Internet of Things Brings More Surveillance and Vulnerabilities to Cities

As smart cities collect more of our information and give cities more data, it's imperative that we understand that the automation of data collection does not make the information perfect or unbiased. In Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life (which has been excerpted and adapted for the Guardian) Adam Greenfield argues that proponents of connected cities exaggerate the benefits of data. "Strongly implicit, is the presumption that whatever policies are arrived at in this way will be applied transparently, dispassionately and in a manner free from politics." No perfect responses to all civic problems exist, and pretending that algorithms can deliver such results endangers cities. "We need to understand that creating an algorithm intended to guide the distribution of civic resources is itself a political act," Greenfield argues.

Greenfield's arguments cover more than cities and deserve to be read in their entirety. While he's not trying to pretend the world can disconnect or should, his investigation centers around cautions like this one. "Advocates of smart cities often seem to proceed as if it is self-evident that each of our acts has a single, salient meaning, which can be recognised, made sense of and acted upon remotely by an automated system, without any possibility of error," a dangerous oversimplification.