Smart City comes too late

I was at MBFC before 8am and someone shouted at me. I turned around to see a grouchy face of a very unhappy man. ‘Brother, no market this morning. Market will open at 12.30pm.’ And he was on his way home. I was a little puzzled. He said he got the news on arrival at the office. I think the news was in the Business Times.
 
On the way from Raffles Place I have flipped through the pages of Today and mypaper but there was not a single piece of news that the SGX would be closed this morning. And I was reading a forum writer talking about how wonderful Smart City will be when news and information flow would be instant. And important news like the closing of the stock market would have been known to all the stake holders and players with the press of a button.
 
In the office there was already a crowd of unhappy remisiers and staff grumbling about the news and wasting their time waking up early to get to office. How nice would it be if the Govt has installed the Smart City yesterday then no one would look so foolish and unhappy? And so many people would not be wasting their time in the office twiddling their thumbs. It would also help to ease the peak time traffic in the trains.
 
This episode also reminds us that even if we have a Smart City, if the people are daft or lazy or negligent, the information would not have flowed to the people in a timely way. What is the point of telling people that the market will be closed for half a day when the people are already in the office?
 
Of course a Smart City would have a lot of stupid problems that they would not tell you. Now they are just telling you the good stuff, the things that you can have but need not have, and may not need or do not want, but have to pay for it. The American intelligence agencies are flooded with information gathered from their snooping around the whole world with all their sophisticated equipment and bugging gadgets. Now, who is going to read them? Who has the time to read them? It would need more than 56 man years to read a day of information collected. It would need thousands of man years to do that. Many people don’t even have the time to read more than two paragraphs of an article in the newspaper.
 
There will be a lot of information available. Who have the time to browse through them or to use them? Just like there are millions of apps in the market. How many do you need and how many millions you don’t need?
Now for the problems that many people are not counting on. You will be paying for the whole system and infrastructure like it or not. You will be paying for the information like it or not.
 
Do you still want a Smart City to tell you that you have forgotten to switch off your lights in the toilet or a bee was found in the Antarctic Ice? Are you smart enough to know what is good for you and what is unnecessary and still you will have to pay for it? Ask, who is benefitting from this Smart City and who is making all the money?

Kopi Level - Green