The 'Smart' City: Welcome to the Epicenter of the Hipster/Industrial Complex
Today we do an excavation of the 'smart city' and dig up dirt, along with lots of other shady shit. Sadly, we don't discover a Pharaoh's tomb, just a burial ground of every bad idea ever conceived:
It doesn’t take a crystal ball, or even the powers of the imagination to divine an ever-present pandemic future. It’s all unfolding now as Silicon Valley forges long-anticipated partnerships with government to provide the “solutions” that will eventually replace it. Just as the ‘gig economy’ reduced dependence on employers, freeing them of their responsibilities of providing healthcare coverage and benefits, a tech-based brain trust is poised to revolutionize all aspects of life with the instruments of “applied utopics”.
Prior to pandemic, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was put in charge of dismantling New York City’s existing institutions for public health and education. The resulting loss of tens of thousands of hospital beds helped make the public case for panic, as overrun hospitals groaned under the weight of Covid patients. Then Governor Andrew Cuomo was meanwhile striking a similar deal with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, calling on his billionaire buddies to implement “smarter” systems in the city’s public schools - or rather, replace the ‘dumb’ ones with education software provided by Microsoft. The profitable classroom software that has replaced public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic has successfully squandered the talents and potential of individuals from less privileged communities - relegating them from birth to hold down soon-to-be obsolete jobs in the gig economy. From this perspective, a win-win for the tech giants, who will rely on their (hopefully) uncritical thinking skills to deliver food, or be pushed around by robots in an online retailer’s warehouse.
It’s doubtful that these Public Private Partnerships will be dissolved with the ouster of Cuomo, or be in any way affected by a ceremonial changing of the guards within the political sphere. Real power firmly rests outside this decrepit, analog institution, and concentrated in the boardrooms and yachts of the real decision makers. Government is operated as just another distressed business on the verge of collapse. Its inability to process and deliver stimulus payments in a timely or efficient manner is both deliberate and punitive, reflecting the ruling class’s unconcealed contempt for the biohazard majority it is “forced” to contain, and to a lesser extent, appease.
By now, we should be able to see where this is going, while markets are rallying even as unemployment figures surpass the Great Depression’s. As unhoused populations overwhelm New York City’s subways and San Francisco’s streets, their numbers rising in rhythm to the steady uptick of Amazon stocks hitting another all time high. As Wall Street celebrates what should be a funeral for global capitalism, it’s hard not to draw the conclusion that an engineered demolition of the ‘old’ economy is already underway. Arguably, this risky maneuver was meant to stave off the inevitable and more unpredictable collapse that was coming down the pipeline, and hastened into its present implementation phase when a mysterious Coronavirus of disputed origin first hit the headlines. You only have to look deep within your own black heart, (to paraphrase Gore Vidal describing the process he used to divine what the ruling class was up to) to envision the “new normal” that pandemic will necessitate to maximize its potential as an enduring social and economic force.
From this corrupted looking glass, we can just make out the contours of the ‘smart’ city beginning to take shape on the horizon. Perhaps you vaguely recall this deferred utopia as a failed experiment by the Google owned company Sidewalk Labs to transform Toronto’s waterfront district into a project dubbed “Quayside”, a “sustainable”, data-driven, showroom for subterfuge technologies of surveillance. This time the “debacle” (as most critics described this wasteful investment into a real estate scheme by a company with no experience or expertise in the physical side of urban development) will be replicated with pandemic as its justification, rather than its downfall. More powerful than pandemic, the forces of privatization - unleashed with the seam-bursting velocity of a firefighting hose - wrested control of a public health crisis to extinguish all public sector impediments to its afforded “opportunities”.
Unfortunately, for this Canadian prototype, its “innovations” were no match for the written-on-parchment laws still in existence that prioritized privacy over “progress”, and citizen-led resistance to the digitization of all basic infrastructure and business transactions to the detriment of those surrendering their unprotected data. As Quayside’s pioneering architects presciently considered, (while overlooking the legal consequences of their careless handling of all this stealthily collected data intended for uses outside Quayside) traditional urban centers were to become obsolete. Already, their their topography has proven incompatible with all the AI-driven infrastructure required to accommodate “new realities” like pandemic.
Quayside’s current status as a project on permanent hold should not discount its braintrust’s cockroach like ability to adapt to a climate of adversity: As Sidewalk Labs CEO Daniel L. Doctoroff stated recently: “The current health emergency makes us feel even more strongly about reimagining cities for the future”. The Terminator, in other words promising “I’ll be back” with the same threat implicit in the catchphrase of a cyborg assassin.
All this non-human and non-contact technology (remote learning and telemedicine) will be instrumental in eventually re-shaping society to conform to the misanthropic ideals underlying this soon-to-be revived utopia, “reimagined” to reduce public engagement down to the level of a coffee order, and as “inclusive” as an ICU ward during lockdown. The same, ultimately self-defeating imperatives to stamp out viruses and germs has been applied to the smart city with predictable results. The consequences of human intervention into eco-systems of the natural world (degradation, loss of diversity and finally, extinction) are replicated in the ‘smart’ city’s machine intervention into social eco-systems.
Under a regime powered by the eternal sunshine of a surveillance spotlight, the deep forest growth of evolving cultures eventually wither and die. Society in this hipster/military industrial complex has no “fringes”, no neighborhoods with high crime rates, or communities beholden to a different set of values, whether ethnically determined, or as a chosen lifestyle at odds with the prevailing and pristine order of a machine imposed monoculture. The ‘smart’ city is less a Brave New World than a defensive, fear-driven fortress within it.
Just as the Victorian mansion was designed to make servants largely invisible by assigning them rooms and corridors sealed off from the rest of the house, the ‘smart’ city immunizes itself against these lowly contagions with architecture that administers its own form of apartheid. Interior walls seal in a skin color spectrum largely unseen in the in this “inclusive community”, whose members remain willfully unaware of other lives behind them, pushing carts of laundry, dishes, food and cleaning supplies through a parallel, dimly lit dimension only accessible through downward mobility.
No longer a society mediated by images of wealth and prosperity (as French philosopher Guy Debord would define late stage capitalism) but a world wholly given over to dismantling the notion of society itself and divestment from the “spectacle” it engendered to reflect a falsely held notion of participation within it. An already anachronistic social order will further shift from multiple organisms with diverse tendencies to identical components prodded into service by a single intelligence.
In contrast to the cumbersome apparatus of analog governance, “instrumentarian” power (as Harvard School of Business professor Shoshanna Zuboff describes this tech-based totalitarian structure in her landmark book ’Surveillance Capitalism’) will be a seamless integration of technology into every aspect of life, mediating every relationship to it, while burrowing itself deeper into our anatomies to extract value from all their plundered secrets. This new and even more concentrated power base will demand a radical overhaul of what was once considered ‘society’, noting the present system is burdened to breaking point by human error. They will demand that we distance from each other forever - and divest ourselves of any ideas that run counter to the prevailing orthodoxy put forth by Valley’s Vatican-like power base.
The ‘smart’ city has learned from its failures in Toronto that violations of privacy laws can be avoided by writing them yourself and paying a law maker to enact a non-existent version to avoid future brushes with ethics committees. The lesson here is that egregious disregard of your own stated principles has the desired effect of numbing public opposition to your transgressions. Impunity, as Donald Trump would personify it, is weaponized to overwhelm the populace and set the bar for accountability so low that it is effectively non-existent, making all demands for it an exercise in sound and fury, signaling its own impotence. Criticisms of its undemocratic governance are met with furious denials, issued not from above, but dispersed evenly by “independent” media sources all on the payroll of the Foundation and echoed in unison by the swarm.
Like the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, (EPCOT) the Walt Disney ‘city’ planned as a suburban showroom for advancing technology, the smart city is fueled by a single idea, and is similarly threatened by any resistance to its utopian aims. The old neoliberal canard touting the “marketplace of ideas” is realized as a single big box store, or rather, a concrete bunker housing the large scale main frame computers necessary for processing bulk collections of data. The ‘smart’ city is an airless chamber insulated against all opinions contrary to the one that insists Big Tech can solve all the world’s problems - chiefly the problems that humans present to ‘progress’.
Near religious adherence to the vague principles laid out in its brochure mission statement is key to survival in this visionary-led compound. Cultish devotion to its dogma makes it resistant to non-believers and pathogens alike. Without it, a dumping ground of neoliberal-talking-points-realized-into-architecture, takes on the characteristics of Banksy’s ‘Dismal Land’; a temporary installation project that brings the underlying nihilism of its “imagineers” into sharp relief.
In these re-emerging ‘smart’ cities, a social credit system, similar to the Chinese model will remain in effect as a punishment and reward apparatus for behavior, even after pandemic restrictions are eased. Already implemented vaccine passports are early prototypes for digitized wallets, banking not only monetary assets, but information that will determine your access to it. Following the Chinese model, the existence of a numerical rating for citizens is neither confirmed or denied, but experienced as “helpful” reminders for the maintenance of health, the timing of appointments and a host of other ‘voluntary’ subscriptions to services that monitor and assist individuals in pursuit of fitness goals, punctuality and effective time management in the workplace. Less apparent, are their data mining capabilities that can sniff out behavioral anomalies that might points towards mental health issues that warrant a direct and pre-emptive intervention, or in less urgent cases, digitized barriers to housing and employment, or even goods or services that further enable “deviant” behavior. Businesses are largely exempt from the scolding mechanisms that dog citizens and extract their obedience to the surveillance state, since they are almost all somehow connected to their creation through investment or as stakeholders.
Authority is exercised for the most part, silently. Unlike China, it is not a blunt expression of state power with explicit mechanisms to curb dissent, but experienced as invisible, insurmountable barriers to employment, housing, and other “privileges” that result in self-imposed exile from the ‘smart’ city. People who want to leave their houses during lockdown periods or want to travel when these restrictions are partially lifted have to “agree” to being tracked by their own smart phones and surrender its data to the authorities who monitor their movements. Without being cleared for access to its facilities and amenities, survival here is impossible.
Pandemic will remain the underlying and guiding force of a new economy that is transitioning from the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services in the social domain into a the digitization of all these processes and products in a more abstract, immaterial realm. “You will own nothing and you will be happy”. Under this arrangement, the economy is no longer dictated by consumers or their demands, but the data they provide both digitally and biologically. Environmental destruction and the scarcity of natural resources has necessitated this transition from the failed “free” market - regulated to some degree by the government - to a centrally planned ‘command’ model overseen by leaders in tech and pharmaceutical industries.
This intentional pivot from oligarch rule to an absolute and authoritarian technocracy, made possible by medically-imposed martial law, ensures that dwindling resources are not squandered on a surplus, no longer performing labor sector, but given over entirely to the class that rendered them obsolete in the first place. “Sustainability’, in other words, sustains wealth at the apex of a class hierarchy built to the specifications of a house of cards, already teetering towards collapse.
My impression was that the idea of smart cities in countries like India was an attempt by shady corporate entities to grab prime land and put in place a "city," possibly involving massive "gentrification," that can be monitored and controlled, while ensuring a steady revenue stream and a dependable work force. Foreign "investors" too might be involved. I suppose the balance of motives might have shifted in recent years, not making it any less shady though.
I have also felt that the setting up of "special economic zones" (SEZs) too would involve similar shady aims -- that are different from what is publicly stated. It is an aggressive, yet stealthy attempt to subvert democratic restraints and laws in place.
In this the SEZs may have something in common with the idea of smart cities: both require the active role of the governments that are supposed to serve the larger public interest handing out not just scarce resources and land, but locking in a certai kind of infrastructure and an economic system that would suffocate the human spirit.
Politicians with shallow intellect and a weak or non-existent conscience, but with obvious vanity and ego, make all such things possible. The only thing that can stop, roll back and dismantle such ventures is the human spirit -- the most precious, and most fragile commodity in the present times.
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As someone who is deeply concerned by the multiple ecological crises, I would hate to see "sustainability" become a bad word, to be abused by right-wing talking heads like how they throw around the term "climate alarmism." Just because shady corporate entities try to take advantage of these very real, multiple ecological crises does not make them any less real, or any less urgent to tackle. I hope your readers are nuanced enough to appreciate the difference between legitimate use of certain words and their abuse by vested interests who may have their own agenda and priorities. :)
AS THE WHEELS FALL OFF THE PLANDEMIC AGENDA THE GLOBALISTS ARE NOW STARTING A WAR WITH RUSSIA
https://www.bitchute.com/video/w8Eur3gfJ5r1/