This TED conference talks about how algorithms are shaping among many things our physical environment. It shows how in order to access information and transmit algorithms to decipher the market faster, wall street firms are locating servers and offices next to the carrier hotels, which are places rented to store servers and bandwidth cables. As pointed out on the conference, buildings are being hollowed around the carrier hotel in Manhattan just to transmit information faster. This is just a trend and is very likely to expand and continue. The fact that no business can squeeze profit out of these locations like wall street and that very likely this firms are going to end up moving there to be more competitiveness evidences a clear interference of technology on how cities are shaped.
This Article, from collaborative work expert, Don Tapscott, talks about one initiative developed in my home city Bogotá. this initiative promotes engagement and participation of citizens to build up a strategic plan with massive collaboration from citizens. The project mixes a robust on line strategy that uses a website, social networks like twitter and Facebook, forums, blogs, and so forth, with real life interaction.
This project resembles the the initiative of the Regional Plan Association for New York city.
In spite the down turn the city has suffered by two corrupt and inefficient administrations, a private initiative has managed to engage citizens to share their vision and priorities for the city.
Here technology shows us new possibilities for citizen engagement, even in and adverse environment.
This is a ranking of The Top 100 most innovative cities according to 2thinknow. This expresses the trend of having technology at the service of the elites, ignoring the base of the pyramid that is almost half of the population of the planet.
And I am not referring only to the moral imperative of having a world with more equity. Is also short sighted to ignore the fact that those 3 billion people are a potential market for technology. It would be interesting to have a ranking of cities promoting technology on developing countries.
PS: I was surprised not to see Zaragoza, Spain on the ranking.
