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Google's Toronto City Built 'From the Internet Up' (bbc.com)
On Toronto's Eastern waterfront, a new digital city is being built by Sidewalk Labs -- a firm owned by Google's parent Alphabet. It hopes the project will become a model for 21st-Century urbanism. From a report: But the deal has been controversial, representing one of biggest ever tie-ups between a city and a large corporation. And that, coupled with the fact that the corporation in question is one of the largest tech firms in the world, is causing some unease. Sidewalk Labs promises to transform the disused waterfront area into a bustling mini metropolis, one built "from the internet up," although there is no timetable for when the city will actually be built. Dan Doctoroff, the company's head and former deputy mayor of New York, told the BBC the project was "about creating healthier, safer, more convenient and more fun lives. We want this to be a model for what urban life can be in the 21st Century," he said. The area will have plenty of sensors collecting data -- from traffic, noise and air quality -- and monitoring the performance of the electric grid and waste collection.
I'm guessing the real goal here is Panopticon:Toronto, where all activities are monitored and monetized.
Was it built "from the internet up with open-standard technologies"? Otherwise, no freaking thanks!
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Last work conference we had at the Harbourfront Hotel in TO I stepped out for a smoke and nearly stepped in human feces on the sidewalk. Not in India or SE Asia, but Toronto.
Yeah the Internet will magically get rid of all the meth and crack and whores and bums! FOR SURE!
Rather like EPCOT, Walt Disney's socialist utopia that didn't even make it as a theme park.
The evil bastards at Google are using Robocop 2 as an instruction manual for how to privatize a city. Because if Google doesn't do it, Amazon will for sure, and Amazon is Omni Consumer Products in all but name already.
Billionaires are playing games against each other with poor people as pawns just like always.
gadget? cease & desist!@#$ sorry dave, can't do that right now........ the 'future' looks right at us 24/7? like a badly written sci-fi script, or berlin in the '30s?
Google couldn't even handle creating a basic ISP. There's no way they're going to follow through on this.
I don't respond to AC's.
As the complexity of a system increases, so does the need for its design to be driven by the process of evolution via variation and selection.
This implies that the area should be open to the activities of a free market, where competition among producers will yield variations, and choice among consumers will yield selective forces.
In the early 1900s Henry Ford tried his hand at city & culture building. That didn't end very well. Now Google is going to show us how to live? I don't think that will end very well either?
Another year older and deeper in debt.
It is an old industrial area made on reclaimed land (landfill), right on the waterfront. Due to little/no restrictions on what that landfill was in the early days, and its old industrial heritage, it is land that is pretty badly polluted. Being on landfill, I'm guessing that foundations for highrise buildings would be difficult/expensive.
Personally, I'd like to see it becoming industrial again. A big reason I left Toronto was that I liked working with my hands, but there is not really any industry left in Toronto. In the 80s/90s property taxes on industry were hugely increased, and they all moved to the suburbs. This was the intent. Politicians didn't want any dirty industrial stuff left in the city. Now if you want to live/work in Toronto, it will have to be in an office or doing construction.
Why do they not understand the difference between the past and the future? Here is yet another story whose headline declares something has happened, yet the summary makes clear that the thing in question has not yet occurred. This project hasn’t even started yet.
Were people not paying attention in fourth grade English?
#DeleteChrome
... when google's current tech is viewed as the 1984 Big Brother that it really is. Will they continue to be happy to be a part of this experiment?
Except in this case built is an adjective:
built
adjective
Definition of built for English Language Learners
—used to say that someone or something has the right qualities for or to do something
: made, formed, or shaped in a specified way
https://www.merriam-webster.co...
Grammar nazi fail.
Unlike US, Canada has some privacy laws. People object to this development because it will be 24/7 monitored area of the city that would spy on everyone in the vicinity, not just the people that signed up to live there.
No, when used in that manner the word is generally paired with “for” or “to do” - e.g. “built for speed”.
Not to mention that the headline in question doesn’t actually work in the context you provide - what is the supposed “for” or “to do” word or phrase being modified?
#DeleteChrome
I said "socialist", not "liberal", and I meant it literally. EPCOT was to be a company town with Disney owning everything. On top of that, Disney acquired municipality rights to the entire property, so the company actually was the government. Having everything owned by the government is by definition socialism.
nothankyou.jpg
shitty protagonist from Watch Dogs
Troll me if you must, but f*ck Google. In five years it will be Canada's former first city of same.
Wow. That's impressive. People know this is Google's attempt to create a panopticon city with underwater snound recorders piped in straight to your toilet vai sewer lines. At least.
Google doesn't want to be your search provider. They want to be your permanent, unelected government.
Things will be better that way.
Just accept it.