
[03:03.940 --> 03:18.900]  Henry Ford decided that he would go to Brazil and build what he called Fordlandia, a factory to produce rubber, the largest in the world, that would be based on... it would use the Taylor's assembly line technology of that time.
[03:19.580 --> 03:28.720]  And he would export what he called the healthy lifestyle, which was essentially American culture, hamburgers and working from nine to five.
[03:30.800 --> 03:40.920]  The problem was that Ford didn't actually sit down and look at where he was building his factory and exporting his technology and his healthy lifestyle.
[03:41.520 --> 03:47.140]  He didn't hire any agronomists or botanists for the rubber plants that he planted.
[03:47.140 --> 03:49.740]  And so they all ended up blighted and dying.
[03:51.480 --> 03:57.060]  The workers revolted because they weren't used to working nine to five in the Amazonian sun.
[03:57.800 --> 04:01.160]  And eventually, literally, the city revolted.
[04:02.240 --> 04:08.040]  Not one to be deterred, Ford decided to try again, just down the river, with predictable outcomes.
[04:09.220 --> 04:18.400]  The lesson there is that when you abstract people away from the environments in which you introduce technology, you're almost certain to spell disaster.
[04:19.100 --> 04:22.880]  A few decades after that, this fellow comes along.
[04:23.060 --> 04:24.120]  This is Walt Disney.
[04:24.540 --> 04:27.740]  And towards the end of his life, he had one big final dream.
[04:28.140 --> 04:35.140]  He wanted to build a futuristic city and planned community, which would revolve around the testing of new technology.
[04:35.740 --> 04:44.600]  He originally called it Progress City, but you might know it as the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or Epcot.
[04:46.420 --> 04:52.780]  Ford bought some land in Florida, and there he decided to build an ever-evolving showcase of modern technology.
[04:52.780 --> 04:57.920]  It was to be a city without... where the government was, corporate government.
[04:59.100 --> 05:02.100]  People were left to the whims of the Disney Company.
[05:04.240 --> 05:07.400]  Disney died before the vision could be realized.
[05:08.160 --> 05:11.500]  And so it was never actually established as a city.
[05:11.820 --> 05:17.100]  In fact, nobody wanted to really move there anyway, given the restrictions on their lives.
[05:17.620 --> 05:20.100]  There was no land ownership and no voting.
[05:20.100 --> 05:22.940]  Again, the Disney Company decided what you would do.
[05:23.980 --> 05:26.980]  It later evolved into Disneyland in Florida.
[05:28.080 --> 05:31.200]  You might call it a utopia in one sense, and here's the lesson.
[05:31.580 --> 05:36.320]  Maybe for one day, it's lovely to run around the controlled environment and commercial environment of Disneyland.
[05:36.620 --> 05:45.660]  But to think that you would want to live there for your entire life, the whims of the Disney Company, does not sound like a successful plan for techno-utopianism.
[05:46.680 --> 05:58.600]  At about the same time, the modernist architects had discovered prefabricated buildings, reinforced concrete, and decided to rebuild entire cities for the automobile.
[05:59.640 --> 06:04.600]  Le Corbusier had one project he called La Ville Contemporaine.
[06:05.280 --> 06:06.960]  It was never realized.
[06:08.000 --> 06:10.620]  But the ideas were borrowed.
[06:11.140 --> 06:18.640]  You see this picture here, 60-story buildings, each separated with their own contained offices and shopping below.
[06:19.840 --> 06:24.920]  In the end, it was picked up and used as a model for Brasilia, the capital of Brazil.
[06:25.240 --> 06:29.920]  For some reason, Brazil ends up being the playground of techno-utopian dreams.
[06:31.140 --> 06:32.640]  The poor Brazilians.
[06:33.480 --> 06:50.200]  And predictably, well, perhaps not so predictably at the start, given the wild dreams that Le Corbusier and the modernists had, Brasilia has been criticized for decades about ignoring residents' habits and desires and for its lack of public spaces for open encounters.
[06:50.540 --> 06:54.480]  Le Corbusier did not like any chance encounters.
[06:54.660 --> 06:57.440]  He wanted everything ordered on a Cartesian grid.
[06:57.440 --> 06:59.320]  So what's the lesson here?
[06:59.980 --> 07:07.580]  Top-down implementation of rigid optimization is not necessarily what makes for a utopian society.
[07:07.900 --> 07:11.540]  It's almost certainly going to be a recipe for disaster.
[07:12.100 --> 07:21.640]  More recently, Peter Thiel of PayPal fame, sponsored for a number of years, financed what was called seasteading.
[07:21.640 --> 07:29.640]  The idea was that you could fund autonomous, self-governed cities built on platforms in the ocean, outside the reach of national and state governments.
[07:31.800 --> 07:34.880]  These were meant to be places to experiment with new technology.
[07:35.120 --> 07:36.780]  No regulations, no laws.
[07:37.120 --> 07:40.940]  The only laws created by the people that live in the seasteading platforms.
[07:41.180 --> 07:45.160]  There'd be no welfare, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons.
[07:45.160 --> 07:51.960]  The seasteading institute says it'll give people the freedom to choose the government they want, instead of being stuck with the government they get.
[07:52.440 --> 07:55.800]  That sounds an awful lot like the United States already.
[07:56.380 --> 08:02.340]  And with no welfare, I guess there is a minimum wage, but it doesn't move, and few restrictions on weapons.
[08:02.340 --> 08:08.400]  I'm not exactly sure what Peter was angling at here, but his vision was never realized.
[08:08.400 --> 08:15.460]  I guess he's been sidelined with trying, I guess, the monumental task of putting the end to Gorka.
[08:16.140 --> 08:27.540]  And I guess once he finishes his endorsements, the Republican National Convention to make America great again, he might get back to the seasteading and make seasteading great again.
[08:29.860 --> 08:34.900]  The final example I'll give is one closer to home here, and it's John Perry Barlow.
[08:35.800 --> 08:39.560]  In the 90s, I liked John Perry Barlow.
[08:40.200 --> 08:47.360]  And his declaration of the independence of cyberspace was really part of this Internet utopian movement of the 90s.
[08:48.240 --> 08:49.680]  I'll quote some words.
[08:49.860 --> 08:55.360]  Governments in the industrial world, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from cyberspace, the new home of mind.
[08:55.840 --> 08:59.040]  On behalf of the future, I ask the past to leave us alone.
[08:59.180 --> 09:00.220]  You are not welcome among us.
[09:00.280 --> 09:02.400]  You have no sovereignty where we gather.
[09:03.040 --> 09:05.120]  Now, of course, for a little while, that was true.
[09:05.540 --> 09:18.040]  But for anybody that was sitting in the panel just before on the crypto wars, you know that very quickly, governments did reestablish their sovereignty in cyberspace and continue to do so until today.
[09:19.420 --> 09:32.460]  The lesson here is that existing power relations, while technologies might have the promise to change them, in many cases, the technologies end up being co-opted by those powerful institutions that previously existed.
[09:32.840 --> 09:34.980]  The technologies make them more powerful.
[09:34.980 --> 09:37.520]  They don't undermine the power in the long run.
[09:39.060 --> 09:42.160]  And so, we turn to the smart cities.
[09:42.460 --> 09:59.940]  Just at the moment that Edward Snowden points out to us how the Internet, instead of being a tool for freedom and liberation, can be used for surveillance and control, the smart city utopians come along and start laying down blueprints for the cities of the future.
[10:00.660 --> 10:05.200]  At this point, I'm going to turn to Burcu, because this is your area of expertise.
[10:05.460 --> 10:07.860]  And I wonder, what exactly is a smart city?
[10:08.800 --> 10:10.540]  Well, thank you.
[10:10.920 --> 10:24.880]  So, the question is really interesting, because I always ask that question when I do research, you know, in the field, working with people who either have a vision for the smart city or try to build tools for the smart city.
[10:25.000 --> 10:27.960]  And I never get a straightforward answer.
[10:27.960 --> 10:36.400]  It's certainly a fuzzy concept with, like, neither a single definition or, like, a one-size-fits-all type of framing.
[10:36.740 --> 10:42.880]  But in general terms, we might see it as a continuation of all the examples that you've just given.
[10:42.880 --> 10:56.820]  How can we leverage technology to solve urban problems and create this sort of utopian land where the quality of life, which is, again, a very kind of vague concept, is better.
[10:57.160 --> 10:59.740]  And we govern ourselves freely.
[11:00.080 --> 11:04.460]  And in some cases, way more democratic than whatever we have now.
[11:05.140 --> 11:26.180]  But when you go to the field and look at the smart city experiments that are being conducted now, it's either on the extreme of creating these controlled environments that is really mostly centralized, high on the surveillance side of things, mostly built from the ground up,
[11:26.300 --> 11:32.280]  such as the city called Songdo in Korea or Mazdar City in Abu Dhabi.
[11:32.640 --> 11:40.180]  There's, like, one company behind it and the local government, and they pretty much decide on how the city should operate.
[11:40.180 --> 11:44.420]  So not that far from the examples that you've just given, like, one vision.
[11:45.600 --> 11:49.960]  On the other side, it's not that utopian, actually.
[11:49.960 --> 11:53.020]  So my research is based in Kansas City.
[11:53.400 --> 12:03.620]  And for those of you who are familiar with Google Fiber, Google's broadband project, Kansas City was the first experimental city that was selected by Google.
[12:04.900 --> 12:08.660]  And it wasn't imagined as a smart city in the first place.
[12:08.660 --> 12:30.940]  But once the fiber optic cables were laid and the city sort of kind of realized that this was becoming a thing, like, cities were becoming the center of tech innovation or kind of the next frontier for the Silicon Valley folks, they looped Cisco in and they've... they're now instituting,
[12:31.020 --> 12:38.460]  it hasn't been fully implemented yet, but the most expansive smart city project in the United States.
[12:38.980 --> 12:42.320]  What that means is still very vague.
[12:43.360 --> 13:06.000]  But it seems like the idea is to kind of have this model of data, data-driven urbanism, which is, again, like, one might read it as either this, like, corporate vision or the Le Corbusier's, like, urban planning vision where everything is, like, you track down every movement,
[13:06.360 --> 13:18.060]  street lights, you know, you put sensors everywhere, smart traffic, and then the city becomes much more efficient, hence a better place to live.
[13:19.560 --> 13:36.760]  My interest is to see, A, how those imaginaries are kind of raised by the collective of the city, not just companies or even the local government officials, but the city residents.
[13:37.360 --> 13:39.840]  And I have a lot to say about that in a minute.
[13:39.840 --> 14:00.220]  But also how they are implemented, and how that is actually affecting cities that are already places where we see the most inequality, where we're not necessarily actually on the same page with the governments in terms of privacy, like, not even without thinking about these new technologies,
[14:00.260 --> 14:02.880]  like, the existing, within the existing frame.
[14:03.540 --> 14:04.860]  So these are my interests.
[14:05.060 --> 14:11.780]  So one thing that I want to say, though, and I'm actually really curious to hear your reaction to this.
[14:12.100 --> 14:32.300]  So when I do this research and talk to entrepreneurs or hackers who are working in this field of smart cities or urban tech, or sometimes civic tech, but I think the terms that I'm working with are mostly smart cities and urban technologies, I don't see the same techno-utopianism that Ben has just described,
[14:32.480 --> 14:35.300]  not even actually Barlow's vision necessarily.
[14:35.860 --> 14:48.020]  I see more mundane, more practical processes where, you know, we're just going to put sensors around and see how it goes, rather than this is the city we want to live in.
[14:48.600 --> 14:52.860]  Both at the conversation level, but also at the implementation level.
[14:52.860 --> 14:57.800]  And also, I think, to me most importantly, at the idea generation level.
[14:57.960 --> 15:12.120]  To the extent that, you know, most entrepreneurs or hackers I interview or sort of moonlight on a day-to-day basis, don't even think about the problems, you know?
[15:12.280 --> 15:15.620]  Like, they don't, like, when I ask them, so what kind of problems do you want to solve?
[15:15.620 --> 15:22.760]  I get, like, you know, a big list of potential problems that they could solve one day.
[15:23.040 --> 15:31.480]  But, like, I'm like, what is the immediate concern that you have about this particular city, which actually has very concrete problems?
[15:32.540 --> 15:36.200]  Instead, over and over again, I see the real concern...
[15:36.200 --> 15:42.920]  I mean, not the concern, but the real goal being unlocking new flows of information.
[15:42.920 --> 15:54.100]  So, if we put sensors around, and if we generate more and more data, like, which is the immediate goal, we're going to find out about new problems that we didn't even know existed.
[15:54.620 --> 16:02.400]  Which is something that I'm still trying to figure out, like, what that means, instead of looking at the immediate problems.
[16:02.920 --> 16:06.860]  Like, looking at the city as a data generator of some sorts.
[16:06.860 --> 16:29.460]  But I think the most immediate concern I have, other than understanding what that means, is, like, then if all the kiosks and sensors and, like, all these tools that we use for data tracking become the new normal, we just stop paying attention to it.
[16:29.460 --> 16:43.020]  And the way, you know, I don't have to tell this crowd about this, but the way, like, software works for these folks is, like, it's, like, constant fixing, constant feedback, constant reaction to it.
[16:43.780 --> 16:48.780]  But without actually having the big conversations that needed to be there in the first place.
[16:48.880 --> 16:52.460]  So, one example I really like is LinkNYC.
[16:54.780 --> 17:07.340]  So, Ben, you know, might talk a little bit more about it, but if you don't know already, like, this is part of a consortium that Sidewalk Labs and this company called Intersection has.
[17:07.920 --> 17:16.280]  New York City is not necessarily a bona fide, we want to be a smart city type city, but they're very interested in this field of urban tech.
[17:16.440 --> 17:19.900]  So, they've, like, put in place these kiosks.
[17:20.440 --> 17:25.180]  And kiosks are, for some reason, are very big in the urban tech, smart city field.
[17:26.360 --> 17:37.360]  To, like, turning these, like, pay phones into portals of data, which is a very expensive definition of what they do.
[17:37.940 --> 17:46.360]  But one thing they constantly do is to collect information about us without actually telling us what is going on behind.
[17:46.540 --> 17:48.380]  So, do you want to say a few words about it?
[17:48.380 --> 17:51.960]  Well, there's something I'll pick up on more detail Sunday at 11.
[17:52.420 --> 17:56.120]  We're going to have a dedicated session to LinkNYC.
[17:56.660 --> 18:01.660]  What I will say, though, is that I haven't yet heard the G word.
[18:02.320 --> 18:06.700]  So, in Kansas City, and you mentioned Intersection and Sidewalk... Intersect...
[18:06.700 --> 18:07.740]  Yeah, Intersection.
[18:07.960 --> 18:09.200]  Yeah, Intersection and Sidewalk Labs.
[18:10.460 --> 18:14.800]  The question I'm going to ask is, who decides what a smart city looks like?
[18:15.000 --> 18:17.440]  And that's going to bring up the G word.
[18:17.780 --> 18:18.460]  G word.
[18:18.700 --> 18:18.900]  Yeah.
[18:19.320 --> 18:26.020]  So, the G word is Google, I guess, in this specific context.
[18:27.440 --> 18:38.500]  So, the example of Google is really interesting, especially in terms of what Ben said about Fortlandia, like not looking at where you build your tech.
[18:38.500 --> 18:51.440]  So, Google fiber emerged as this like next generation broadband, super fast Internet that's like 100 times faster than whatever, you know, the average American has now.
[18:52.060 --> 19:05.820]  And Kansas City was this perfect place for it because the public utilities are kind of centralized and it was easier for Google to both arrange things with the local government, but also implemented on the ground.
[19:06.400 --> 19:13.940]  But they created this model of not if you build it, they will come, but if they want it, we will build.
[19:15.120 --> 19:37.580]  So, the plan was to say, hey, neighborhoods, if you're interested in getting Google fiber, just chip in $10 and show us that you're interested, which will, you know, signal to us that it is worth coming to your neighborhood and we will come and lay down the fiber optic cables.
[19:38.460 --> 19:54.560]  What obviously happened was the middle income, upper middle income neighborhoods who are already paying a ton of money to get Internet access were like, oh, yeah, sure, like same price, faster Internet, just $10, like there you go.
[19:54.560 --> 20:05.400]  So, lower income neighborhoods, which are kind of the urban core of the city, found that amount quite outrageous and they didn't have Internet in the first place.
[20:05.680 --> 20:23.480]  So, during the built up phase, Google had this website where like if your neighborhood has enough interest, it was turning into, if I'm not mistaken, green and the other parts were yellow or red.
[20:24.680 --> 20:43.640]  And, you know, one like sort of already rich, already better off part of the cities was green as the interest phase was going on and the poorer, not to mention mostly people of color, other living communities were staying yellow.
[20:44.680 --> 20:53.640]  To the extent that like the map pretty much looked like once upon a time red lined map of Kansas City.
[20:54.020 --> 21:00.040]  And Google was rightly accused of at the time digital red lining.
[21:00.580 --> 21:13.220]  That doesn't necessarily mean, and I'm going to kind of leave at this point that like Google was trying to deliberately discriminate against a certain part of the city.
[21:13.440 --> 21:28.060]  I don't think that was necessarily the case, but they really had no idea how to kind of adapt their business model or whatever implementation model that they had in mind to the realities of the city.
[21:28.060 --> 21:37.780]  Which is, you know, again and again what we see when we try to solve problems of a living and breathing city with technology.
[21:38.280 --> 21:45.100]  So, I'm going to leave it there and maybe we can discuss more about like how we can prevent those familiar mistakes.
[21:45.440 --> 21:45.700]  Yeah.
[21:45.980 --> 21:49.440]  I have an idea, but I'd open up to James if you have a question or comment.
[21:50.160 --> 21:51.100]  Yeah, sure.
[21:52.200 --> 21:57.000]  I find the smart cities movement perplexing for sure.
[21:59.680 --> 22:10.580]  At the very least, it seems like it would be nice if whatever I think of the trade-offs and whether they're worth it, if there were a lot of openness to the data.
[22:11.680 --> 22:18.940]  So, there is Google, who is involved with smart cities initiatives in places like Kansas City or New York.
[22:18.940 --> 22:23.240]  And then there are a variety, as you mentioned, of other companies that are involved in this.
[22:24.160 --> 22:34.440]  Both in the United States and internationally, what kind of track record are we seeing so far in terms of how open the data is to the taxpayers who are paying for it?
[22:34.920 --> 22:36.980]  Well, and not in the case of LinkNYC.
[22:37.280 --> 22:37.980]  Not at all.
[22:38.060 --> 22:41.860]  And I mean the corporate model almost precludes them doing that, which is...
[22:41.860 --> 22:42.400]  Yeah.
[22:42.600 --> 22:43.320]  So, yes and no.
[22:43.720 --> 22:52.400]  So, definitely not in the case of LinkNYC, although that's being discussed, negated, negotiated, whatever.
[22:52.780 --> 22:55.420]  Is the city access to the data or the public access to the data?
[22:55.580 --> 22:57.980]  The city definitely has access to the data.
[22:58.280 --> 22:59.620]  Police definitely can demand access.
[23:00.440 --> 23:09.120]  The data that's being collected from LinkNYC, like when you plug your phone in there to get connected to the Internet or make a phone call, that data.
[23:09.260 --> 23:12.600]  They'll collect your IP address, MAC address, click stream.
[23:12.600 --> 23:13.000]  Yeah.
[23:13.460 --> 23:13.840]  So, the data...
[23:13.840 --> 23:14.960]  When you do it, how long?
[23:15.160 --> 23:15.400]  Yeah.
[23:15.620 --> 23:34.580]  So, the data that I am talking about, like, you know, what happens when there are camera sensors on your streetlights that track movement or, I don't know, other types of sensors in like parking lots because they, you know, they want to have efficient traffic management in cities,
[23:34.980 --> 23:38.280]  that kind of data at least...
[23:38.280 --> 23:43.040]  Well, first of all, there's no framework to regulate that right now.
[23:43.180 --> 23:44.400]  That's an open question.
[23:44.580 --> 23:53.640]  And I don't think there's enough interest from the, at least for now, like from the privacy community that we're having these discussions at that large scale.
[23:53.640 --> 24:05.380]  In Kansas City specifically, the algorithmically managed data is owned by Cisco, as it happens internationally too.
[24:05.640 --> 24:12.780]  And then the city has raw data, which they will share with the public.
[24:13.320 --> 24:15.840]  So, that's for Kansas City.
[24:16.040 --> 24:21.500]  And there are not many other cities where we can actually look for examples, but that's the current situation.
[24:21.500 --> 24:24.440]  Quickly, what is algorithmically managed data mean here?
[24:25.900 --> 24:34.480]  If, I mean, I don't, I mean, whatever dashboard Cisco created, which is their corporate, you know, recipe.
[24:34.480 --> 24:35.300]  It's a term of art.
[24:35.560 --> 24:35.760]  Yeah.
[24:35.900 --> 24:36.380]  Okay.
[24:36.620 --> 24:36.800]  Yeah.
[24:37.140 --> 24:44.500]  To analyze and like, like, you know, develop new products to probably sell to other cities in the future.
[24:45.040 --> 24:45.520]  Right.
[24:45.520 --> 24:47.240]  You know, that's pretty much their business model.
[24:47.480 --> 24:49.660]  Like that part is obviously not open.
[24:50.040 --> 24:50.120]  Yeah.
[24:50.120 --> 24:52.960]  Is it user behavior models you're speaking of?
[24:53.320 --> 24:53.640]  Yes.
[24:54.600 --> 24:55.100]  Mostly, yeah.
[24:55.140 --> 24:55.220]  Yeah.
[24:55.700 --> 24:56.320]  Or citizen.
[24:57.400 --> 24:58.040]  It's outtastic.
[24:58.440 --> 24:58.520]  Yeah.
[24:59.140 --> 25:03.640]  So, I mean, to come back to your previous question about, so, you know, where do you go from here?
[25:03.680 --> 25:04.220]  What solutions?
[25:04.500 --> 25:17.080]  It struck me in your description of how the projects are managed, that, you know, people who are working, the developers who are working on it, you know, are saying, well, let's see what problems come out of the data, and if we don't find any, let's collect more data,
[25:17.080 --> 25:18.380]  stuff, and then we'll find the problems.
[25:18.580 --> 25:26.680]  It strikes me that if they wanted to find the problems that people have in cities, why don't they just ask people what their problems are?
[25:27.060 --> 25:28.860]  I have the same question.
[25:29.080 --> 25:33.640]  I mean, I, like, honestly, if anyone has any ideas, I'm more, I'm all ears.
[25:34.180 --> 25:34.640]  Fiber.
[25:35.060 --> 25:35.260]  Yeah.
[25:36.080 --> 25:36.980]  Well, I mean...
[25:36.980 --> 25:38.140]  It solves everything.
[25:38.380 --> 25:39.780]  But they have the answer.
[25:40.020 --> 25:40.200]  Yeah.
[25:40.200 --> 25:41.580]  They have to find the problems.
[25:42.240 --> 25:42.720]  I...
[25:42.720 --> 25:43.480]  Well, I...
[25:43.480 --> 25:43.660]  Maybe.
[25:43.860 --> 25:44.280]  I don't know.
[25:44.400 --> 25:51.960]  But I think that that's definitely, like, this big Y Combinator, this VC company fund...
[25:51.960 --> 25:52.400]  Incubator, yeah.
[25:52.940 --> 26:05.700]  ...recently actually had this call for research first, but I think they're going to move on to developing products or investing in products, like, asking how to optimize the city.
[26:06.380 --> 26:12.720]  Like, that's clearly a concern for entrepreneurs or hackers or programmers these days.
[26:12.920 --> 26:14.040]  But I think you're right.
[26:14.040 --> 26:14.980]  We should send them to Brasilia.
[26:15.320 --> 26:15.480]  Yeah.
[26:15.480 --> 26:16.840]  Go and live there and see what it's like.
[26:16.840 --> 26:17.080]  Yeah, probably.
[26:17.260 --> 26:23.600]  Well, Brazil is actually a big smart city center, and it's pretty much a failed experiment there, too, yeah.
[26:23.700 --> 26:27.940]  You solve the problems that were built in when they built Brasilia by adding more Internet and stirring.
[26:28.220 --> 26:28.380]  Yeah.
[26:30.640 --> 26:35.200]  I'm conscious of time, and, you know, the other half of the talk today is on blockchains.
[26:35.200 --> 26:36.960]  Which is very interesting.
[26:38.320 --> 26:39.040]  This...
[26:39.040 --> 26:44.340]  I love this project and this picture, because the BitNation...
[26:44.340 --> 26:47.460]  I'm picky on them a little bit, because they're not the worst offenders.
[26:48.260 --> 27:03.780]  The idea is that you can add blockchains, disintermediate decision-making, and in that way solve governance problems like land title in Guatemala and incorrect birth certificate notices.
[27:03.780 --> 27:13.900]  And so you'll take everything that was good about Bitcoin, and then apply it to problems that are nothing like Bitcoin, and hope that it, you know, fixes the problems like the Internet didn't.
[27:15.560 --> 27:15.960]  It's...
[27:15.960 --> 27:19.880]  James, I'm gonna hand it to you now, you know, to give us a quick...
[27:19.880 --> 27:29.120]  I assume most people in the audience are familiar with blockchains and Bitcoin, but if you'd just give a bit on that, and then maybe why do people see so much hope in a tool that is...
[27:29.120 --> 27:30.840]  It's like a hammer that's...
[27:30.840 --> 27:31.060]  Sure.
[27:31.240 --> 27:32.420]  Everything's a nail, right?
[27:33.120 --> 27:33.560]  Yeah.
[27:34.680 --> 27:35.840]  So, blockchain.
[27:37.740 --> 27:38.220]  It's...
[27:38.220 --> 27:41.780]  I think it's pretty easy to grok.
[27:42.280 --> 27:48.820]  There's a lot of complexity that goes on in the way that these things are explained, but it's a database.
[27:49.940 --> 27:52.900]  It's a database that's a more generalized version of Bitcoin.
[27:52.900 --> 27:54.680]  So, Bitcoin is a currency.
[27:57.080 --> 27:58.220]  Blockchain is...
[27:58.600 --> 27:59.160]  Well, the new...
[27:59.160 --> 28:11.800]  The so-called blockchain 2.0 implementations will allow for, say, a currency and some kind of program or instruction built around exchanging that value.
[28:13.680 --> 28:24.280]  They are fully distributed, which makes them very interesting, and they are transparent, meaning that there is...
[28:24.280 --> 28:29.120]  Everyone can see what everyone else has done.
[28:29.600 --> 28:48.820]  So, when Bitcoin is referred to, for example, as anonymous, it means that there's not an easy or direct method of correlating a Bitcoin wallet ID with an individual, but we can look at the sum of those transactions over time.
[28:49.920 --> 28:57.680]  So, yes, and so blockchain, yeah, a generalized version of this, and then BitNation, I have things to say about it.
[28:57.880 --> 29:07.120]  So, the distributed nature of blockchains and the fact that they're anonymous are two key features that people think are... and it's immutable.
[29:07.360 --> 29:07.680]  Well, right.
[29:07.820 --> 29:20.080]  So, people really like that they are, depending on how you're looking at it, really, really hard, or impossible to modify retroactively without there being a record of that modification.
[29:20.480 --> 29:22.960]  So, I neglected to explain here with the BitNation.
[29:23.220 --> 29:26.820]  It's the... they say the world's first blockchain-powered virtual nation.
[29:27.000 --> 29:32.480]  It's going to put marriage, land titles, birth certificates, world citizenship ID on a blockchain.
[29:34.440 --> 29:39.060]  The leader of BitNation, Suzanne Templehof, sees the future this way.
[29:39.340 --> 29:44.020]  All laws should compete on a free market and be subject to the same reputation as people are.
[29:44.840 --> 29:47.160]  I guess a bit like on Yelp.
[29:48.100 --> 29:48.760]  We should...
[29:49.480 --> 29:55.240]  All of our marriage certificates should be judged based on whether or not people think it's a legit marriage.
[29:55.240 --> 29:55.600]  Yeah.
[29:57.380 --> 29:58.340]  I wonder...
[29:59.160 --> 30:02.080]  I want to dig a bit deeper into this idea that...
[30:02.080 --> 30:11.220]  So, Bitcoin has done a relatively good job of having a borderless currency that's kind of a means of exchange.
[30:11.380 --> 30:14.420]  It's not a very good store of value, but it does a decent job of that.
[30:15.100 --> 30:19.900]  Yeah, it's a cheap way to exchange currency across borders compared to wiring and such.
[30:19.900 --> 30:21.760]  So, we're going to move it...
[30:22.560 --> 30:28.120]  We're going to use blockchain to solve other problems, like land registry and birth certificates.
[30:28.340 --> 30:29.340]  I wonder...
[30:29.340 --> 30:34.820]  I mean, what is it about a distributed, anonymous, immutable ledger that is needed here?
[30:34.940 --> 30:36.780]  And what problems are we solving?
[30:38.020 --> 30:44.180]  Well, the fact that it is immutable is awesome.
[30:45.240 --> 30:49.540]  But I think that people...
[30:49.540 --> 30:53.080]  There's some disconnect where we think about...
[30:54.580 --> 30:57.120]  We should be decoupling...
[31:03.760 --> 31:07.420]  Decoupling what we are trying to do with how we are doing it.
[31:07.420 --> 31:13.620]  So, we see a blockchain and we assume that it's going to solve the problems that existed before.
[31:15.020 --> 31:19.460]  Say, with difficulties in Ghana with land usage.
[31:19.900 --> 31:27.000]  Or maybe we, for some reason, see a problem with the way that marriage licenses are granted by states.
[31:27.180 --> 31:29.420]  States meaning like federal governments...
[31:30.180 --> 31:31.740]  Well, state governments in the United States.
[31:34.200 --> 31:36.740]  And I guess that people...
[31:36.740 --> 31:42.440]  Perhaps they feel that they throw their hands in the air and say, Whatever we're doing now isn't working.
[31:42.720 --> 31:43.640]  This is new.
[31:44.180 --> 31:45.220]  Let's try it.
[31:46.040 --> 31:47.980]  And I do think that there is...
[31:47.980 --> 31:50.280]  There are things about blockchains that are awesome.
[31:50.420 --> 31:54.280]  But I do think that there is a lot of treating every problem like a nail going on.
[31:54.540 --> 31:55.160]  Point taken.
[31:56.020 --> 31:57.760]  Burcu, do you have any comments or thoughts?
[31:58.960 --> 32:01.660]  When you guys were talking... like describing it...
[32:02.940 --> 32:08.320]  Is there anything necessarily democratic about it?
[32:08.440 --> 32:09.880]  Or is there a democratic promise?
[32:10.080 --> 32:14.120]  Because that's something I keep seeing in my own smart city experiments.
[32:14.420 --> 32:15.360]  Oh, this is more like...
[32:15.360 --> 32:21.280]  Even the idea that you're going to put kiosks around that are in beta mode.
[32:21.280 --> 32:23.680]  And people will constantly give feedback.
[32:24.060 --> 32:26.660]  Not necessarily being aware or not.
[32:26.940 --> 32:29.160]  But, you know, by using it.
[32:30.300 --> 32:33.240]  It's more participatory and more democratic.
[32:33.580 --> 32:38.860]  So that's kind of the thin definition of democracy that I usually see in my research.
[32:39.020 --> 32:45.160]  I wonder if there's kind of a similar version going on in big nations or blockchains or whatever.
[32:45.160 --> 32:45.720]  Right.
[32:45.960 --> 32:48.720]  I wouldn't necessarily say that it can make things more democratic.
[32:49.580 --> 32:58.480]  But it does level the playing field a bit in that it limits the power of the state to be able to do corrupt things.
[32:58.740 --> 33:04.560]  To be able to say, this thing that you own, well now you don't own it.
[33:05.000 --> 33:07.200]  Because the records are very difficult to modify.
[33:08.160 --> 33:10.760]  So I'm going to disagree on that in two areas.
[33:11.000 --> 33:15.940]  One, so it might be an immutable ledger, but who determines what's put on the ledger?
[33:16.440 --> 33:29.980]  Now, if you've got corrupt land titles and the person who's putting the entries in the existing system is corrupt, what's to think that this person's not going to put false information on an immutable blockchain that will forever be...
[33:30.640 --> 33:32.980]  So, I'll let you make your second point as well.
[33:33.420 --> 33:35.560]  The other one is around the consensus mechanism.
[33:35.560 --> 33:45.680]  And for anybody that pays very close attention to Bitcoin, you'll know that much of the mining power that now powers the consensus mechanism of Bitcoin is based in China.
[33:46.440 --> 33:52.440]  Now, the decision of which blockchain is the true blockchain is kind of done on a system...
[33:52.440 --> 33:53.280]  It's a bit like a...
[33:54.440 --> 33:55.940]  It's not like a referendum.
[33:56.300 --> 34:00.260]  You have a 51% threshold you have to cross of agreement.
[34:00.260 --> 34:02.980]  A referendum, though, is one person, one vote.
[34:03.220 --> 34:08.140]  But in Bitcoin, it's the amount of the hash rate you contribute to the network.
[34:08.420 --> 34:17.800]  So, you can find concentrations of power, as we're finding now in China, that is highly undemocratic, at least according to the typical definitions.
[34:17.800 --> 34:26.420]  And if you look at the DAO hack the other week and the hard fork that followed it with Ethereum, Ethereum, it's one node, one vote.
[34:26.700 --> 34:38.420]  But because it's pseudonymous, as we don't know who controls what nodes and how many they control, again, it's kind of open to gaming in a way that's very undemocratic.
[34:40.060 --> 34:44.180]  So, the public nature of the ledger helps prevent corruption.
[34:44.360 --> 34:49.200]  However, to be clear, I don't think that blockchain is able to eliminate corruption.
[34:49.480 --> 34:52.320]  I don't think that it changes anything about human nature.
[34:52.700 --> 35:00.220]  And, yeah, I am bearish on it from that utopian perspective.
[35:00.560 --> 35:00.700]  Cool.
[35:02.880 --> 35:04.140]  We're at 7.38.
[35:04.900 --> 35:07.540]  My understanding is we have roughly 15 minutes for Q&A.
[35:07.820 --> 35:13.300]  Unless either of you have any other further comments, I'd welcome people to come up and ask questions if they have them.
[35:15.200 --> 35:20.340]  And, James, you mentioned before, we'd like the questions phrased in the form of a question.
[35:21.360 --> 35:23.680]  Yeah, imagine a question mark at the end.
[35:23.780 --> 35:25.060]  If it makes sense, it's a good question.
[35:25.880 --> 35:27.500]  So, I hope this fits.
[35:27.700 --> 35:28.380]  My name is Brady Dale.
[35:28.600 --> 35:35.340]  I'm a journalist who's covered cities and technology with a big focus on smart cities and blockchains.
[35:35.500 --> 35:38.440]  And I think a lot of what you guys just say about smart cities is dead on.
[35:38.560 --> 35:44.160]  This last conversation about blockchains, I do sort of... I wonder if I run this by you.
[35:44.220 --> 35:44.760]  So, here's the question.
[35:44.900 --> 35:46.240]  If I run this by you, does this sound compelling?
[35:46.520 --> 35:51.800]  When I heard about the idea of putting land titles on blockchains, I thought, wow, this is a pretty great idea, right?
[35:51.800 --> 35:55.960]  Is a person who has bought and sold a house and realizes you're doing that.
[35:56.280 --> 35:59.520]  There's all these different people who do this every day and you do it maybe twice in your life.
[35:59.700 --> 36:05.460]  And they have a lot of different mechanisms just to screw you a thousand different ways over the course of like buying or selling a home.
[36:05.640 --> 36:16.380]  And one of those people, it's a very minor player in it, is the land title people who you pay like $200 or $300 to show that there's no debts on your property, right?
[36:16.380 --> 36:23.800]  Well, if, you know, in a place, if all properties went on to an immutable record, which doesn't have to be the blockchain, by the way.
[36:23.940 --> 36:24.460]  It's just a blockchain.
[36:24.460 --> 36:25.040]  It can be a blockchain.
[36:25.260 --> 36:25.460]  Right.
[36:25.840 --> 36:31.400]  Is on some kind of immutable record that, you know, all those things are put in there and are logged over time.
[36:31.400 --> 36:35.100]  And we sort of trust that our system of government does that, you know, kind of okay.
[36:35.340 --> 36:40.480]  The price for that particular chunk of the transaction drops to somewhere close to zero, like maybe like $10.
[36:40.480 --> 36:45.640]  And that's billions of dollars across normal people saved across the entire country.
[36:45.780 --> 36:45.840]  Right.
[36:46.000 --> 36:53.580]  So and sort of insert that same logic into the world of personal debt, where lots of personal debts were also lodged on the blockchain.
[36:53.760 --> 36:56.800]  People are screwed left, right and center there, too, because of the fuzziness of those records.
[36:57.000 --> 36:57.400]  Right.
[36:57.480 --> 37:04.420]  So I guess like when I guess when you put it that way, you sort of think in terms of brass tacks, how normal people could like possibly save some money like that.
[37:04.420 --> 37:10.700]  Doesn't that seem kind of, that's how it seems sort of compelling to me, just for that, on those small levels.
[37:10.900 --> 37:12.160]  Is there a question mark?
[37:12.260 --> 37:14.140]  Well, yeah, the question is, is that argument compelling?
[37:14.360 --> 37:16.020]  Like, you know, like, I mean, do you buy it, you know?
[37:16.360 --> 37:27.740]  Because I see how you sort of, there's sort of high level theoretical objections, but that's one where, you know, there's just a simple way in which a bunch of money could be saved and there's some logical efficiency.
[37:29.580 --> 37:48.540]  So, yeah, on one hand, we're discussing how experts are, like, say, a property expert costs money, but provides some useful expertise, and perhaps with the blockchain they don't need to, but then there's the issue of maybe only once or twice in a normal person's life they're doing a transaction.
[37:48.540 --> 37:57.140]  I do worry that blockchain does not eliminate the need for some kind of intelligent intermediary.
[37:57.320 --> 38:10.440]  Land use is an example, but I am very skeptical that if we see smart contracts being adopted more, that this would somehow eliminate the need to pay a lawyer.
[38:10.440 --> 38:20.020]  Personally, I would very much like to have a lawyer involved in documenting the details of my particular smart contract, whether that contract is on a blockchain or not.
[38:20.300 --> 38:21.320]  Do you have anything, Ben?
[38:22.860 --> 38:41.220]  I would just point out that thinking again about Henry Ford's rubber trees that, you know, perished in the Amazonian jungles, the land titles in a country like, I'll use an example, Venezuela, you throw a blockchain in it, and you say, all right, this will fix the problem of corruption,
[38:41.540 --> 38:43.360]  record-keeping in a country like Venezuela.
[38:43.660 --> 38:47.460]  The problems around record-keeping are not because you can't keep the records accurate.
[38:47.460 --> 38:53.060]  It's because the corrupt people that put information on those records and control them.
[38:55.360 --> 38:58.160]  So, blockchains might help, and they might reduce the costs, agreed.
[38:58.500 --> 39:07.960]  But there are all these other elements, hard elements, that we have to think about a bit more, at least I've seen from the community around throwing blockchains at problems.
[39:10.380 --> 39:11.460]  Yeah, go ahead.
[39:11.600 --> 39:13.340]  So, short, I'm sorry.
[39:14.420 --> 39:17.600]  This is mostly raised towards you, but I guess, obviously, a ridiculous answer.
[39:17.760 --> 39:20.220]  So, a comment and then a question about that comment.
[39:20.220 --> 39:34.880]  But I work with some projects that are, we use the term civic tech, I know that's like the least use, but in a satellite city of New York that's also a sanctuary city, so there are a lot of Latin American communities, mostly from Central and South America,
[39:35.200 --> 39:42.020]  that are here and don't know what they're doing here, or especially in this weird kind of satellite, half techy, half very rural city.
[39:43.440 --> 39:53.680]  And we deal with a lot of like, we realized very early on the problem that a lot of the people we're dealing with want to build these big, grand, technical solutions to non-problems.
[39:54.140 --> 39:59.940]  And we're approaching it from more of a, like, start with the people that are strolling first and then build solutions to those problems.
[40:00.140 --> 40:03.000]  And it's not always technical solutions, but obviously there's a lot of overlap.
[40:03.540 --> 40:11.680]  And is the... have you actually, in your research, like, seen that few people actually trying to do that first, like problem solving first?
[40:12.020 --> 40:13.920]  Are there any examples that stand out to you?
[40:13.920 --> 40:16.000]  This is more like picking, like, for resources.
[40:17.420 --> 40:18.100]  Definitely.
[40:19.160 --> 40:28.020]  I want to say, yes, in Kansas City, maybe not a ton.
[40:29.200 --> 40:40.000]  Since I feel like, I feel like those models work better when there is actually already grassroots groups who are maybe more socially or politically oriented.
[40:40.380 --> 40:45.920]  And I have yet to see those communities in Kansas City embrace technology.
[40:46.960 --> 40:51.940]  But I...so after I started my research, I got really interested in this idea of civic tech.
[40:52.580 --> 41:08.500]  And kind of like, you know, like, why do these, like, really smart tech folks who are, you know, well-intentioned in the first place wanted to carve their space out and, you know, want to call it civic tech instead of just tech?
[41:08.820 --> 41:12.160]  You know, when did tech become not civic?
[41:12.820 --> 41:16.820]  If you look at the history, like, it does surprise me as a researcher.
[41:16.820 --> 41:27.120]  So I do have lots of examples I'm happy to share with you, like, maybe after the panel, mostly from New York and some other cities in Europe.
[41:27.360 --> 41:27.700]  Awesome.
[41:27.940 --> 41:28.080]  Thank you.
[41:28.080 --> 41:28.160]  Yeah.
[41:28.520 --> 41:36.600]  I'll be...so maybe given the time constraints, we should have three questions and then we can kind of take whichever ones we think are the ones we can address.
[41:37.000 --> 41:37.920]  I got a pretty quick one.
[41:38.280 --> 41:38.400]  Great.
[41:38.400 --> 41:40.820]  You mentioned it would be nice to have some openness to the city data.
[41:41.160 --> 41:42.860]  I posed a question to all three of you.
[41:43.020 --> 41:56.720]  If it was up to you, it's your call, would you apply a rule that says all public spending, all public sector wages, all sensor data, and all surveillance camera feeds be public to the citizens?
[41:59.120 --> 42:00.620]  And we're going to take three rapid fire?
[42:00.760 --> 42:00.940]  Yeah.
[42:01.440 --> 42:01.600]  Yeah.
[42:01.760 --> 42:02.220]  I think so, yeah.
[42:03.560 --> 42:03.880]  Hi.
[42:04.060 --> 42:05.300]  Great talk about smart cities.
[42:05.800 --> 42:11.400]  Something that struck me that actually, I think Ben said, they want to put sensors up everywhere, but they don't want to talk to the people.
[42:11.580 --> 42:12.580]  And I don't think this is anything new.
[42:12.580 --> 42:21.080]  I mean, you brought up Le Corbusier, but also like Robert Moses and reading like about just all the urban planning in the 20th century, like they always wanted to bulldoze the local community.
[42:21.200 --> 42:22.360]  They never wanted to engage.
[42:22.540 --> 42:24.720]  I mean, they just never want to talk to them.
[42:24.860 --> 42:30.300]  So as researchers, do you have any mindset into how, like why this is just keeps happening?
[42:30.440 --> 42:36.920]  I mean, it's going to be like 80 something years where they just are like, oh, we're just going to plan from the top down and like never ask a local person what they want or think.
[42:37.200 --> 42:38.860]  Like I would love to know any insight you have into that.
[42:40.960 --> 42:52.900]  I was just wondering if you sort of like, I think it sort of makes sense to sort of differentiate the top down philosophy of Bousier and Fordlandia and stuff with the idea that we're going to sort of improve things by building infrastructure and providing people with more tools.
[42:53.140 --> 42:57.740]  I mean, like 30 years ago, you probably couldn't have predicted all the things the Internet would do.
[42:57.860 --> 43:00.600]  And I'm just wondering if something like, or smartphones and stuff like that.
[43:00.700 --> 43:12.700]  So something like Google Fiber seems like, I'm kind of surprised you put it in the same category as like the smart cities, because it seems like it's kind of a case in point of building a better technology and kind of letting people use it how they will.
[43:12.920 --> 43:15.760]  And I know that like maybe they didn't deploy it in the most equitable manner.
[43:15.980 --> 43:19.760]  But some people would say, well, at least it was more of a proof of concept to show what it could do.
[43:19.980 --> 43:26.280]  And the people in the poor areas of Kansas City, they only had the same crappy Internet that 90% of the people in the U.S. have.
[43:27.120 --> 43:27.400]  Yep.
[43:29.060 --> 43:31.820]  Can I quickly pick up on the last question?
[43:32.500 --> 43:42.240]  Just to make it very clear, I'm not sure if the smart cities idea like is necessarily top down.
[43:42.640 --> 43:45.280]  I think it's more of an open question right now.
[43:45.480 --> 43:57.040]  And the only reason, and I think this, you know, like proof of concept that Google Fiber did is very, very much the kind of MO in the smart city community.
[43:57.040 --> 44:00.100]  Like, let's just do experiments and see how it works.
[44:00.400 --> 44:12.200]  The only reason why I put them all together is because I think in my own narrative, since the alphabet city sidewalk labs is, you know, has become a thing.
[44:12.200 --> 44:17.620]  And I know historically Google has always been interested in cities, maybe if not openly.
[44:18.780 --> 44:25.060]  I think I see Fiber as an example of investing, improving.
[44:25.440 --> 44:27.480]  I mean, I don't know how, however you want to define it.
[44:28.260 --> 44:32.380]  You know, data-fying, technologizing, whatever city is.
[44:32.500 --> 44:34.020]  So that's one reason.
[44:35.100 --> 44:36.280]  James, do you have any...
[44:36.940 --> 44:39.080]  We're going from first to last, yeah?
[44:39.840 --> 44:41.520]  If you want to address the question.
[44:41.520 --> 44:42.040]  Oh, yeah.
[44:42.440 --> 44:43.720]  That's the initial question, right?
[44:43.880 --> 44:44.180]  Go for it.
[44:44.280 --> 44:44.400]  Yeah.
[44:45.380 --> 44:47.000]  So I...
[44:48.300 --> 44:48.700]  I...
[44:49.100 --> 44:49.980]  Do I...
[44:49.980 --> 44:53.200]  I don't want every piece of...
[44:53.200 --> 44:58.580]  Every datum from any possible sensor to be completely public.
[44:58.580 --> 44:58.980]  No.
[45:00.580 --> 45:04.520]  I am obviously concerned about the cost...
[45:05.120 --> 45:11.380]  Sorry, the dangers of being able to identify individuals.
[45:13.200 --> 45:14.820]  But, I mean, there's a...
[45:14.820 --> 45:15.860]  You can really...
[45:15.860 --> 45:19.640]  Like, you can do a lot here, where I think that you're...
[45:19.640 --> 45:21.280]  As far as I know, the risks are low.
[45:21.360 --> 45:23.520]  And, of course, if some vulnerability...
[45:24.160 --> 45:30.500]  If you were like a sort of a data or a statistical vulnerability becomes exposed, then that could be patched.
[45:30.500 --> 45:31.480]  But, I mean, I think like...
[45:31.480 --> 45:32.840]  So, for example, the...
[45:32.840 --> 45:33.140]  The, um...
[45:33.140 --> 45:34.420]  In, uh...
[45:34.420 --> 45:38.440]  Southeast Asia, in particular, apparently there are a lot of sensors around water usage, if I recall correctly.
[45:39.200 --> 45:39.660]  Uh...
[45:39.660 --> 45:40.340]  So, uh...
[45:40.340 --> 45:41.060]  Perhaps, um...
[45:41.060 --> 45:44.060]  It could be a privacy violation, or at least a scary...
[45:44.060 --> 45:44.340]  Scary.
[45:44.640 --> 45:45.400]  If, um...
[45:45.400 --> 45:49.380]  Every time that my toilet flushed, then that data...
[45:49.380 --> 45:49.780]  That...
[45:49.780 --> 45:50.700]  Those data are available.
[45:51.300 --> 45:51.760]  Uh...
[45:51.760 --> 45:54.100]  Because that indicates that I or someone are home.
[45:54.100 --> 45:54.700]  Uh...
[45:54.700 --> 45:57.220]  But perhaps, if this were generalized to, uh...
[45:57.220 --> 46:00.220]  My apartment building, and it's an apartment building of a certain size.
[46:00.380 --> 46:05.660]  There are already differentiations that the city makes there regarding rules of, say, I think, over four units or under.
[46:06.780 --> 46:07.260]  Uh...
[46:07.260 --> 46:11.720]  I would be comfortable that one of those toilet flushes is mine.
[46:14.060 --> 46:14.540]  So...
[46:14.540 --> 46:15.160]  Uh...
[46:15.160 --> 46:16.520]  I liked all those questions.
[46:16.740 --> 46:18.340]  The first one I'm gonna answer very quickly.
[46:18.560 --> 46:19.940]  Certain times of information, yes.
[46:20.220 --> 46:20.980]  Certain times, no.
[46:21.640 --> 46:22.620]  Budgets, for instance.
[46:22.620 --> 46:26.240]  There are many countries where city budgets are completely open.
[46:26.480 --> 46:27.440]  In fact, uh...
[46:27.440 --> 46:29.060]  Elected officials' emails are completely open.
[46:29.240 --> 46:30.100]  Finland, for instance.
[46:30.580 --> 46:31.880]  Sky hasn't fallen there.
[46:32.220 --> 46:34.780]  And if you looked at what WikiLeaks done today, uh...
[46:34.780 --> 46:38.960]  You'll know that having emails of elected officials open might be a good idea.
[46:39.620 --> 46:39.880]  Um...
[46:39.880 --> 46:41.960]  The second question I very much liked as well.
[46:42.500 --> 46:42.940]  Um...
[46:42.940 --> 46:43.160]  I...
[46:43.160 --> 46:47.020]  Maybe it's because we don't have enough talks like this about the horrible failures of the past.
[46:47.500 --> 46:48.660]  So we can learn from them.
[46:49.080 --> 46:52.600]  And the Google Fibre is, yeah, there is potential there if we do it in a way that...
[46:52.600 --> 46:53.520]  That's participatory.
[46:53.720 --> 46:54.840]  And there's not just...
[46:54.840 --> 46:57.640]  The data is just not owned by Google and sealed up forever.
[46:58.080 --> 46:58.600]  Uh...
[46:58.600 --> 47:00.740]  Out of reach of the people who generated it.
[47:01.260 --> 47:01.720]  Um...
[47:01.720 --> 47:02.840]  So we have five minutes left.
[47:03.420 --> 47:03.720]  Uh...
[47:03.720 --> 47:07.260]  Could we do three quick questions and then three quick answers?
[47:07.840 --> 47:08.120]  Please.
[47:08.440 --> 47:09.360]  I'll answer quickly.
[47:09.360 --> 47:10.260]  So, uh...
[47:10.260 --> 47:12.120]  To try to generalize, um...
[47:12.120 --> 47:15.680]  What's your opinion on how, uh...
[47:15.680 --> 47:20.700]  The current issues surrounding money and politics may be, uh...
[47:20.700 --> 47:27.660]  Influencing who has access as either providers of, uh...
[47:27.660 --> 47:30.700]  Smart city tech or consumers of the data?
[47:30.700 --> 47:31.750]  And, um...
[47:33.320 --> 47:34.180]  If...
[47:34.180 --> 47:38.780]  To sort of color that question, um...
[47:38.780 --> 47:41.040]  Could there be, uh...
[47:41.040 --> 47:48.800]  Conflicts of interest with granting some of these companies basically virtual monopoly status when they become a de facto utility?
[47:48.800 --> 47:49.920]  And we, uh...
[47:49.920 --> 47:56.820]  We've seen how well some of these monopolies have gone when Verizon gets, uh...
[47:56.820 --> 48:00.000]  Tax breaks to deploy Fios and then drags their heels on it.
[48:00.240 --> 48:00.840]  And things like that.
[48:01.360 --> 48:01.880]  So...
[48:01.880 --> 48:02.180]  Thanks.
[48:02.400 --> 48:02.940]  Thank you.
[48:05.300 --> 48:06.860]  Quick comment and a question.
[48:07.260 --> 48:07.400]  Um...
[48:07.400 --> 48:10.180]  The toilet flush is probably a worse problem than you think.
[48:10.360 --> 48:13.940]  Because the MIT Sensible Cities Lab is putting sensors in sewers.
[48:14.900 --> 48:15.420]  Um...
[48:15.420 --> 48:17.160]  So, um...
[48:17.160 --> 48:17.280]  Um...
[48:17.280 --> 48:20.320]  You know, how far upstream they put it becomes a private area.
[48:20.340 --> 48:20.840]  It's a privacy issue.
[48:21.360 --> 48:21.880]  Um...
[48:21.880 --> 48:23.240]  But my question is this.
[48:23.380 --> 48:27.260]  I live in a city, Cambridge, Massachusetts, that's looking at municipal fibers.
[48:27.520 --> 48:29.460]  So, you know, forget Google fiber.
[48:29.720 --> 48:37.760]  But, of course, one of the reasons we're doing it is because of the Internet of Things and smart cities that nobody can define.
[48:39.240 --> 48:39.760]  Um...
[48:39.760 --> 48:40.360]  But how...
[48:40.360 --> 48:41.940]  How would you...
[48:42.620 --> 48:45.760]  Suggest a city frame a discussion about those things?
[48:45.760 --> 48:50.920]  Because the whole notion of putting out sensors for data is a common sense one.
[48:51.800 --> 48:53.300]  But then what?
[48:53.520 --> 48:58.640]  How would you start asking the policy questions to try and drive this in a sensible way?
[48:58.900 --> 48:59.160]  Okay.
[48:59.460 --> 48:59.680]  Thank you.
[49:03.660 --> 49:13.720]  If I understand the tenor of this panel correctly, part of what you are asking is why certain technologies are being applied to areas where there don't appear to be a problem or whether they're being applied correctly.
[49:14.380 --> 49:14.780]  Uh...
[49:14.780 --> 49:18.760]  So, again, a question similar to one of the previous ones, which is when the Internet was invented...
[49:18.760 --> 49:21.100]  We all know that when the Internet was invented, it had...
[49:21.100 --> 49:23.580]  The vision was very wild from what it is today.
[49:23.760 --> 49:29.200]  And many of the problems and advantages as broad were not even questions or solutions people were clamoring for.
[49:29.480 --> 49:37.440]  So, ultimately, my question is how can we determine whether these technologies will or won't solve problems or improve our lives unless we actually try it?
[49:37.580 --> 49:37.680]  Yep.
[49:39.760 --> 49:40.660]  Can I jump in?
[49:40.780 --> 49:41.000]  Go ahead.
[49:41.000 --> 49:41.700]  Um...
[49:41.700 --> 49:44.540]  So, I'm gonna start with the second question.
[49:44.800 --> 49:44.980]  I...
[49:45.880 --> 49:50.280]  I think the cities should definitely have those policy conversations.
[49:51.000 --> 49:52.700]  Do I have a direct answer?
[49:52.880 --> 49:53.200]  How?
[49:53.920 --> 49:54.400]  No.
[49:55.020 --> 49:55.500]  Um...
[49:55.500 --> 49:56.620]  But I think one...
[49:56.620 --> 49:57.400]  You know...
[49:57.920 --> 50:03.160]  I think one problem is, obviously, and this kind of goes back to the question of, like, why does this keep happening?
[50:04.200 --> 50:04.680]  Um...
[50:04.680 --> 50:05.780]  Like, these are...
[50:05.780 --> 50:10.060]  Like, some of these questions are framed as expertise questions, like, tech...
[50:10.060 --> 50:11.060]  Uh...
[50:11.060 --> 50:15.620]  Folks should be around the table and, like, ordinary citizens may or may not understand.
[50:15.620 --> 50:18.060]  I think that's one way to start.
[50:19.100 --> 50:19.520]  Um...
[50:19.520 --> 50:27.780]  You know, by kind of finding a common ground and framing those conversations and not making them a part of a specific expertise.
[50:28.740 --> 50:29.260]  Um...
[50:29.260 --> 50:30.060]  But other...
[50:30.060 --> 50:33.000]  Other than that, I don't have, like, a golden solution.
[50:34.100 --> 50:34.620]  Um...
[50:34.620 --> 50:40.840]  And I do agree that those experiments should take place to, you know, in answer to the third question.
[50:55.880 --> 50:56.400]  Um...
[50:56.400 --> 50:58.460]  Like, I've met so many folks who believe that.
[50:58.840 --> 50:59.200]  They...
[50:59.200 --> 51:00.360]  They might be right.
[51:00.860 --> 51:01.340]  Uh...
[51:01.340 --> 51:02.860]  But, again, I think it's...
[51:02.860 --> 51:14.200]  Even while we were building these smartphones, we should have had some conversations around privacy and equality and data sharing and whatnot that we're kind of, like, trying to catch up later on.
[51:14.400 --> 51:14.820]  Uh...
[51:14.820 --> 51:17.800]  So that's the only reason why I think we should question these visions.
[51:18.300 --> 51:20.600]  Do you have a quick comment with one minute?
[51:21.400 --> 51:21.780]  Uh...
[51:21.780 --> 51:21.920]  Yeah.
[51:22.940 --> 51:23.320]  Um...
[51:23.320 --> 51:24.320]  I mean, it's the...
[51:24.320 --> 51:24.720]  The, uh...
[51:24.720 --> 51:25.840]  Data collection, uh...
[51:25.840 --> 51:28.240]  I view as an input when it comes to the smart cities.
[51:28.660 --> 51:31.360]  And I think it's a question of inputs and outputs.
[51:31.480 --> 51:33.260]  If I can just look at this in a very general way.
[51:34.740 --> 51:35.500]  So, uh...
[51:35.500 --> 51:37.260]  The outputs are what matter.
[51:37.480 --> 51:39.240]  Those are the variables that you can tweak.
[51:39.420 --> 51:40.320]  Whatever you can change.
[51:40.680 --> 51:42.800]  And there doesn't seem to be as much attention paid to them.
[51:42.880 --> 51:47.600]  And they seem far limited and uncorrelated to the inputs, to the data which are being collected.
[51:48.700 --> 51:49.140]  Okay.
[51:49.300 --> 51:49.600]  Thank you.
[51:50.660 --> 51:51.100]  Um...
[51:51.100 --> 51:53.060]  There's a common thread through all three of those questions.
[51:53.260 --> 51:54.660]  And it's a great note to end on.
[51:55.300 --> 51:55.740]  Um...
[51:55.740 --> 52:05.140]  I think so often what we found with the failed utopies of the past is a top-down controlled process of application of technologies to problems that they're not designed to solve.
[52:06.000 --> 52:14.280]  So, if we're gonna go forward and we're gonna start using these technologies in a constructive way, there's no problems delivering technologies to people, new ones.
[52:14.280 --> 52:21.280]  It's just when you kind of rigidly apply them almost messinaically to problems you don't understand.
[52:21.860 --> 52:22.460]  Uh...
[52:22.460 --> 52:26.440]  And to people whose interests that you don't recognize or ask for.
[52:27.020 --> 52:27.540]  Um...
[52:27.540 --> 52:30.080]  That seems to be the root of the problem here.
[52:30.080 --> 52:34.220]  And so, going forward, it would be very nice with the smart cities if, uh...
[52:34.220 --> 52:37.000]  There was more community engagement and openness around decision making.
[52:37.160 --> 52:41.320]  And with the blockchains, there are plenty of ways in which we can implement blockchains.
[52:41.880 --> 52:42.320]  Uh...
[52:42.320 --> 52:45.080]  But again, it has to be done in a way in which has...
[52:46.020 --> 52:49.020]  Except that there's a wider context in which these technologies are used.
[52:49.240 --> 52:55.780]  And that there are unintended consequences that we should be cognizant of before we go madly chasing after an unattainable goal.
[52:56.700 --> 52:57.120]  Um...
[52:57.120 --> 53:01.220]  On that note, over time, thank you very much for joining us this evening for the discussion.
[53:01.640 --> 53:01.920]  And...
[53:01.920 --> 53:02.960]  have an excellent conference.
[53:03.240 --> 53:03.440]  Of...
[53:03.440 --> 53:04.020]  Thank you.