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Page 4


www.us- tech.com


Tech-Op-ed September, 2019 SOUNDING OFF


By Michael Skinner Editor


Built from the Internet up


“N


what we’re planning here is neither cheerful science fiction, like The Jetsons, nor dark and dystopian, like Black Mirror,” writes Jesse


one of this is tech for tech’s sake. Let’s just get this out of the way:


Shapins. Shapins is one of the directors of Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Al- phabet, Inc., and a sister company of Google. In 2017, Sidewalk Labs was com- missioned by the Canadian government to create a plan for a technologically advanced, digitally interconnected community along a portion of waterfront in Toronto, Ontario. Sidewalk Labs’ current proposal outlines a 1.3 billion dollar development


project, which is designed to revitalize Toronto’s Quayside district and a por- tion of nearby Port Lands. Like much of North America’s rusty industrial sprawl, the 800-acre Port Lands symbolize the power and infrastructure of an abandoned era — an era before digitalization. The new Sidewalk Toronto dis- trict, however, has been carefully planned, from a complex digital fabric to the mass timber out of which its buildings are to be constructed. Curb-less streets, heated pavement, bicycle and pedestrian lanes defined


by self-adjusting LEDs, and beacons that can be sensed by autonomous vehi- cles and automated shuttles, combine to create a utopian vision of transporta- tion and logistics. With 60 percent of the total area billed as residential, Quay- side is meant to attract around 5,000 potential inhabitants, create 44,000 di- rect jobs, and rake in around $4.3 billion in tax revenue each year. According to Sidewalk Toronto’s proposal, by the project’s 2040 completion, Quayside will generate $14.2 billion in annual GDP. The glue that holds the community together, however, is a mass of ever-


flowing data. Public Wi-Fi will allow residents to stay online anywhere in the neighborhood and thousands of sensors and cameras are designed to manage traffic decisions, energy distribution, waste handling, and weather mitigation systems. The project has since been mired in controversy. Residents and officials


of Toronto have heavily criticized the project over its lack of explanation as to who owns the data generated by the micro-city and its inhabitants and what exactly will be collected. In late 2018, Saadia Muzaffar, a member of the panel guiding Sidewalk


Toronto’s development resigned, citing “apathy and a lack of leadership re- garding shaky public trust.” Muzaffar is the founder of TechGirls Canada, a non-profit focused on promoting women in STEM. Critics have likened the community to a sort of Orwellian experiment,


where each inhabitant is tracked and profiled in real-time and in physical space, a realization of the digital user profiles that Google creates online. Toronto-based open-government advocate Bianca Wylie says, “Blurring the line between what is the public sector and what is the private sector is the the- matic concern here.” There is a chance that if Quayside is successful, it may have the power


and funding to expand to the rest of the Port Lands, which could become the site of more than a dozen similar communities. Google even plans to build its Canadian headquarters adjacent to Quayside. The city has special signifi- cance for Google, as much of the artificial intelligence that underpins its search engine was developed at the University of Toronto. The controversy around the Quayside project highlights the debate


around individual freedom and privacy, and federal government and corpo- rate control. Ideally, democracy allows for a certain amount of uneasiness be- tween the people and their government, which spurs public discourse and re- sults in policy changes. But, with companies like Google buying up swathes of property around the Bay Area and New York, corporate interests may easily outweigh local governments, pressuring residents to adapt or leave. On the other hand, Sidewalk Labs has already spent a year conducting


thousands of public consultations with Torontonians, allowing the locals to shape the vision of Quayside. This careful and pragmatic approach has worked to keep the project afloat, though ground has yet to be broken. Quayside’s futuristic mini utopia is a valuable experiment. Not only to


explore how reimagining a community from bottom to top with cutting-edge technology can be done, but also how dialogue between powerful corporations, federal governments and citizens should take place. While tradeoffs and com- promises are a necessity for a successful community, the right balance still must be found. r


PUBLISHER’S NOTE


By Jacob Fattal Publisher


How Much Trust is Enough? A


s 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. earned an almost mythological nickname as a “trustbuster.” He pursued monopo- lies in the railroad and oil industries, enforcing the Sherman Antritrust


Act of 1890 aggressively. Today, some comparisons can be drawn between gi- gantic tech companies, such as Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Google, and others, and the monopolies of Roosevelt’s day. The last time the U.S. government successfully tackled a monopoly was


in 1974 with an antitrust lawsuit against AT&T. The company responded by refusing to give up its subsidiary Western Electric, but was forced to break up into seven additional independent companies, which was finalized in 1984. The effects on the telecommunications industry were mixed. The com-


plexity of teasing apart all the operations of the various companies prompted local residential phone call rates to shoot up, due to a loss of subsidization from long-distance calls. On the other hand, without the subsidy, long-dis- tance rates quickly fell and opened to competition. The breakup also affected how national television and radio were broad-


casted. After the breakup, Bell invested in satellite distribution technology, due to its higher quality and lower cost of transmission. It is difficult to say how technology may have evolved without the pressures of competition. Leading antritrust figures today, including Chris Hughes, cofounder of


Facebook, are calling for a range of actions against the tech titans. These in- clude bright-line breakups, in which companies are forbidden from providing a service and promoting their own goods through it — think Amazon prevent- ed from selling Amazon-branded products through its shopping service. Another option is a selective breakup, where companies like Facebook


would be required to give up companies they’ve purchased, such as Instagram and WhatsApp. Critics of these acquisitions, including Hughes, have accused


Facebook of squashing potential competition with dollars. The New York Times recently reported that Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram at a time when the company was a startup with 13 employees. This antritrust discussion is gaining momentum as more people begin to


understand the full impact that these big tech companies have on our daily lives. One of the biggest concerns is data privacy and manipulation of social platforms, whether it be for political or financial gain, or both. Another concern is the monetization of personal data, and a lack of con-


trol on the part of the user to prevent companies from sharing certain infor- mation with others. Trustbusting is a difficult job, it turns out — Microsoft survived an attempt two decades ago. Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that he believes regulation is in- evitable. In the meantime, the trust or bust debate continues. r


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