Slashdot Mirror
California City Converts Its Street Lights Into A High-Speed IoT Backbone (backchannel.com)
Harvard Law professor Susan Crawford describes how the city of Santa Monica installed its own high-speed IoT backbone on its street lights and traffic signals -- and why it's important.
Neutral "micro" cell sites can make very high-capacity wireless transmissions available, competitively, to everyone (and every sensor) nearby. This can and should cause an explosion of options and new opportunities for economic growth, innovation, and human flourishing in general... Very few American cities have carried out this transmogrification, but every single one will need to. Santa Monica...is a city that will be able to control its future digital destiny, because it is taking a comprehensive, competition-forcing approach to the transmission of data...
Cities that get control of their streetlights and connect them to municipally overseen, reasonably priced dark fiber can chart their own Internet of Things futures, rather than leave their destinies in the hands of vendors whose priorities are driven (rationally) by the desire to control whole markets and keep share prices and dividends high rather than provide public benefits.
Santa Monica's CIO warns that now telecoms "are looking for exclusive rights to poles and saying they can't co-locate [with their competitors]. They're all hiring firms to lock up their permits and rights to as many poles as possible, as quickly as possible, before governments can organize."
Cities that get control of their streetlights and connect them to municipally overseen, reasonably priced dark fiber can chart their own Internet of Things futures, rather than leave their destinies in the hands of vendors whose priorities are driven (rationally) by the desire to control whole markets and keep share prices and dividends high rather than provide public benefits.
Santa Monica's CIO warns that now telecoms "are looking for exclusive rights to poles and saying they can't co-locate [with their competitors]. They're all hiring firms to lock up their permits and rights to as many poles as possible, as quickly as possible, before governments can organize."
Can we stop saying that maximizing profits at all costs is the only rational approach to business?
It's a rather new idea that's been pushed by the financial and legal worlds for the last 40 years (because, surprise surprise, it lets them maximize profits on their advisory services), but is by no means the only valid metric for measuring business success. Focusing solely on profits oversimplifies the role of business in complex markets. This single minded focus ultimately leads to monopolies providing expensive, crappy products (which is exactly what Santa Monica is trying to avoid here).
IoT...hacker's choice!
Human flourishing are not the words I would choose. Corporate flourishing on the backs of regular people, definitely. Would silicone valley please come up with an 'innovation' that doesn't paint them as evil incarnate? Pretty please? Legitimate public service is dead in America.
Santa Monica...is a city that will be able to control its future digital destiny, because it is taking a comprehensive, competition-forcing approach to the transmission of data...
Aren't they supposed to use the word synergy in there somewhere?
... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
ATT haven't blocked this yet? They're losing their touch.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Great, now we'll see even larger DDOS attacks.
This can and should cause an explosion of options and new opportunities for economic growth, innovation, and human flourishing in general.
Really?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So - I'm envisioning a Wifi hot spot in every light bul b- forming its own mesh network? The future will be awesome!
> It's the reason the business exists.
Speak for yourself. I've founded and owned several businesses over the last 30 years, and none have existed solely or primarily for the purpose of profit to the business. Maybe that's how YOU do business, but not the rest of us.
My last business was *started* in order to solve a specific pair of problems for customers and the industry as a whole, because existing solutions weren't working and it was a pain in the butt for day job. Actually, it turned my day job into a night job - having to be up in the middle of the night dealing with servers overloaded by attacks. So basically it was started to prevent problems that made my day-to-day work painful. It was then spun off as a separate corporation for the purpose of providing continued employment to existing employees when the main business was sold. That is, to provide employment for a couple of years until another company could be launched around another product. Because it's first purpose as a corporation was to provide a steady paycheck for loyal employees, when one employee got depressed and stopped showing up to work we continued to pay her for six months - making sure people had a steady income was the purpose of that company existing, after all. Later I gave that company to another employee, most of it anyway.
> Are you suggesting it would somehow be in the interests of the business to minimize profits, or operate at a loss and go out of business?
Yes, companies such as State Farm and Nationwide insurance minimize profits. Any profit not required for new investment is refunded to customers. Their purpose is to provide the best possible insurance value to customers.
Most, though not all, businesses have a continuing purpose, so indeed they try not to go out of business. Some have a limited-time purpose, but not most. So they try to avoid net long-term losses that would put them out of businesses. That's very different from maximizing profit. A great many strive for profit near zero other than paying off debt and a capital expenditures fund. I've been on the board of directors of such.
Non profits minimize profit by paying their big cheeses all their profits. It's not the same as a for profit business, but more like them than different.
'State Farm' is not a good example to use, they are as bad as insurance companies get in terms of fucking their customers every chance they get. Citing them is like citing 'The United Way' as an example of a good charity. Makes me think you're living in a different universe.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's really time to put a stop to the abuse of public infrastructure to benefit what were once highly regulated monopolies (i.e. Edison and Ma Bell).
Municipalities should seize every telephone pole and lamppost for the public good.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
So now add streetlights to the botnet of crappy DDOS things.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
Non profits minimize profit by paying their big cheeses all their profits. It's not the same as a for profit business, but more like them than different.
'State Farm' is not a good example to use, they are as bad as insurance companies get in terms of fucking their customers every chance they get. Citing them is like citing 'The United Way' as an example of a good charity. Makes me think you're living in a different universe.
I shudder to think how bad the others really can be considering that State Farm has by far been the best one that I've had over the years.
Never filed a claim? Otherwise you'd know better.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's so nice that the beach bunnies are getting better Wi-Fi. How about they spend some money on helping the crowds of homeless people who roam the streets beset by mental illness? Santa Monica is a cyberpunk nightmare at this point.
Considering how IoT devices have more holes in their security than a colander, this of course means streetlights are now going to become part of some cybercriminals' botnet used to attack whoever. Probably even make the lights go out when they want teams of thieves in an area to steal cars, rob houses, and kidnap people. Meanwhile the government will find some way to use this to even more thoroughly track and surveil the populace, and corporations will find a way to use this to collect more personal, private data on people.
I don't see a need, or want, the 'Internet of Things', and I know I'm far from alone in that. A streetlight needs to just be a streetlight, not some over-engineered, over-complicated, wirelessly-connected thing. While white LEDs have made them better and more efficient streetlights, and dimmable, at full brightness only when someone passes by (which is brilliant, forgive the poor pun), I see no need for them to be wirelessly connected to the damned internet, not any more than my washer, dryer, refrigerator, teakettle, or toilet needs to be. How long until we're past this particular fad? I can't wait for it to go away.
> 'State Farm' is not a good example to use, they are as bad as insurance companies get in terms of fucking their customers every chance they get.
That's very interesting. The non-profit cooperative is much worse than all of the companies that have a profit motive to compete on service. Does recognizing that fact completely ruin your entire world view?
wish i had my bulls*** bingo card ready.
AKA Cyberdyne Systems Model 0.1 Beta.....
to fuck you.
Councils should know by now that communication is a basic service and unsuitable for a government-backed monopoly. Any Councillor who supports selling rights to a basic service should be sacked.
Both times I filed claims with State Farm the work was done within 6 days. One time vandalism on my car, the other when I was involved in a hit and run, and the entire ass end of my car was totaled(sadly it's hard to catch people with no plates). GP would have been better off using something like Green Shield which operates as a non-profit insurance company.
Om, nomnomnom...
Well, is it?
Seeing how many of the recent ongoing DoS-attacks have been using these unprotected and un-updated IoT-devices...