I live in a town. A dumb old town. I can’t tell you if the bus arrives more or less on time as I never catch it. My rubbish bins don’t talk to me but if they did, I would ignore them. When I go for a walk, the only person watching is that creepy guy who lives in number 12.
Dumb towns and even more imbecilic cities are taking big, scary steps into the future. It’s happening before our eyes. In Brisbane, humble lamp posts are being replaced by smart poles that deliver wi-fi, measure air quality and noise pollution sending data back to City Council HQ. Pedestrians can charge their phones on these smart poles though why anyone would want to is beyond me. In a tip of the lid to nostalgia, these smart poles also cast light after the sun goes down.
Smart bins in smart cities will emit a signal when they’re full and wheel themselves out to the nature strip to be collected. The drudgery of bin night will be over forever. Hooray! But don’t count your blessings. If Stephen Hawking taught us anything it is that artificial intelligence will one day turn on us. Anything that you hurl dog and cat shit into on a regular basis is bound to be the first thing chasing you down the street.
Smart cities use technology to improve air quality, enhance traffic flows and respond to heightened demands for public transport. This sounds lovely but these benefits come at the cost of omnipresent CCTV cameras and other means to measure your every move. Going for a walk may soon become an Orwellian nightmare of GPS tracking, stepping on and off pedestrian footpads just so you don’t have to wait an extra 10 seconds at a traffic light.
Unsurprisingly, big-tech corporations are all over the push for smart cities.
Where governments allow data sharing with corporations either voluntarily or otherwise, your stroll will measure where you stopped to shop, what you bought, and combined with a whole raft of data that tech companies already have on you, issue advice and suggestions direct to your smartphone.
The advertising on billboards of the future will be visible to all but contain personalised information based on your internet browsing and shopping history. So, if you recently stumped up for that sex toy, the billboard you look at will be a garish vision of electronic phalluses.
Alas, one person’s time-saving technology is another’s dystopian horror show.
The notion of sustainability amid finite resources as an overall response to climate change drives smart city technology. Naturally, China and India have new smart cities either on the drawing board or under construction. Bhopal, benighted by a chemical leak in 1984, which killed more than 5000 people, is now considered India’s smartest city. Shenzhen, the city of 12.5 million linking Hong Kong to the mainland and designated as China’s first special economic zone, is a role model of urban modernisation according to Huawei. Hmm.
There are undoubted benefits. Smart cities will be more efficient in waste management, in recycling and reducing demands on landfill. Energy output can be controlled more effectively, cooling or heating buildings according to localised measurements of temperature changes, like an all-seeing dad who won’t let anyone else touch the thermostat. Nineteen degrees is fine. If you’re cold, put a jumper on.
But every element of smart city technology comes at a cost of eternal monitoring if not outright surveillance. And that data, the terabytes and terabytes of it can be used, misused, abused and stolen.
While some cities are being retrofitted, other smart cities are being built from scratch.
Perched high on the Red Sea in the northwest of Saudi Arabia, stands the ominous sounding smart city of Neom. It is a city of just two buildings now, plus an airport. Neom will use smart city technologies and become a tourist resort. The project will cost half a trillion dollars, much of it coming from the Saudi sovereign treasure chest, Public Investment Fund.
The shadow of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman looms large over the smart city project. When he’s not involved in a bit of casual murder and evisceration, MBS has spoken expansively about a resort paradise of flying cars (at last), mock lunar surfaces and plenty of parking. It brings to mind the words of the late, great P.J. O’Rourke who said of Disney’s Epcot Centre in Florida that, “they had done the impossible - created a fantasy vision of the future that was somehow worse than reality”.
As with Qatar’s bid for the World Cup, the exploitation of migrant labour is already a red-hot issue. A report in the Wall Street Journal revealed a taped conversation where Neom’s chief executive, Nadhmi A. Al-Nasr was overheard saying, “I drive everybody like a slave, when they drop down dead, I celebrate. That’s how I do my projects”.
What better place to holiday than Neom where you can wander around shopping malls built on the bones of thousands of dead workers?
All this from a nation that prides itself on state surveillance overreach and constant monitoring of citizens and residents.
The answer is not to fear the future but to engage in it and, as individuals and communities, set the parameters of how much is too much. Smart city technology had to be pulled back in Amsterdam and Copenhagen (declared the smartest city in the world in a 2022 index) due to residents’ concerns.
As with the present, the future requires eternal vigilance. The trick is not to leave it until it is too late or at least before your bin comes to kill you.
More Coverage
What to expect when you’re expecting: dad edition
Be patient with conception, be kind to your partner and remember that parenthood is one of the greatest gifts, says an obstetrician who has delivered more than 5000 babies.
‘I’ve been called a dirty Jew … our hearts are broken’
Shocked and tested like never before, this Scottish-raised Jewish community leader is struggling with the sudden rise of anti-Semitism.