One of the few things I remember from War in the Age of Intelligent Machines -- and as I type this, I find I barely remember it -- is how cities were developed in terms of defensive need. For centuries, the city is what you could put a defensive wall around. The "wall" in Wall St., for example, was the point of early New York where they put the barricade to protect themselves from the natives in midtown. The wide avenues of Paris were developed so that the riot-prone Parisians couldn't shut down the city by barricading the streets. I suspect the CCTV network of London is best seen in this light.
In all but a few contexts, the defense of a contemporary city isn't from outside -- WWII showed that static defense in the age of industrial warfare is a pipe dream, and the age of the ICBM makes it even worse -- so in one way or another, the Smart City can be seen as a city defending itself from its citizens. Which is weird.
Link via Bruce Sterling.
In all but a few contexts, the defense of a contemporary city isn't from outside -- WWII showed that static defense in the age of industrial warfare is a pipe dream, and the age of the ICBM makes it even worse -- so in one way or another, the Smart City can be seen as a city defending itself from its citizens. Which is weird.
Link via Bruce Sterling.
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