Enterra Insights

A Thought Probe Series on Tomorrow's Population, Big Data, and Personalized Predictive Analytics: Part 4, What Lies Ahead?

To get a glimpse of what lies ahead for smart cities, one need only to look to Singapore. As Mark Fischetti reported last year, "LIVE Singapore uses real-time data recorded by myriad communications devices, microcontrollers and sensors to analyze the pulse of the city, telling residents how they can reach their homes fastest, reduce their neighborhood’s energy consumption and find a taxi when a rainstorm hits." ["The Smartest Cities Will Use People as Their Sensors," Scientific American, 17 April 2011] The following short video, created by MIT's SENSEable City lab, gives you a glimpse of the future.

Looking to the future, Jemima Kiss, writes, "From transport to entertainment, work to education, our lives are already being transformed by high-speed internet that will help create the fully wired city. Within 10 years, faster, comprehensive, wired and wireless networks will not only become the norm, they will become free, says Gerd Leonhard, chief executive of the business thinktank The Futures Agency. The reason? The enormous benefits to government and education." ["City design: A digital revolution," The Guardian, 2012] While I agree that networks will continue to grow in importance, especially in urban environments, I'm not as sanguine as Kiss that ubiquitous connectivity will be free a decade from now. As connectivity increases, concerns over privacy issues will also rise, but Leonhard told Kiss, "While the debate about appropriate use of our personal data will continue, consensual services could be to our benefit." Among the benefits referred to by Leonhard is targeted marketing. "You'll walk past a department store and the window will show a personalised display with your size and preferences," says Leonhard.

Most smart city initiatives are not primarily focused on shopping experiences. Carlo Ratti and Anthony Townsend report that a number of countries are trying to create utopian urban environments. The furthest along is "Masdar in the United Arab Emirates, a walled community intended for 50,000 residents in the desert outside of Abu Dhabi, in which every building, streetlight and personal electric 'pod' vehicle has been preplanned and preloaded with high-tech gear, largely to maximize energy efficiency." ["Harnessing Residents' Electronic Devices Will Yield Truly Smart Cities," Scientific American, 17 April 2011] To learn a bit more about Masdar, read my posts entitled Abu Dhabi's Masdar Plan and Update on Masdar City. Ratti and Townsend continue:

"At Masdar, as well as New Songdo City in South Korea and PlanIT Valley in Portugal, real estate developers, global information-technology companies and governments are attempting to build urban centers from scratch that are filled with technologically enhanced infrastructure and services. The designers say their grand conceptions will determine how future cities will be built. But as models, these top-down projects pale in comparison to the emergent form of intelligence that is bubbling up from millions of newly cyber-connected residents. Truly smart—and real—cities are not like an army regiment marching in lockstep to the commander's orders; they are more like a shifting flock of birds or school of fish, in which individuals respond to subtle social and behavioral cues from their neighbors about which way to move forward."

Ratti and Townsend claim that this bottom-up view of smart city evolution represents "an immensely powerful, democratic and organic alternative vision of the smart city." They explain:

"Rather than focusing on the installation and control of network hardware, city governments, technology companies and their urban-planning advisers can exploit a more ground-up approach to creating even smarter cities in which people become the agents of change. With proper technical-support structures, the populace can tackle problems such as energy use, traffic congestion, health care and education more effectively than centralized dictates. And residents of wired cities can use their distributed intelligence to fashion new community activities, as well as a new kind of citizen activism."

Ratti and Townsend call this effort "going beyond urban efficiency." They note that "over the past decade digital technologies have begun to blanket our cities, forming the backbone of a large, intelligent infrastructure." They believe that this backbone holds the key to the future for all cities, not just planned developments like Masdar. They explain:

"Broadband fiber-optic and wireless telecommunications grids are supporting mobile phones, smartphones and tablets that are increasingly affordable. At the same time, open databases—especially from the government—that people can read and add to are revealing all kinds of information, and public kiosks and displays are helping literate and illiterate people access it. Add to this foundation a relentlessly growing network of sensors and digital-control technologies, all tied together by cheap, powerful computers, and our cities are quickly becoming like 'computers in open air.'"

Rather than embedding sensors in infrastructure, for many daily activities, Ratti and Townsend believe that mobile devices and cooperative owners will drive smart applications. They write:

"An ideal beginning is to leverage the growing array of smart personal devices we all wield and recruit people as the sensors of a city rather than relying only on formal systems embedded into infrastructure. The traffic function on Google Maps is a good example. Instead of building a costly network of dedicated vehicle sensors along roadways, Google constantly polls a large network of anonymous volunteers whose mobile devices report their up-to-the-minute status, which reveals where traffic is flowing, slowed or stopped. The information is delivered to drivers via mobile mapping applications in various ways—as colored overlays indicating traffic speeds, as estimated driving times that account for delays or as a factor in determining alternative routes. ... Bottom-up approaches to sensing can also provide rapid, cheap deployment of new kinds of sensors that measure and record data about people's activities, movements, surroundings and health."

Michael Durham claims that "Smart cities have always existed in people's heads." ["City design innovation," The Guardian, 2012] He asserts, that from the time that Plato wrote his Republic, "people have dreamed of the perfect community, where citizens live in harmony, life is good, technology is harnessed and everything works. Today, big ideas about improving city life continue to pour forth from futurologists, academics and thinktanks." Terry Kirby provides his own view of a future smart city. He writes:

"Imagine life for the citizen of the smart city: you awake in your sustainably built home, and take your morning shower in recycled industrial waste water, cost-efficiently heated overnight. Eating breakfast, you scan the flat screen, fed by maximum bandwidth internet, where the special, easy click local neighbourhood menu allows you to compare your daily energy use with other houses in the area, confirm your webcam appointment with your doctor, top up the balance of your all-purpose travelcard, order your groceries and leave messages for your child's teacher. You can even watch television on it. Outside, your electric car is waiting. On the edge of the central congestion zone, you park in a charging area and, paying with your travelcard, get into a three-wheeled utility vehicle which, via a network of special lanes and sensor-controlled pedestrianised areas, delivers you to another parking dock at your workplace." ["City design: Transforming tomorrow," The Guardian, 2012]

To me that sounds a bit like something out of The Jetsons cartoon show; but Kirby claims that "this is not some Dan Dare meets Minority Report fantasy of life in the future, where we all walk around in metallic jumpsuits. Smart thinking is here already." The problem, of course, is that cities aren't going to start over. London, for example, has had the same basic street layout (and some of the same buildings) for hundreds of years. We need to make sure that smart city initiatives help real people, living in existing dwellings, and carrying on with normal daily activities. Fortunately, Kirby is correct that smart thinking is already here and thinking about those challenges as well. He admits that smart city initiatives are "not simply about integrated transport or sustainable housing." He writes:

"The accumulation of electronic data online, digitally accessible and searchable, creates other opportunities for the consumer to know more about their neighbourhoods and the wider world we live in, and to use that information on a daily basis. It also allows local government, architects, transport bodies and utility companies to work together in partnerships to make the most of these technologies."

Simply accumulating and accessing data doesn't provide the answers or insights needed to make smart city initiatives successful. Big data analytics and other cognitive reasoning technologies are required to make sense of mountains of data being generated every minute of every day. Michael Durham claims, "In 40 years' time cities will not just be smart, they will be so brainy it hurts." ["Forty years from now ...," The Guardian, 2012] Most of that brainpower will be supplied by artificial intelligence. Among the smart people contemplating how to create smart cities are scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT's City Science website notes:

"The world is experiencing a period of extreme urbanization. In China alone, 300 million rural inhabitants will move to urban areas over the next 15 years. This will require building an infrastructure equivalent to the one housing the entire population of the United States in a matter of a few decades. In the future, cities will account for nearly 90% of global population growth, 80% of wealth creation, and 60% of total energy consumption. Developing better strategies for the creation of new cities, is therefore, a global imperative. Our need to improve our understanding of cities, however, is pressed not only by the social relevance of urban environments, but also by the availability of new strategies for city-scale interventions that are enabled by emerging technologies. Leveraging advances in data analysis, sensor technologies, and urban experiments, City Science will provide new insights into creating a data-driven approach to urban design and planning. To build the cities that the world needs, we need a scientific understanding of cities that considers our built environments and the people who inhabit them. Our future cities will desperately need such understanding."

The following video discusses some of the interesting and exciting things that are being developed at MIT.

Achieving the objectives of smart city initiatives won't be easy (and probably won't be cheap). That is why public/private partnerships will be required. Smart city initiatives begin with people because their goal is to make cities more livable for people. If smart people fail to get the fundamentals right, technologies and processes that support smart city initiatives won't be able to overcome that shortfall.

A Thought Probe Series on Tomorrow's Population, Big Data, and Personalized Predictive Analytics: Part 3, Where Things Stand

"What makes a city?" That is a question asked on IBM's Smarter City website. The company believes that a city is "an interconnected system of systems" that rests on three pillars: infrastructure, operations, and people. The site goes on to state that a city is "a dynamic work in progress, with progress as its watchword. A tripod that relies on strong support for and among each of its pillars, to become a smarter city for all." That definition may be a bit too cheery for some because they know that for years many inner cities have not progressed but languished or deteriorated. That entropic trend must change, because the world is becoming more urbanized every day. If tomorrow's cities are not going to become vast areas of poverty and decay, we have to be smarter about how they are planned, managed, and maintained. In a special issue about smart cities, the editors of Scientific American wrote:

"Many otherwise lucid thinkers, from Tho­mas Jefferson to Frank Lloyd Wright to President Gerald Ford, tended to think of cities as centers of poverty, crime, pollution, con­gestion and poor health. In recent years, though, the thinking has shifted along with the demographics. Many experts have come to realize that people are better off when they live in a city. This is not to dismiss the problems of urban life; cities, particularly fast-growing ones in the poorer parts of Asia and Africa, can be places of great human suffering. But even a city slum has benefits that you won't find on the farm or in the village. The move from the country leads, for instance, to dramatic changes for many women. As Kavita N. Ramdas of the Global Fund for Women notes in Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline (Penguin, 2010), 'In the village, all there is for a woman is to obey her husband and relatives, pound millet, and sing. If she moves to town, she can get a job, start a business, and get education for her children.' Indeed, the city has come to look less like a source of problems than as an opportunity to fix them. Investments in sanitation and water have turned many cities in the developed world from places of disease and pestilence into bastions of health. City folk are at lower risk of death from motor vehicle accidents and suicide by firearms (although they are overstressed). From the stand­point of the metropolis, climate change also seems less intractable. Because city residents rely less on cars and live in more compact dwellings than suburbanites, they tend to leave smaller carbon footprints. The challenge is to extend the efficiency of the urban center to the wider conurbation, embracing the city center, suburbs and satellite towns. Although climate is bigger than any one fix, how we build our cities, and how efficiently we live in them, is going to factor large in our response." ["Street-Savvy," 17 April 2011]

In Part 1 of this series, I discussed suggestions from experts on how to begin smart city initiatives. One of those experts, Dr. Boyd Cohen, created a model he calls the Smarter Cities Wheel. IBM has also developed a model that is reminiscent of Dr. Cohen's Wheel. The IBM model shows how it believes the three pillars of a city discussed above are interconnected.

Like most organizations involved in smart city initiatives, IBM believes that data collection and analysis is the undergirding that makes such initiatives useful. IBM's site states:

"As demands grow and budgets tighten, solutions also have to be smarter, and address the city as a whole. By collecting and analyzing the extensive data generated every second of every day, tools such as the IBM Intelligent Operations Center coordinate and share data in a single view creating the big picture for the decision makers and responders who support the smarter city."

In Part 2 of this series, I noted that participants in a study published by the Institute for the Future expressed some concern that companies like IBM are trying to establish data monopolies that could be used to hold cities hostage in the decades ahead. IBM obviously sees itself as providing a much-needed service that cities can't provide for themselves. The company offers a nifty interactive Smarter Cities experience that can be explored at your leisure. Of course, IBM isn't the only global company that sees business opportunities in helping cities operate more efficiently. Oracle has its own interactive website that highlights its solutions for smart cities. The launch page for that interactive site also shows how Oracle sees connectivity within an urban setting (with business and citizens being the focal point).

Although the site explains that "Oracle offers a complete, integrated set of solutions to meet the complex needs of local government," some people, like Greg Lindsay, believe that companies like Oracle, IBM, and Cisco are "offering 'smart city in a box' solutions" that don't take into account the nuanced complexities that make each city unique. ["The Battle for Control of Smart Cities," Fast Company, 16 December 2012] See Part 2 of this series to learn more about Lindsay's concerns. Cisco's offering is called Smart+Connected Communities. Cisco's Shane Mitchell explains, that "the main barrier to adopting [smart city] solutions is the complexity of how cities are operated, financed, regulated, and planned." ["Smart City Frameworks: A Systematic Process for Enabling Smart+Connected Communities," Cisco Blog, 10 October 2012] Rather than offering a set of solutions, Cisco begins with "a 'Smart City Framework' designed to move the Smart City debate from merely an academic or esoteric discussion to a call for action." The framework is shown below.

Mitchell explains, "The Smart City Framework ... describes a potential process that will help key stakeholders and city/community participants 1) understand how cities operate, 2) define city objectives and stakeholder roles, and 3) understand the role of ICT within physical city assets." I agree with Mitchell that all stakeholders must be involved in smart city initiatives. As I wrote in Part 2 of this series, the only way to move forward is to embrace public/private partnerships that benefit both sectors." Terry Kirby agrees with that position. He writes, "When it comes to achieving the high-tech, sustainable, and smart cities of the future, there is one word that sums up the pathway to success: partnership." ["Getting smart cities connected," The Guardian, 2012] He continues:

"Imaginative and collaborative partnerships between local authorities, utilities, universities and the private sector – whether it is bus companies or software providers – are the defining characteristics of 'smart thinking', according to leading figures in cities around UK and Europe. All agree that so-called 'smartness' – which at its most basic level is about using new technology to improve lives – is necessary to adapt to the demands of urban growth. ... These kind of partnerships can range from multi-agency infrastructure ventures aimed at transforming the lives of millions, to simple projects improving digital access for everyday users of public services. They include new ways of using mobile phones and smartcards to pay for a wide range of goods and services, to schemes designed to recycle waste water for heating."

The editors at Scientific American conclude:

"The most hopeful impact of city life may be its effect on the mind. Humans are social animals; we draw stimulation from other minds close at hand. Plato and Socrates both lived in fifth-century b.c. Athens, a city-state. Galileo and Michelangelo lived in Renaissance Florence. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak grew up in a western U.S. conurbation that includes Silicon Valley. The young, agile minds at work on the next Big Thing are probably tweeting—they live, as author William Gibson points out, ... in a kind of digital meta city. Chances are, they are living in a physical city, too. Technology is reshaping city life and making it more intellectually productive, but it will not soon replace the easy interchange of ideas that comes from casual proximity, the cornerstone of city life."

While some pundits believe that smart city initiatives may drain city centers of their vitality, I agree with the editors at Scientific American that making cities more livable will actually increase the vitality of cities and make urbanization a boon rather than a bane to mankind. Gerd Leonhard, chief executive of the business thinktank The Futures Agency, agrees. He told Jemima Kiss, that "the more digitised our lives become, the more we will value real experiences. 'The landscape of the cities of the future will be a huge place to do the things that don't work in digital form – food, culture, contemplation. Digital tools drive us to want to have the actual experience much more than before.'" ["City design: A digital revolution," The Guardian, 2012] The thing I appreciate most about the smart cities movement is its optimism. There are enough Cassandras in the world warning us of impending doom. Optimists bring about progress and, as the IBM website states, progress is the watchword.

A Thought Probe Series on Tomorrow's Population, Big Data, and Personalized Predictive Analytics: Part 2, Moving Forward

In Part 1 of this series, I discussed recommendations about how urban areas can begin efforts to make their cities smarter and more efficient. In this post, I discuss why moving forward is more controversial than one might think and how some of the concerns can be addressed. Greg Lindsay asks, "Who will own the brains of smart cities--citizens or corporations?" ["The Battle for Control of Smart Cities," Fast Company, 16 December 2012] My first reaction is, "Does it matter?" Lindsay believes it does. He writes:

"At stake is an impending massive trove of data, not to mention issues of privacy, services, and inclusion. The battle may be fought in the streets between bands of Jane Jacobs-inspired hacktivists pushing for self-serve governance and a latter-day Robert Moses carving out monopolies for IBM or Cisco instead of the Triborough Bridge Authority. Without a delicate balance between the scale of big companies and the DIY spirit of 'gov 2.0' champions, the urban poor could be the biggest losers. Achieving that balance falls to smarter cities' mayors, who must keep the tech heavyweights in check and 'frame an agenda of openness, transparency and inclusiveness.'"

Those are not just his conclusions, but conclusions of a Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored study entitled "The Future of Cities, Information, and Inclusion" that was published by the Institute for the Future. Lindsay reports that authors of the study conclude, "Without this catalyst for cooperation, we may repeat the devastating urban conflicts of the 20th century that pitted central planners like Robert Moses against community activists like Jane Jacobs." Lindsay continues:

"Befitting the Foundation's focus on the world's poorest and what it calls 'smart globalization,' the report's emphasis is on smartening up cities in the developing world--cities that lack both data about their swelling populations and the tools needed to make sense of it. The roster of expert contributors comprises a who's who of ubiquitous computing and gov 2.0 types, including MIT Senseable City Lab director Carlo Ratti, Everyware author Adam Greenfield, the Santa Fe Institute’s Nathan Eagle, Intel Labs Director Genevieve Bell, Microsoft Research’s Jonathan Donner, and San Francisco CIO Chris Vein. Together, they highlight five 'technologies that matter' for cities in 2020: mobile broadband; smart personal devices, whether they're dirt-cheap phones or tablets; government-sponsored cloud computing (modeled on the U.K.'s national 'G-cloud' initiative); open-source public databases to promote grassroots innovation, and 'public interfaces.' Instead of Internet cafés, imagine an outdoor LED screen and hacked Kinect box allowing literally anyone to access the Net using only gestures."

I admit the list of participants is impressive and their concerns certainly deserve consideration. The fact of the matter is, however, that not all data that could benefit smart cities is publicly owned or available. The World Economic Forum has declared data to be a new asset class, like gold or oil, and organizations that own that data are counting on benefiting from it. Does that somehow make them evil or uncompassionate? Of course not. The current global economic morass also demonstrates that reliance on public programs can result in national debts that inevitably hurt the poor more than the rich. The only way to move forward is to embrace public/private partnerships that benefit both sectors.

In first segment of this series, I noted that even when governments are offered programs created by civic-minded activists that have an obvious benefit for their citizens, politicians have often been hesitant to implement them. It's hard to imagine that something as important as smart city initiatives should be placed solely in the hands of government or ceded to unstructured populist movements. Both structure and broad-based support are required. Everyone seems to agree that the sine qua non for good smart city initiatives is the availability of data (BIG data). But you can't raise the subject of big data without also raising privacy concerns. Anthony Townsend, director of technology development at IFTF and the report's lead author, told Lindsay, that "those tensions come up in every discussion, whether it's privacy versus the public good, collecting data versus parsing it, and guaranteeing access to all citizens versus carving out virtual gated communities and corporate enclaves." Townsend pointed out how the same data could be used to promote good initiatives or could be used to obstruct initiatives. "There are ways," he told Lindsay, "all of these can play out as either dystopia or utopia."

Lindsay states that the report "is the highest-profile critique to date of the bright green rhetoric from companies like IBM, Siemens or Cisco, which have seized the chance to pad their top lines with government sales while corporate IT customers stockpile mountains of cash." Lindsay obviously has strong feelings on this subject. He could have written something like this: "The report is critique of smart city initiatives from companies, like IBM, Siemens, or Cisco, that see an opportunity to grow their businesses while helping cities become more efficient and effective." But that sentence wouldn't have raised your hackles nor have presented large corporations in a negative light -- an impression that Lindsay obviously wants to impart. Lindsay continues with a discussion of arguments presented in the report:

"Global technology companies are offering 'smart city in a box' solutions. Governments are responding to their pitch: a smarter, cleaner, safer city. But there is no guarantee that technology solutions developed in one city can be transplanted elsewhere. As firms compete to corner the government market, cities will benefit from innovation. But if one company comes out on top, cities could see infrastructure end up in the control of a monopoly whose interests are not aligned with the city or its residents."

Those concerns are certainly valid, but they are also addressable. They certainly shouldn't be used as arguments to prevent smart city initiatives from moving forward. Lindsay admits that cities need global technology companies to help them achieve more efficient operations; but, he writes: "Government officials just need to avoid being sold a bill of goods." Of course, they should. Townsend, too, admits that grassroots efforts aren't "scalable or sustainable yet, and that's what these corporate campaigns bring to the table." Smart city initiatives need to get all stakeholders involved.

Usman Haque, founder of Pachube.com, agrees that we need to move forward with smart cities initiatives but he believes that the current offerings of global technology companies haven't gone far enough. "For almost a decade, corporate giants like IBM and Cisco have been banging the smart city drum and," he writes, "frankly, the beat is getting a little boring. We've long been promised great things: more energy efficient power grids, an end to traffic jams and even rubbish bins that let you know when they're full." ["Surely there's a smarter approach to smart cities?" Wired, 17 April 2012] He continues:

"The truth is, all of these 'smart city" initiatives actually only reflect the most basic functionalities of the Internet of Things (IoT). The true potential for smart cities is so much greater, so much more interesting, and so much more important."

I couldn't agree more. With the world becoming more urbanized every day, pursuing smart city initiatives is important. Haque agrees with Lindsay that it also represents big bucks, which is why "every major IT company is looking for its slice of the smart city pie." He lists a few of those corporate initiatives, like IBM's Smarter Planet and Cisco's Smart+Connected Communities. He writes, "Despite the subtle differences in these approaches, in both IBM and Cisco's eyes, smart cities predict the convergence of smart information and communication technologies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of urban systems and services." Haque doesn't quibble about the goals of smart city initiatives, but, like Lindsay, he rejects one-size-fit-all approaches. He believes such initiatives approach "the evolution of smart cities from fundamentally the wrong direction. "Their strategies focus on the city as a single entity, rather than the people -- citizens -- that bring it to life."

I agree with Haque that cities are too complex to be seen as a homogeneous entity. An approach to smart city planning that uses something like Enterra Solutions' Sense, Think/Learn, Act™ technology and advanced analytics could differentiate the needs of individual neighborhoods. Haque states, "Any adequate model for the smart city must focus on the smartness of its citizens and encourage the processes that make cities important: those that sustain very different -- sometimes conflicting -- activities." The very complexity of cities requires that technology be used, but used more effectively. Haque continues:

"Cities are, by definition, engines of diversity so focusing solely on streamlining utilities, transport, construction and unseen government processes can be massively counter-productive, in much the same way that the 1960s idealistic fondness for social-housing tower block economic efficiency was found, ultimately, to be socially and culturally unsustainable. We, citizens, create and recreate our cities with every step we take, every conversation we have, every nod to a neighbour, every space we inhabit, every structure we erect, every transaction we make. A smart city should help us increase these serendipitous connections. It should actively and consciously enable us to contribute to data-making (rather than being mere consumers of it), and encourage us to make far better use of data that's already around us."

That is very well argued. In first segment of this series, I referred to Dr. Boyd Cohen's Smart City Wheel. At the hub of the wheel, you find smart people, smart government, smart economy, smart environment, smart mobility, and smart living. I believe that Cohen's Wheel, and its associated indicators, take into account the concerns and recommendations expressed by Lindsay and Haque. Haque believes it all starts with (and will move forward because of) smart people. He writes:

"The 'smartness' of smart cities will not be driven by orders coming from the unseen central government computers of science fiction, dictating the population's actions from afar. Rather, smart cities will be smart because their citizens have found new ways to craft, interlink and make sense of their own data. Smart cities cannot be defined by one application, or central organising body, that sets pre-programmed limits. They will be defined by individual citizens, who are anxious to collaborate with each other -- to create devices and applications that solve specific local problems. Smart cities will be places that foster creativity, where citizens are generators of ideas, services and solutions, rather than subservient and passive recipients of them."

Haque says that we should abandon the dream of ubiquitous sensors and extraordinary networks because for most of the world such initiatives will be unaffordable for a long, long time. "Even if [cities] could find funding for the sensor hardware and installation costs, the on-going maintenance would be enormous," he writes. "The sheer volume of accessible data being transmitted would force huge investment in data centres and other IT infrastructure." So what should we concentrate on? He says that companies like IBM and Cisco should concentrate on developing "a flexible system that can dynamically adjust to changes, one that responds to unpredictable phenomena in a way that is not planned, and that harnesses the creative capacity of inhabitants." Rather than a one-size-fits-all solution, "citizens should be able to adjust and rewire the smart city as needed to solve problems and overcome obstacles in their own lives."

Haque agrees that both "corporations and governments ... have a major role to play in the smart city." But his belief is that they should make "data openly available for coders to build upon." Frankly, that's not likely to happen for a lot of data. Proprietary data remains too valuable an asset. I do, however, agree with his suggestion that corporations and governments should "make it easy for citizens themselves to create and contribute their own data." Haque concludes:

"The entry of pervasive computing into the city cannot be seen as a 'one-stop-shop' that will solve all of our problems from pollution to traffic management. Despite the best intentions of Cisco and IBM, connecting systems and bridging data will not by itself solve tough issues. At best, such systems will likely just provide greater visibility of urban problems. However, empowering citizens to find and build their own solutions dynamically may yet allow the full potential of smart cities to be realised."

I agree with Haque that all stakeholders must be engaged and stay engaged. That means that they must see tangible benefits from the initiatives that are implemented; especially if we expect them to continue to create and contribute their own data.

Big Data and Big Brother

"In our haste to study larger and larger amounts of data and find information," writes Christopher Taylor, "there's a point getting lost in the excitement ... those are people who often haven't given their permission for their data to be used for just any purpose. This isn't a small problem or isolated problem. The use of consumer data to understand the marketplace is one thing, but we've gone beyond the question of what's selling well." ["Privacy Rules are the First Casualty of Big Data," DZone, 8 March 2013] In numerous previous posts, I've noted that privacy issues are the 600-pound gorilla in the big data room. Taylor insists, "The data about the purchase has become as important as the purchase itself and less likely to be scrutinized for privacy than ever before." Because so much analysis is being done behind corporate firewalls, protecting privacy rests on the shoulders of corporate data scientists and statisticians performing the analysis. Because self-regulation is the norm, Taylor asserts that "new levels of responsibility" have been created "for those who collect, hold and use all of that data." Unfortunately, not all of these individuals (or the bosses who direct them) are scrupulous. Taylor concludes, "The biggest challenge of Big Data isn't the storage or processing. The single biggest challenge, a challenge many don't see or aren't talking about, is the need to govern data in ways that protect the individual from manipulation, fraud or worse."

Quentin Hardy writes, "Even without knowing your name, increasingly, everything about you is out there. Whether and how you guard your privacy in an online world we are building up every day has become increasingly urgent." ["Rethinking Privacy in an Era of Big Data," New York Times, 4 June 2012] Data collection strategies have become so sophisticated I'm not sure that individuals are now able to guard their online privacy with any assurance. Hardy reports that Danah Boyd, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, last year told participants attending a conference at Berkeley, "Privacy is a source of tremendous tension and anxiety in Big Data. It's a general anxiety that you can't pinpoint, this odd moment of creepiness." The "creepiness" factor is primarily attached to the notion of big brother watching your every online move. Hardy continues:

"Privacy is not a universal or timeless quality. It is redefined by who one is talking to, or by the expectations of the larger society. In some countries, a woman's ankle is a private matter; in some times and places, sexual orientations away from the norm are deeply private, or publicly celebrated. Privacy, Ms. Boyd notes, is not the same as security or anonymity. It is an ability to have control over one's definition within an environment that is fully understood. Something, arguably, no one has anymore."

That's the rub. I appreciate the fact that Hardy points out that there are differences between anonymity, security, and privacy. The first two are more easily dealt with than the latter. We all understand that companies want to collect and analyze data to help them sell the right product to the right person at the right time. And most of us know that, like ants, we leave a scent of activity that follows us through our online surfing. Companies must legally tell us how they intend to use the data they collect and most of us click the button indicating that we have read the privacy notice without really having done so. We rely on geeks, nerds, and lawyers to read them for us and we trust they are forcing companies to be fair and reasonable. That could be a mistake. Mary E. Shacklett writes, "In many cases, the data collecting is far more comprehensive than people imagine it to be, thanks to new ways to plumb the data, such as reality mining, which gathers and analyzes information from machine-generated data that is capable of predicting individuals' social behavior." To learn more about reality mining, watch the attached video, which features MIT's Professor Alex "Sandy" Pentland.

Despite his work on reality mining, Professor Pentland believes that companies can establish mutually beneficial relationships with consumers so that they willingly provide access to important marketing data. For more on his views, see my post entitled Big Data Dilemmas. Even Shacklett agrees that there are times when reality tracking can provide valuable benefits. She explains:

"If you're an online retailer, you've got a matter of seconds (while the customer is on your website) to consummate a sale. The better you are at predictive selling, the better your sales numbers will be. If you're a healthcare services provider monitoring Alzheimer's patients in their homes, the more real-time data you can collect based on their whereabouts, activity sensors placed in their homes, and on their cellphones, the easier it will be to intervene if patients need help and are unable to request it. If you're a metropolitan area monitoring city traffic flows, the more up-to-the-minute data you can collect about developing traffic jams, the better you can preempt complications by sending out messages to roadside e-billboards that inform motorists of upcoming congestion and advise them on alternate routes. You may be able to control traffic lights more effectively to control the flow of vehicles in the congested area. If you're a financial institution, the more you know about a person's buying patterns (and potentially, even the people they associate with in social media channels) the likelier you will be able to reach out to more customers with the right products. The balance enterprises need to strike in using this data is how far they should go to exploit this vast morass of data. This is the balance organizations must strike between helping the customer (and improving profits) and maintaining trust (which also builds profits)."

That balance between use and abuse of data is not easy to achieve. Shacklett concludes, "The data is out there and tools are available to pull it all together, but organizations must walk a fine line so they don't frighten prospects or existing customers away. It is a balancing act, and corporate reputations depend on getting it right." Professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, from Oxford University, and Kenneth Neil Cukier, from The Economist, agree that the risk of abuse is increasing. They call it the "dark side" of big data. ["Big Data - and its Dark Side," Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 6 March 2013] They believe, "The power of big data -- analyzing huge swaths of information to uncover insights and make predictions that were largely impossible in the past -- is poised to transform business and society. Fueling it is the realization that data has a value beyond the primary purpose for which it was collected. Yet there is a dark side. Privacy is eroded like never before. And a new harm emerges: predictions about human behavior that may result in penalties prior to actual the infraction being committed." That proposition should sound very familiar to anyone who watched the movie thriller "Minority Report."

Concerns about privacy continue to rise and will only continue to do so as the so-called "Internet of Things" becomes a reality. Richard Nieva comments, "As the landscape around connected devices begins to take shape, ... the copious amounts of data that devices will be collecting on consumers ad nauseam ... present a sticky situation for those concerned with privacy." ["Privacy and the Internet of things," PandoDaily, 10 April 2013] Nieva believes "there is still a way to shape the discussion." Vrunda Rathod, from Engine.is, an organization that works with startups and government to create public policy, told Nieva, "Consumers are going to give up privacy if they know what they are giving it up for." That pretty much mirrors Pentland's views.

Apparently a lot of people are coming to the same conclusion. That may be one reason that Fred Guterl reports that more and more people now agree that "users CAN and SHOULD have some measurable control over either collection or use of their data." ["How Much Control Will We Have over Our Personal Data?" Scientific American, 25 January 2013] He explains:

"We just saw the world move. Huge companies – and in particular, the large number of massive global companies that are not hide-bound by their attachment to traditional Internet advertising business lines – see clearly the vast revenue opportunities in the data stores they have been accumulating for decades about people, places, and things. And now – for reasons of both regulation and principle – they are highly motivated to start monetizing those data sets in ways that are clearly user-centric and pro-user. There’s a tremendous amount of valuable data that companies can’t presently access or deploy for corporate or user gain – untapped gold, a resource of tremendous revenue generation. With the right model — a 'good guy' paradigm that is user-centric — progressive companies could open the door to a huge new source of wealth creation. With a Field of Dreams-like focus on incentives ('if you offer them, they will come'), consumers will embrace the shift to owning and benefiting from their data."

If Guterl's observations are correct (and people like Pentland seem to believe they are), then individuals may find themselves having much more control over their personal data than they do today. There is no putting the genie of big data back in bottle; so providing people with more control over how their data is used is probably the best compromise that can be reached. It should be encouraging that large organizations are starting to support this concept.

Semantic Web and Semantic Search

Sir Timothy "Tim" Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, also coined the term "semantic web" nearly a score of years ago. It has taken most of two decades to develop technologies that hold the promise of making his vision a reality. Some people believe it may take another twenty years to perfect. Bill Kilpatrick, a student at Temple University's Fox School of Business, offers this brief, but informative, description of the semantic web concept. ["What Is The Semantic Web?," HASTAC, 15 November 2012] He writes:

"The technology aims to link up information, on a worldwide scale, in a way that is easily understood by machines. In essence, the Semantic Web will allow computers to process syntax closer to the way humans do by describing things in ways that computers can understand. For example, consider the following statements:

• The Rolling Stones are a rock band.
• Keith Richards plays guitar in the Rolling Stones.
• 'Brown Sugar' was recorded by the Rolling Stones.

"Those sentences, and their mutual relationship, are easily comprehended by most people. To be understood by computers, however, they would need the ability to process syntax semantically. This process is likened to the use of hyperlinks, which connect a current web page to another one, thus defining a relationship between the two pages. However, on the Semantic Web, an important difference is that such relationships could be recognized between any two or more resources, if the information is properly structured. To do this, the Semantic Web uses special languages for detailing web-based resources and information, such as RDF (Resource Description Framework). Information put into RDF files allows computers to find, extract, store, analyze, and process web-based information, which the Semantic Web can then describe."

Berners-Lee adds:

"When you use speech grammars and VoiceXML, you are describing possible speech conversations. When you use XML schema, you are describing documents. RDF is different. When you use RDF and OWL, you are talking about real things. ... Because this information is about real things, it is much more reusable. ... The general properties of a car, or a product of your company, of real things, change rarely. They are useful to many applcations. This background information is called the ontology, and OWL the language it is written in." ["Speech and the Future," World Wide Web Consortium, 14 September 2004]

A company called hakia, which advertises itself as "a pioneering company in semantic search technology, notes that a semantic search has to achieve at least ten things in order to be successful. ["What is Semantic Search?"] They are:

1- Handling morphological variations (like tenses, plurals, etc.)
2- Handling synonyms with correct senses (like cure, heal, treat,.. etc.)
3- Handling generalizations (like disease = GERD, ALS, AIDS, etc.)
4- Handling concept matching
5- Handling knowledge matching (like swine flu = H1N1, flu=influenza)
6- Handling natural language queries and questions (like what, where, how, why, etc.)
7- Ability to point to uninterrupted paragraph and the most relevant sentence
8- Ability to Customize and Organic Progress -- Semantic search allows customization in various stages by the owners of the system as well as the user of the system (i.e., such as semantic tagging) where search becomes a part of a social network formed around a business.
9- Ability to operate without relying on statistics, user behavior, and other artificial means
10- Ability to detect its own performance -- A semantic search engine is expected to produce a relevancy score that reflects the degree of meaning match. ... Accordingly, the search engine can understand its poor performance to automatically flag areas of improvement that is needed.

The ability to confidently discover semantic relationships dramatically improves search results. Hakia insists, "Conventional search systems (indexing keyword search) can no longer meet the increasing demand for quality results and time-saving practices in today's world, nor do they offer any room for progress for the future. As a result, semantic search has increasingly been the choice as the next step by many businesses during the last decade." It continues:

"Semantic search technology is based on a computerized system that understands content and query similar to how the human brain processes natural languages. Instead of matching the occurrence of words or symbols (as done in indexing systems), semantic search systems match concepts and their meaningful variations. As a result, a number of benefits emerge:

• Accuracy: Improves the accuracy of the search results exponentially
• Focus: Transforms search function from pointing a document to pointing a direct answer
• Engagement: Allows flexibility to use natural language queries, thus increases user engagement
• Intelligence: Enables semantic understanding of the user behavior via search analytics
• Control: Prevents manipulations from content providers and users
• Independence: Does not rely on external inputs (i.e., popularity) for base performance
• Progress: Allows customization, user input, organic improvement

These advantages result in indisputable return of investment that are reported in several enterprise-wide case studies."

Eric Savitz agrees that semantic search has the potential to change the business landscape dramatically. ["5 Ways Semantic Search Will Disrupt Business," Forbes, 20 June 2012] The reason he believes that semantic search has a promising future is because it can be used to help make sense of big data. He writes:

"As the Big Data dialogue progresses and the information onslaught grows more acute, a single technology has quietly evolved that holds the promise to put our data anxieties to rest and it's been here all along. One could even say that it was one of the origins of the Big Data challenge – semantic search. Semantic search significantly improves search accuracy and relevance by understanding a searcher's true intent and the contextual meaning of words. The technology considers the context of search, location, intent, word variation, synonyms, multiple meanings of words and foreign language to provide users with exactly what they are seeking. Say good-bye to the days of search results with endless pages of blue links."

Savitz believes there "are 5 areas where semantic search will disrupt and transform business and help solve for the global data obesity challenge." They are:

• SEO: By 2016, the interactive advertising business will reach $77 billion, according to Forrester. ... Semantic contextualization will enable better ... targeted ads based on a searcher's intent. One to one consumer/advertiser relationships will reach its full potential with semantic search. ...

• Database Management: Using semantic search to build new ways of analyzing the massive amounts of data that businesses are generating will allow them to identify new business opportunities. ...

• Drug Discovery: Using semantic search will allow streamlined access to critical information necessary for complex product development such as drug discovery. ... Semantic technology can help choose better candidates by using matching technology combined with scoring and ranking systems, saving money and re-filling the global drug pipeline.

• Travel: ... The next big transformation in [the] travel industry will be booking the complete travel package. Semantic search can dramatically simplify discovering destinations and activities, reduce the complexity involved with tailoring a vacation. ...

• Human Capital Management: ... Semantic search holds the promise of becoming the killer app in human capital management because its sophisticated recognition process enables finding the right needle in a million data haystacks.

The most important word in all of these discussions, according to Doc Sheldon, is "semantic." He writes, "'Semantic', ... is a qualifier that means a great deal in this context. It demands that a machine, or more accurately, the software that drives that machine, must understand the information in the way it was intended. Let's face it: most of us know a handful of human beings that are challenged in that regard." ["Semantic Search in 2025," Search Engine Watch, 6 November 2012] He continues:

"Indeed, for a machine to comprehend the meaning behind what a human has put to text, requires a certain amount of artificial intelligence. Humor, irony, and emotion certainly seemed to be beyond the conceivable limits of a computer program in 1994. Even in 2012, there are still some that doubt that such comprehension will be possible in the near future."

As the title of his post reveals, Sheldon believes that the semantic web will be a reality by 2025. He believes that all of the tools and data are in place to make this happen. They just need to be refined over the coming decade.

A Thought Probe Series on Tomorrow's Population, Big Data, and Personalized Predictive Analytics: Part 1, Getting Started

On Friday, for the next several weeks, I'll be posting a series of articles examining how the world is becoming more urbanized and how governments, businesses, and citizens must adapt to ensure that urban growth is done intelligently. I'll discuss how big data can help influence city planning and operations as well as help manufacturers and retailers ensure that their products and services are available to urbanites. These topics are generally grouped together under the topic of smart cities.

In the post entitled Hurricane Sandy and the Resilience of Cities, I indicated that I had more to say about cities and how to make them more resilient. I believe that resilient cities are smart cities. Dr. Boyd Cohen, a climate strategist, believes "the smart-cities movement is being held back by a lack of clarity and consensus around what a smart city is and what the components of a smart city actually are." ["What Exactly Is A Smart City?, Fast Company, 21 September 2012] He continues:

"While some people continue to take a narrow view of smart cities by seeing them as places that make better use of information and communication technology (ICT), the cities I work with ... all view smart cities as a broad, integrated approach to improving the efficiency of city operations, the quality of life for its citizens, and growing the local economy."

Although I'm a technology guy, I agree with Cohen that a broad definition of what constitutes a smart city is better than a narrow one. To show how various city sectors come together to make a smart city, Cohen has developed what he calls the Smart City Wheel. At the hub of the wheel, you find smart people, smart government, smart economy, smart environment, smart mobility, and smart living.

Cohen admits that his "model has been inspired by the work of many others." The fact that many others are working to make cities smarter should be encouraging, especially in the light of the fact that urbanization is occurring at an historical rate. Cohen indicates that "there are over 100 indicators to help cities track their performance with specific actions developed for specific needs" behind the model. He says that efforts to create a smart city should begin with three steps. They are: 1) Create a vision with citizen engagement; 2) Develop baselines, sets targets, and choose indicators; and, 3) Go lean.

Rick Robinson, an Executive Architect at IBM specializing in emerging technologies and Smarter Cities and a self-labeled Urban Technologist, has his own ideas about to get a smart cities program started. ["How Smarter Cities Get Started," The Urban Technologist, 26 July 2012] He writes:

"Many of the environmental, social and economic forces behind the transition to Smarter Cities are common everywhere; however, the capabilities that enable cities to act in response to them are usually very specific to individual cities. They depend on factors such as geographic location, the structure and performance of the local economy, the character of local communities, and the approach of leaders and stakeholders across the city. The relationships between those stakeholders and communities are crucial. Cities may aspire to encourage economic growth amongst small, high-technology businesses; or to stimulate innovation in service delivery by social enterprises; or to switch to more sustainable patterns of travel and energy usage. To act successfully to achieve any of these aims, long and complex chains of connections between individuals need to work effectively, from city leaders, through their organisations, to community and business associations such as small business forums, neighbourhood communities, and faith groups, to individual companies, their employees and citizens across the city."

Robinson makes an important point about the uniqueness of each urban area's situation. The only way to discover that uniqueness, and the connections that are critical for improving society, is through analysis of big data. As Robinson notes in his article, a "complex web of city systems" must be woven into a cohesiveness system working together towards the same objectives. He doesn't claim to have all of the answers about how this can be done, but he writes that there are observable "patterns in the behaviour of the cities who have made the most progress." He states it all starts with a plan.

"Cities already have plans, of course. In fact, often they have lots of plans – for the economy, for housing, for public service transformation, for marketing and for many other aspects of urban systems. What is really required in a Smarter City context, though, is a single plan that captures the vision and means for transformation; and that is collectively defined and owned by stakeholders across the city; not by any single organisation acting alone. It needs to be consistent with existing plans within individual domains of the city; and in time needs to influence those plans to develop and change."

While working in the risk management area several years ago, we noticed that, because large organizations have departmental silos, each department usually maintains its own mitigation and recovery plan. Because those plans aren't coordinated, actions necessary to make one plan work (like shutting down a system) could negatively impact the mitigation plans of other departments. Only through effective coordination could the overall objective of protecting the organization be realized. The same thing holds true when developing a plan for a smart city; plans must be coordinated (if not integrated) so that various groups aren't working at cross purposes. Technology, like the Sense, Think/Learn, Act™ system being developed at Enterra Solutions, can be used to code natural language plans and then analyze them to discover conflicts, redundancies, non-obvious connections (inferences) and so forth. The same technology can be used to discover the unique qualities of neighborhoods and the important connections between stakeholders that are often not easy, or obvious, to understand. Robinson continues:

"A Smarter City plan needs to set out a vision that is clear and succinct, often expressed in a single sentence capturing the future that the city aspires to. That vision is usually supported by a handful of statements that summarise its impact on key aspects of the city – such as wealth creation, inclusivity and sustainability. Together these statements are something that everyone involved in the city can understand, agree to and promote. ... To make the vision deliverable, a set of quantified objectives against which progress can be measured are vital. In IBM as we work with cities to establish these measures, we're learning that social, financial, environmental, strategic and brand values are all important and related. They could include improvements in education attainment; creation of jobs; increase in the GDP contribution by small businesses in specific sectors; reduction in carbon impact in specific systems or across the city as a whole; improvements in measures of health and well-being; and may include some qualitative as well as quantifiable criteria. It is against such objectives that specific programmes and initiatives can be designed in order to make real progress towards the city’s vision.

In other words, Robinson agrees with Cohen that creating a vision is a critical first step towards a smarter city. Robinson believes that the vision is also critical for aligning stakeholder actions for achieving success. To ensure that stakeholders stay engaged and motivated, Robinson recommends "a mixture of long and short-term projects across city domains; and in particular that [the plan] includes some 'quick wins' – in attempting to work in new partnerships to achieve new objectives, nothing builds confidence and trust like early success." Like Cohen, Robinson believes that everyone must be engaged for a plan to succeed. He writes:

"Once stakeholders from a city ecosystem have come together to define a vision and a plan to achieve it, it's vital that they maintain a regular and empowered decision-making forum to drive progress. The delivery of a Smarter City plan relies on many separate investments and activities being undertaken by many independent individuals and organisations, justified on an ongoing basis against their various short-term financial obligations. Keeping such a complex programme on track to achieve cohesive city-level outcomes is an enormous challenge. Such forums are often chaired by the city's local authority; and they often involve representatives from local universities who act as trusted advisors on topics such as urban systems, sustainability and technology. They can include representatives from local employers, faith and community groups, institutions such as sports and retail centres, and trusted partners in domains such as technology, transport, city planning, architecture and energy. The broader the forum, the more completely the city is represented; but these are 'coalitions of the willing', and each city begins with its own unique mix. In fact, a formative event or workshop that brings such city stakeholders together for the first time, is often the catalyst for the development of a Smarter City plan in the first place."

Like many projects, initial excitement for smart city initiatives can be high and then taper off over time. Keeping people engaged is absolutely essential. That won't happen if the smart cities movement is viewed as a passing trend. Ben Rooney writes, "In the pantheon of Next Big Thing trends, the concept of 'smart cities' is one of the trendiest." ["'Smart City' Planning Needs the Right Balance," Wall Street Journal, 27 September 2012] Rooney's fear is that smart cities initiatives will be driven by well-meaning, but clueless, governments and that "there is a fear that such top-down programs may threaten the very vitality that attracts people to cities in the first place." Done correctly, smart cities should increase the vitality of cities not diminish it. That's why Cohen and Robinson are so insistent that all stakeholders need to be engaged.

Rooney agrees that smart cities initiatives are generally based on data analysis. He claims, however, that doing so is nothing new. He explains:

"One of the first uses of data to drive civic policy was more than 150 years ago when during the 1854 London cholera outbreak surgeon John Snow plotted cases on a map. He traced the outbreak to a water pump in Broad—now Broadwick—Street. When the pump handle was taken off, the number of cases immediately began to decline."

Imagine that kind of analysis being applied to urban challenges based on enormous amounts of data and using today's massive computer power. Health and safety are very important areas where connectivity and analysis can play a vital role. This value was recently demonstrated during the investigation that followed the terrorist bombings in Boston. Video and photographic evidence were critical in catching the perpetrators. Enterra Solutions has helped install a system at the Port of Philadelphia that has been recognized for helping make the port more secure. Holt Logistics' Chief of Security, Kurt Ferry, praises the system as "an example of a successful collaboration between private and public sector organizations using grant funds to enhance regional maritime security." ["Security Grants Help Improve Domain Awareness: A Success Story," The Beacon, Winter 2011] According to Rooney, cities of the future (like one being built in Portugal) will be even more connected. He writes:

"PlanIT is a €10 billion, four-year project to build a new smart city in Portugal to house some 225,000 people. With sensors built into every building it presents itself as an urban utopia where smart buildings can sense our presence and anticipate our needs. But behind this drive for efficiency is a fear that optimizing for data will drive out the inefficiencies that imbue cities with their humanity; cinematic history is littered with cautionary urban dystopias, from Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' to the Wachowski brothers' 'The Matrix.' As Ben Hammersley, the U.K. prime minister's ambassador to Tech City, told the audience at the recent WSJ Tech Cafe event, optimizing is a dangerous thing unless you are quite clear on what exactly you are optimizing."

You recall that one of Cohen's first steps was to "go lean." Rooney is warning that you can go too lean. I agree. Hammersley an adviser to the Danish city of Aarhus, gave the Tech Cafe audience a specific example of what he was talking about. He told him:

"'Most smart-city initiatives are about optimizing the route for commuters getting to the office,' he told the audience. 'But Aarhus, which has the highest number of pavement cafés in the country—it is essentially one huge café—doesn't want to optimize that. The lesson is be careful what you measure because you may end up optimizing on the wrong thing.'"

That's where big data analysis and relationship discovery technology can play a major role in helping cities become the best they can be. Rooney labels the use of big data as "a bottom-up" approach to smart city planning. He writes:

"A very different kind of smart-city initiative has had success in cities as diverse culturally and geographically as San Francisco and Singapore, and is coming to Europe. Called Urban Prototyping, the movement approaches cities from a bottom-up—not top-down—viewpoint. Peter Hirshberg, who lives in San Francisco, is the man behind the drive, which aims to bring together programmers, planners, activists, and even artists to use data and technology to solve problems in cities. 'There needed to be a dialog between people doing interesting things and the folks running the city,' he said. 'San Francisco is awash with data, but it turned out that inside the bus system the guys use Walkie Talkies and clipboards to track busses that break down.' Over one weekend in July 2011 ... developers built an iPad app to solve this problem. 'Everyone wants the busses to run properly. This was a case of citizens getting together and solving a problem.' He cites dozens of other examples. 'We had a festival called "The Summer of Smart". The head of public works for San Francisco came along with a proposal. "Where I see public art I don’t see graffiti," he told us. "Where I see graffiti, I don’t see public art."' The result was a project called Art Here that brings together the two."

Although it sounds great, Rooney admits that even the best-intentioned efforts need champions who can make things happen. He reports that nine months after the bus app had been developed for the city, it still hadn't been implemented. That kind of underwhelming response can trigger both anger and ambivalence. As Rooney put it, "City Hall has proved to be the movement’s biggest challenge." He concludes, "If this movement is to make a real impact on the lives of city dwellers it will take more than some well-intentioned hackers and a lot of pizza."

I'm speculating that is why one of the main sectors on Cohen's Smart Cities Wheel is Smart People. Based on advertisements run during the last political season, it's clear that we could use a lot more smart people in government. Robinson agrees that "it’s impossible to understate the importance of individual people in making cities Smarter. The functioning of a city is the combined effect of the behaviour of all of the people within it; and Smarter City systems will not change anything unless they engage with and meet the needs of those individuals." Fortunately, I'm an optimist. I believe that technology can be used to create a better future and smarter cities.

Robots Learn to Talk to Each Other

"As I gaze in the coming year's crystal ball," writes Miranda Mulligan, "I suspect that, at this time next year, we will be talking about 2013 being the rise of the robot." ["The Rise of the Robot," Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab, 19 December 2012] On the other hand, George Dvorsky reports that instead of us talking about robots, robots may be talking about us. ["Robots can now collaborate over their very own Internet," io9, 11 March 2013] He writes:

"One of the more serious limitations facing the robotics industry today is that each bot it produces is an island unto itself. Worse, robots' primitive AI doesn't allow for intuitive thinking or problem solving — what's known as artificial general intelligence. Looking to overcome this problem, researchers from several different European universities have developed a cloud-computing platform for robots that will allow them to collaborate — and make each other smarter — over the Internet."

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is predicted to grow faster than human communication in the years ahead (see my post entitled Machine-to-Machine Communication). The new cloud-computing platform discussed by Dvorksy is "called Rapyuta: The RoboEarth Cloud Engine." It "is an open source repository of accumulated information for robots. Its name is taken from the movie Castle in the Sky by Hayao Miyazaki, in which Rapyuta is the castle inhabited by robots." Dvorsky included the following video as part of his article, which explains why cloud computing is essential if robots are going to get smarter.

Admittedly, most of us don't have a Robby the Robot waiting to serve us. We're lucky if we have a Roomba that relieves us of vacuuming. But researchers believe that more and more technologies are going to be developed that will allow robots to find their way into our daily lives. One reason this will occur is because, as the video show, much of the computational heavy lifting will be done in the cloud. Dvorsky reports, "The platform will allow robots who are connected to the Internet to directly access powerful computational, storage, and communications technologies, including those of modern data centers." A news release from the AlphaGalileo Foundation states, "By making enterprise-scale computing infrastructure available to any robot with a wireless connection, the researchers believe that the new computing platform will help pave the way towards lighter, cheaper, more intelligent robots." ["Cloud-computing platform for robots launched," 11 March 2013] In that release, Mohanarajah Gajamohan, researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and Technical Lead of the project, stated:

"The RoboEarth Cloud Engine is particularly useful for mobile robots, such as drones or autonomous cars, which require lots of computation for navigation. It also offers significant benefits for robot co-workers, such as factory robots working alongside humans, which require large knowledge databases, and for the deployment of robot teams."

Dvorsky admits this is exciting news, but he indicates "the concept is not without its problems." He writes that two things in particular concern him.

"First, anything that's connected to the Internet is inherently hackable. This system will need to be crazy secure, otherwise the robots could be controlled by a malicious source (either individually, or collectively). And second, the query response-and-match algorithms will need to be very strict to prevent a robot from getting the wrong instructions. For example, a robot could ask the cloud for instructions on how to perform task x, but the cloud-engine could misunderstand and provide it with instructions for task y. The robot, because it's stupid, will then execute task y. This could be dangerous, and even potentially catastrophic in some contexts."

A third concern is connectivity. We've all experienced dropped calls. It could be hazardous for a cloud-connected robot to lose connectivity during a critical activity. Although these concerns are genuine, smart people will discover ways to create failsafe systems and work-arounds. The fact of the matter is that, in the future, we are going to be working and living in much closer proximity to robots than we have in the past. Science fiction writers worry that M2M communication will result in robots talking behind our backs (or over our heads) to build their own society and eventually become the "Terminators" of movie fame. Moshe Y. Vardi, a professor of computational engineering at Rice University, notes that main villain in the Terminator movies was a cloud-like AI system called "Skynet, a self-aware artificial intelligence." ["The Consequences of Machine Intelligence," The Atlantic, 25 October 2012] Although Vardi doesn't see the rise of Terminators anytime soon, like Mulligan, he does see robots making an ever greater impact in our lives. He writes:

"It is in the context of the Great Recession that people started noticing that while machines have yet to exceed humans in intelligence, they are getting intelligent enough to have a major impact on the job market. ... While the loss of millions of jobs over the past few years has been attributed to the Great Recession, whose end is not yet in sight, it now seems that technology-driven productivity growth is at least a major factor. Such concerns have gone mainstream in the past year, with articles in newspapers and magazines carrying titles such as 'More Jobs Predicted for Machines, Not People,' 'Marathon Machine: Unskilled Workers Are Struggling to Keep Up With Technological Change,' 'It's a Man vs. Machine Recovery,' and 'The Robots Are Winning.'"

In light of the recent "rise of the robots," Vardi recalls an article written in 2000 for Wired magazine by Bill Joy, whom he calls "a very mainstream technologist as co-founder of Sun Microsystems." The article was entitled "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us." Vardi insists some 13 years on, Bill Joy's question deserves an answer. He writes:

"Does the future need us? By this I mean to ask, if machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do? I have been getting various answers to this question, but I find none satisfying. A typical answer to my raising this question is to tell me that I am a Luddite. (Luddism is defined as distrust or fear of the inevitable changes brought about by new technology.) This is an ad hominem attack that does not deserve a serious answer. A more thoughtful answer is that technology has been destroying jobs since the start of the Industrial Revolution, yet new jobs are continually created. The AI Revolution, however, is different than the Industrial Revolution. In the 19th century machines competed with human brawn. Now machines are competing with human brain. Robots combine brain and brawn. We are facing the prospect of being completely out-competed by our own creations. Another typical answer is that if machines will do all of our work, then we will be free to pursue leisure activities. The economist John Maynard Keynes addressed this issue already in 1930, when he wrote, "The increase of technical efficiency has been taking place faster than we can deal with the problem of labour absorption." Keynes imagined 2030 as a time in which most people worked only 15 hours a week, and would occupy themselves mostly with leisure activities. I do not find this to be a promising future. First, if machines can do almost all of our work, then it is not clear that even 15 weekly hours of work will be required. Second, I do not find the prospect of leisure-filled life appealing. I believe that work is essential to human well-being. Third, our economic system would have to undergo a radical restructuring to enable billions of people to live lives of leisure. Unemployment rate in the US is currently under 9 percent and is considered to be a huge problem. Finally, people tell me that my concerns apply only to a future that is so far away that we need not worry about it. I find this answer to be unacceptable. 2045 is merely a generation away from us. We cannot shirk responsibility from concerns for the welfare of the next generation."

I agree with Vardi that a future filled with nothing but leisure activity doesn't sound very fulfilling (or likely). The much more likely scenario is that robots, as they learn to communicate better, will eventually become "Collaborators" with humans rather than their Terminators. Obviously, there is still much to be worked out. If robots and humans to do collaborate much more closely in the years ahead, then robots will need to learn how to interact better with their less robust colleagues. To that end, Alicia Clegg reports that some researchers are studying how to teach robots some much-needed manners. ["Robots take lessons in body language," Financial Times, 28 June 2012] Clegg writes:

"While her colleagues pore over algorithms, debug software codes and tinker with articulated arms and gripper hands, Leila Takayama has been teaching a new generation of robots some manners. A research scientist at Willow Garage, a Silicon Valley robot developer, her etiquette lessons are basic − move to the left of a corridor when someone is approaching from the right, don't hog the centre in an elevator when there are other passengers who want to get in. Nonetheless, how well her charges − known as personal robots − master such niceties could have a big bearing on the welcome that awaits them when they make it out of the laboratory and into wider society. Robots are already commonplace in factories, typically performing programmed tasks. Other specialised bots have been developed for hospital settings ranging from remote-controlled mobile robots, allowing doctors to examine patients over video-links, to delivery carts that ferry meals and medication around. Some homes boast robotic toys and robotic vacuum cleaners. But for robots to become more widespread, they need to be smart enough to cope with human idiosyncrasies whether in the living room or even out on the streets."

As I've pointed out in past posts, humans really haven't proven to be great prognosticators and so I'm not really expecting to walk the streets with robots any time soon. But AI systems will increasingly control the machines we use to make our lives safer, better, and more effective. M2M collaboration will play an important role in the future, even if machines only communicate directly with each other and not through a cloud-computing platform. So I say, let them talk.

Globalization's Bed of Nails, Part 3: The Transformationalists and Traditionalists

In the first two segments of this series, I looked at the optimistic and pessimistic sides of globalization. In both of those posts, as in this one, I used a post by an anonymous British blogger as the basis of each sides' various arguments. ["Theories of Globalisation," realsociology, 9 February 2013] In this post, I'll first look at what he (or she) calls the "the Transformationalist View of Globalisation." By that, I believe he means the views of those who believe that globalization has transformative qualities (both good and bad). I assume that transformationalists want to encourage good qualities and discourage bad ones.

The first argument that the blogger says is made by transformationalists is that "'Trade' has many complex formations. So it is difficult to say that it is either good or bad. Besides Free Trade, Fair Trade is expanding, and there is also illegal trade – in drugs for example." He goes on to note, "The Fairtrade Foundation has many examples of how trade can benefit people the world over in all sorts of different ways." On the other hand, he notes that all of the technologies that have fostered international trade can also be used by criminal and terrorist organizations to pursue their nefarious activities.

The second argument addresses the topic of transnational companies. The optimists saw TNCs as a force primarily for good and the pessimists saw them as primarily a force for exploitation. The blogger writes, "TNCs operate in dozens of countries. Clearly there are going to be winners and losers in different cases. Also governments the world over regulate international companies in different ways." I'm not exactly sure what transformationalist argument he is trying to make. I'm assuming the point is that global corporations are transformative because they operate somewhere on the globe 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. They have their own cultures, policies, agendas, and so forth. They are also the source of many of the challenges associated with globalization, such as, pollution, working conditions, infrastructure stress, and so forth.

Transformationalists also point out that globalization has forever changed consumerism. Like trade, however, in and of itself "consumerism isn't just good or bad." The blogger claims that increased consumerism has affected global culture, which he says "is characterised by hybridity – new brands come into contact with local cultures and they are modified by those cultures, creating new products." He notes that some people refer to this as "glocalism" or "glocalization." As I noted Part 2 of this series, this is particularly true in the food and drink sector. Successful international companies learn to adapt to local cultures.

One of the strongest arguments that transformationalists make about the transformative powers of globalization is in the area of politics. "Globalisation is characterised by new political formations, not just the spread of democracy or the spread of American dominance." U.S. politicians have learned that you can encourage democracy, but you can't control the direction it will take. Elections in Egypt, for example, certainly didn't achieve the results that U.S. politicians had hoped for. Economics is another area in which globalization has a significant transformative affect. The blogger points to China and the fact that it has transformed from a closed, highly-centralized economy to a hybrid economy that now embraces capitalism.

The next transformative aspect of globalization involves technology. Africa surprised the world by leapfrogging over telephone landline infrastructures and embracing mobile phone technology. There are now more mobile devices in the world than there are people. Technology has also fostered activities like crowdsourcing, microfinance, mobile banking, and a myriad of social media outlets that have empowered many previously disenfranchised segments of society. With advances in alternative energy sources, like wind and solar, bringing down costs, it is not inconceivable that some developing countries will also be able to leapfrog large electrical grids and rely on smaller, more affordable, local or regional distribution systems.

The final transformative aspect of globalization that the author discusses involves the shattering of traditional ideas and behaviors. He writes, "Anthony Giddens argues that 'detraditionalisation' is part of Globalisation – People increasingly challenge traditions as they come into contact with new ideas." As with most other aspects of transformationalism, challenging traditions is not inherently good or bad. Some traditions need challenging and some deserve to be protected. The blogger concludes, "Read KT’s blog post on 'detraditionalisation' and summarise Gidden's view of what effect globalisation has on culture – Is this closer to the optimist or transformationalist view of globalisation?"

The final view of globalization that the blogger examines is the Traditionalist view. According to the author, adherents of this viewpoint believe that the effects of globalisation are exaggerated. In fact, some people refer to all the hype as "globaloney." ["The case against globaloney," The Economist, 20 April 2011] The Economist article notes that much of what journalists write involves simplification and/or exaggeration. It claims that assertion is certainly true when it comes to what has been written about globalization. It states:

"There is a lively discussion about whether it is good or bad. But everybody seems to agree that globalisation is a fait accompli: that the world is flat, if you are a (Tom) Friedmanite, or that the world is run by a handful of global corporations, if you are a (Naomi) Kleinian."

The staff at The Economist claims that at least one academic has managed to "keep his head" on the subject of globalization. He is Professor Pankaj Ghemawat of IESE Business School in Spain. It explains:

"For more than a decade he has subjected the simplifiers and exaggerators to a barrage of statistics. He has now set out his case—that we live in an era of semi-globalisation at most—in a single volume, 'World 3.0', that should be read by anyone who wants to understand the most important economic development of our time. Mr Ghemawat points out that many indicators of global integration are surprisingly low. Only 2% of students are at universities outside their home countries; and only 3% of people live outside their country of birth. Only 7% of rice is traded across borders. Only 7% of directors of S&P 500 companies are foreigners—and, according to a study a few years ago, less than 1% of all American companies have any foreign operations. Exports are equivalent to only 20% of global GDP. Some of the most vital arteries of globalisation are badly clogged: air travel is restricted by bilateral treaties and ocean shipping is dominated by cartels. Far from 'ripping through people's lives', as Arundhati Roy, an Indian writer, claims, globalisation is shaped by familiar things, such as distance and cultural ties. Mr Ghemawat argues that two otherwise identical countries will engage in 42% more trade if they share a common language than if they do not, 47% more if both belong to a trading block, 114% more if they have a common currency and 188% more if they have a common colonial past. ... Mr Ghemawat also explodes the myth that the world is being taken over by a handful of giant companies. The level of concentration in many vital industries has fallen dramatically since 1950 and remained roughly constant since 1980: 60 years ago two car companies accounted for half of the world's car production, compared with six companies today. He also refutes the idea that globalisation means homogenisation. The increasing uniformity of cities' skylines worldwide masks growing choice within them, to which even the most global of companies must adjust. McDonald's serves vegetarian burgers in India and spicy ones in Mexico, where Coca-Cola uses cane sugar rather than the corn syrup it uses in America."

The article concludes, "People seem to have a natural tendency to overestimate the distance-destroying quality of technology." If you are optimistic about globalization, there is a lot more that can be accomplished. If you're a pessimist, apparently there isn't too much you have try and undo. Considering those facts, it's remarkable that globalization has accomplished as much as it has over the past few decades.

Regardless of your point of view, there is a set of arguments that supports your position; and, there probably isn't a competing set of arguments that is going to convince you that another point of view is more correct. Pessimists only focus on the dark side of the subject (and, unfortunately, there is a lot to write about). Nevertheless, globalization's proponents have a good tale to tell (and the good that has been accomplished has far outweighed the bad). Can we do better? Of course we can. But we should face the future armed with a broad perspective of the benefits and pitfalls associated with globalization (or with whatever scheme eventually replaces it).

Globalization's Bed of Nails, Part 2: The Pessimists

In my last post, I looked at the optimistic side of globalization. I used a post by an anonymous British blogger as the basis of arguments presented in that post. ["Theories of Globalisation," realsociology, 9 February 2013] In that same post, he (or she) also presented the arguments raised by globalization pessimists, transformationalists, and transnationalists (the latter two categories will be discussed in the final segment of this series). This post will look at the arguments presented by individuals who are not so keen about the concept of globalization.

The first argument they make is that "increased trade has had unequal benefits." Even globalization optimists admit that globalization has been uneven and the result has created a spiky world. Optimists, however, would argue that dissing globalization because it hasn't benefited everyone equally would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Globalization's first beneficiaries were developed countries as multinational corporations moved into new markets; but, it has been Asian countries that have ultimately benefited most. Spreading the beneficial effects of globalization to the rest of the world certainly needs to be a priority.

The second argument raised by pessimists is that transnational corporations "pollute [and] extract resources from and exploit cheap labour in the developing world." Have there been abuses? Undeniably. Does that mean that developing countries will be better off if large corporations are forced to leave those countries? I believe that argument would be hard to make. That doesn't mean, however, that large corporations shouldn't be held to certain standards to ensure that they don't conduct activities that pollute and exploit resources (including human resources).

The third argument raised is that "culture may be increasingly global, but this mainly means Americanisation." Although there are concerns about local cultures being lost as a result of globalization, many large companies (especially those involved in the food and drink industry) have found that they must adapt to local tastes in order to succeed. Pessimists point out the ubiquity of McDonald's, Coca Cola, Walmart, and Starbucks as evidence of the Americanization of the world. Bhaskar Chakravorti, director of Tufts’ University's Institute for Business in the Global Context, paints quite a different picture. "He says all these examples represent 'the myth of American global market power' — they are outliers that disguise the real failing of American multinationals to succeed around the world, and especially in fast-growing emerging markets." ["Why Most American Companies Are Terrible At Globalization," by Tim Fernholz, Business Insider, 5 March 2013] Fernholz provides an excerpt from a forthcoming paper written by Chakravorti and his colleague Gita Raohas:

"In 2010, emerging markets represented 36% of global GDP; these markets already account for the majority of the world's oil and steel consumption, 46% of world retail sales, 52% of all purchases of motor vehicles and 82% of mobile phone subscriptions. With two-thirds of global growth coming from these markets, in a decade they will account for the majority of the world’s economic value. Yet U.S. companies derived less than 10% of their overall revenues from emerging markets: about as little as 7%, according to HSBC estimates for 2010. The 100 largest companies from the developed world overall made 17% of their revenues from emerging markets, according to a McKinsey report; in other words, the U.S. lags not only emerging market firms in capturing share in emerging markets, but it lags the developed world overall. By considering the difference between the 'absolute potential' represented by the 36% number or, to take a much more conservative benchmark, the global peer average of 17% and the U.S. share of 7%, we derive two measures of the gap – and the degree to which U.S. industry has not participated in global growth."

In other words, concerns about the Americanization of the world are probably exaggerated. Fernholz has a lot more to say about why U.S. companies haven't done better at globalizing, but that's a topic for another day.

Another argument raised by globalization pessimists is that, rather than spreading democracy like the optimists claim, it has spread "U.S Military power, as outlined by John Pilger in the War on Democracy," and has encouraged the U.S. to spend "almost $700 billion on its military every year." I would suggest that the fall of the Soviet Union had more to do with the spread of U.S. military power than the globalization. That event unleashed former clients to use the military hardware they had received from the Soviet Union (mostly in internecine civil wars) and the world became a much more dangerous place. At the same time, the U.S. found itself the sole remaining superpower capable of dealing with regional conflicts. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on U.S. soil further convinced American politicians that it needed to engage its foes "over there" in order to protect citizens at home. This strategy has certainly been controversial, but laying that strategy at globalization's doorstep doesn't really advance the debate.

The next argument raised is interesting. It claims that "the spread of global media really means the spread of massive media firms such as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, with programmes such as Fox News presenting a pro-American view of the world. Also think of popular culture – X factor, and Hollywood and global advertising. The pessimist view on such aspects of the global media is that they lead to increasing cultural homogenisation." This is a companion argument to the Americanization argument raised earlier. What I find interesting about this argument is that it specifically refers to Fox News, a well-known conservative news outlet that is a source of much anti-globalization sentiment. In fact, I would place Fox News among the ranks of globalization pessimists. Unlike most pessimists, who believe that globalization is bad for the world, Fox News and supporters of its views, believe that globalization is bad for America.

The next argument raised by the pessimists involves urbanization. "Zygmunt Bauman argues that global cities are best described as 'fortress cities' – especially in the developing world cities are places of huge inequalities where the rich hide themselves away in exclusive gated communities and the poor are left to the slums." It would be hard to argue with the fact that cities are "places of huge inequalities." Most analysts argue, however, that cities are also places of huge opportunities. To read more about this view of cities, read my post entitled Will Cities Save Us? In that post, I cite an article by Charles Kenny. ["In Praise of Slums, Foreign Policy, 13 August 2012] Kenny doesn't sugarcoat conditions found in urban slums. He writes about "the stench of open sewers, the choking smoke of smoldering trash heaps, [and] the pools of fetid drinking water filmed with the rainbow color of chemical spills" that found in many slums. But he also argues that poor people living in slums are generally better off than poor people living in rural areas. He explains:

"Most people who've experienced both rural and urban poverty choose to stay in slums rather than move back to the countryside. That includes hundreds of millions of people in the developing world over the past few decades -- and 130 million migrant workers in China alone. ... For all the real horrors of slum existence today, it still usually beats staying in a village. Start with the simple reason that most people leave the countryside: money. Moving to cities makes economic sense -- rich countries are urbanized countries, and rich people are predominantly town and city dwellers. ... Slum dwellers may be at the bottom of the urban heap, but most are better off than their rural counterparts. Although about half the world's population is urban, only a quarter of those living on less than a dollar a day live in urban areas."

For a really pessimistic view of globalization, read what Gail Tverberg has to say. ["12 Reasons Why Globalization is a Huge Problem," The Energy Collective, 24 February 2013] In a nutshell, she says that globalization is a huge problem because it negatively affects the developed world -- especially the U.S. (i.e., globalization allows developing countries to use up resources too fast, raises energy prices too high, transfers jobs to lower cost countries, transfers consumption to emerging market countries, transfers investment spending to developing countries, and encourages global interdependence). It's good grist for a Fox News story.

On the whole, the pessimistic view of globalization certainly highlights its shortcomings, but it falls short of convincing me that globalization has been bad for the world. The fact that so many people have been raised out of poverty in the past half century convinces me otherwise. In my opinion, we should discuss globalization without praising or burying it. That also seems to be the view of those who see globalization as transformative. I'll discuss their arguments in the concluding segment of this series.

Globalization's Bed of Nails, Part 1: The Optimists

"The globalization paradigm," David Brooks wrote half a decade ago, "leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations." ["The Cognitive Age," New York Times, 2 May 2008] Brooks believes such notions are destructive and counterproductive. He argued that we are entering "the cognitive age paradigm" which "emphasizes ... specific processes that foster learning. It emphasizes that different societies are being stressed in similar ways by increased demands on human capital." Brooks wants the people of the world to move beyond the globalization paradigm so that we can reason together to solve transnational challenges that affect us all. He explains:

"If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, you're focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner. It's not that globalization and the skills revolution are contradictory processes. But which paradigm you embrace determines which facts and remedies you emphasize. ... It's time to move beyond [the globalization paradigm]."

In two recent posts (What Follows Globalization, Part 1 and Part 2), I discussed the concerns of a number of analysts and scholars who worry that it's going to be difficult to move beyond the globalization paradigm because no clear model has emerged to replace it. Brooks' cognitive age paradigm doesn't really fit the bill because it doesn't describe how people, organizations, and countries are going to interact in the decades ahead. It simply states that we should be smart enough to reason together. So, for a least a while, we're probably stuck with the globalization paradigm.

I do agree with Brooks that it is unfortunate that the very term "globalization" now stirs deep emotions in some people. While some pundits argue that globalization has been the catalyst that has brought more people out of poverty than ever before in history, other pundits argue that it has been the catalyst that started the developed world on the road to ruin. A British blogger, who posts anonymously, recently wrote an article that provides a pretty good overview of the arguments used by optimists, pessimists, transformationalists, and transnationalists regarding globalization. ["Theories of Globalisation," realsociology, 9 February 2013] He (or she) begins with an overview of the optimistic theories of globalization. The first argument used by globalization optimists, he writes, is that it has resulted in "more international trade" and, in increased "wealth, health, and education for most countries." He points to the following video as evidence that the optimistic view has lots to crow about.

The second argument that the British blogger claims is being made by the optimists is "that Transnational Corporations are a force for good. Companies such as Apple, Sony, etc. bring investment and jobs to developing countries." This argument is not quite as easy to defend as the one above. Ethical companies have indeed helped bring millions out of poverty; nevertheless, we have all heard the tales of sweatshop conditions in which some employees in developing countries are forced to work. Recent factory fires, in places like Bangladesh, only underscore the fact that we still have a ways to go before we can truly label transnational corporations "a force for good."

The third argument offered by globalization optimists relates to the fact that with improved health and wealth "patterns of consumption are becoming globalised. More people around the world are consumers rather than living subsistence lifestyles." As I'll note below and in the next segment, pessimists don't necessarily see this as a good thing. I would have stated the argument a little differently: Globalization has helped millions of people escape poverty and become part of the global middle class. Most economists believe that the future of the global economy will be determined by this global middle class. People in both the developing and developed world will benefit if this trend continues.

The fourth argument provided by the blogger is a bit frivolous. He writes, "Sporting events such as the world cup and the Olympics have become more popular." Globalization, especially the spread of technology, has certainly played a role in sporting events like the World Cup and Olympics being seen by more people; but, it hasn't necessarily increased global interest in sports that did not already have an international flavor.

The fifth argument that the blogger asserts is used by globalization optimists is that it has helped "spread ... Democracy and respect for human rights since the end of WW2." As evidence, he points to "the end of colonial rule in Africa, the collapse of communism and the Arab Spring." New technologies that have connected the world through satellites, cell phones, and the World Wide Web have clearly had an empowering effect. Whereas people used to talk about the course of history being changed primarily by military engagements, today we often read about super-empowered individuals who use social media to change the world. And that is a good segue to the sixth argument optimists offer, namely, "the growth of social media (Facebook and Twitter) have lead [to] more freedom around the world."

The seventh argument optimists use is that "globalistion increasingly means global cities [and] urban centres ... have highly educated, politically engaged middle classes." Whereas New York Times' columnist Tom Friedman argues that globalization has made the world flat, others argue it has made the world spiky -- making it look more like a bed of nails than a playing field. Thejas Jagganath explains it this way:

"Contrary to popular belief that globalisation is a worldwide phenomenon leading to a leveled world, Richard Florida in his book ‘Who’s Your City' argues that this is far from reality. He states that the world is 'spiky' with innovation and global ideologies largely spread across certain cities more than others. This concept of the world being uneven and spiky is in relation to Thomas Friedman’s concept of the world being flat. In his book, Friedman writes 'when the world is flat, you can innovate without having to emigrate.' Florida argues that this is not true, and rightly so." ["Globalisation in a Spiky World," Urban Times, 26 February 2013]

Just because globalization has been spiky doesn't mean it hasn't provided benefits. Globalization optimists argue that you should rejoice whenever you see people being raised out of poverty, even if it is accomplished unevenly. I would classify Bill Gates among the optimists. Since retiring from his day-to-day role with Microsoft, he has dedicated himself to help solving global problems ranging from food security to health to education. He believes that a combination of technology, big data, and measurement will help us solve the world's biggest problems. ["Bill Gates: My Plan to Fix The World's Biggest Problems," Wall Street Journal, 25 January 2013] In his article, Gates specifically focuses on the importance of measurement. He begins his article by citing a book entitled The Most Powerful Idea in the World, written by William Rosen. In that book, Rosen relates how new, precise measuring tools helped foster the industrial revolution. Gates continues:

"There's a larger lesson here: Without feedback from precise measurement, Mr. Rosen writes, invention is 'doomed to be rare and erratic.' With it, invention becomes 'commonplace.' In the past year, I have been struck by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal — in a feedback loop similar to the one Mr. Rosen describes. This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right."

Gates provides a litany of anecdotal examples of how finding the right measure has resulted in significant gains. He continues:

"There are plenty of other areas where our ability to measure can improve people's lives in powerful ways — areas where we are falling short, unnecessarily. In poor countries, we still need better ways to measure the effectiveness of the many government workers providing health services. They are the crucial link bringing tools such as vaccines and education to the people who need them most. How well trained are they? Are they showing up to work? How can measurement enable them to perform their jobs better? In the U.S., we should be measuring the value being added by colleges. Currently, college rankings are focused on inputs — the scores and quality of students entering college — and on judgments and prejudices about a school's 'reputation.' Students would be better served by measures of which colleges were best preparing their graduates for the job market. They then could know where they would get the most for their tuition money. In agriculture, creating a global productivity target would help countries focus on a key but neglected area: the efficiency and output of hundreds of millions of small farmers who live in poverty. It would go a long way toward reducing poverty if we had public scorecards showing how developing-country governments, donors and others are helping those farmers."

Measurement and data go hand-in-hand. In an earlier post entitled Data Philanthropy and Global Resilience, I discussed how important is that policymakers have access to the right kind of information so that they can establish policies and programs that will make the world more resilient. Gates concludes:

"If I could wave a wand, I'd love to have a way to measure how exposure to risks like disease, infection, malnutrition and problem pregnancies impact children's potential — their ability to learn and contribute to society. Measuring that could help us quantify the broader impact of those risks and help us tackle them. The lives of the poorest have improved more rapidly in the past 15 years than ever before. And I am optimistic that we will do even better in the next 15 years. The process I have described — setting clear goals, choosing an approach, measuring results, and then using those measurements to continually refine our approach — helps us to deliver tools and services to everybody who will benefit, be they students in the U.S. or mothers in Africa. Following the path of the steam engine long ago, thanks to measurement, progress isn't 'doomed to be rare and erratic.' We can, in fact, make it commonplace."

If I had to choose a camp into which I must be placed, my first choice would probably be the optimists' camp. I do believe that international transactions provide more benefits than ill effects. As I noted earlier in this post, not everyone is an optimist when it comes to globalization. In the next segment of this series, I'll look at what the pessimists have to say.