The case for cities where you’re a sensor, not a thing to be sensed
> It’s not hard to see why: “smart” has become code for “terrible”. A “smart speaker” is a speaker that eavesdrops on you and leaks all your conversations to distant subcontractors for giant tech companies. “Smart watches” spy on your movements and sell them to data-brokers for ad-targeting. “Smart TVs” watch you as you watch them and sell your viewing habits to brokers.<p>I guess that would make the Guardian a “smart website”.<p>> The problem is that the smart city, as presently conceived, is a largely privatised affair designed as a public-private partnership to extract as much value as possible from its residents<p>I looked quite hard for any evidence in the article that this was the case other than ‘I don’t know, it feels kind of icky’ but couldn’t find any.<p>> If you want to page a minibus – something like an Uber Pool, but run by the city, licensed, safe, paying a living wage and not mining your data – you can summon one, and yes, this exposes your identity so that the driver can find you.<p>Ah, and there’s the nub of it. It’s fine for a responsible (read public-sector) technocrat to mine and process your data, but it’s evil when a company does it.