smart divide
The pursuit of smartness is merely another name for a technological escape from our bewildering and taxing social milieu. Meanwhile, emboldened no doubt by the success of many privately built gated communities, the Sanathana Dharama Parirakshana Trust from Sringeri has taken the pursuit of smartness to new heights. On offer at a site about 40 kilometres from Bangalore is the first exclusively Brahmin community township, a vedic village no less, with a temple complex, a Veda Pathasala, Goshala, alternative medicine centre, etc. Houses curving around the auspicious symbol of ‘Om’ will ensure its inhabitants protection from the rough and tumble of Indian democracy.
Janaki Nair, In pursuit of smartness - The Hindu
With “open” (later might come about this one later), “smart” is certainly one of those keywords that people should pay attention because of its overratedness. The article for the hindu is worth a read. It shows at which extends “smart” is both a way for western cities to emphasize what they should do since a long time ago, what they do by pouring money over the middle class and ostracize the lower class that cannot affort to be “smart”. On the other side, what happens when this social logic is translated to BRIC megacities is a way to tell emerging countries to follow western standards (at least for the top-tier diligent own survival) with extra unequalities as a bonus. Sure that is good when money got diverted to such pathways but also it hides how “smart” is part of techo-corporate jargon that does not even try to solve social inequality issues. It does not tell that being “smart” has a cost and that revenue is not profit for the poor but for the happy few that know how to deploy it ; the effort will not be never enough to protect and save the most fragile ones of the ecosystem: the poor and their risk-exposed habitats. Guess who will stay after each crisis: the rich and their assured gated communities. Your “smart” home drived by a NEST thermostat lessen your carbon footprint and you electricity bill but your smartness is still own by the device, its patents and its legal owners.
Let even not speak about what happens to your data and how “smartness” is computed by using “big data” algorithms that needs massive collected intelligence to be pertinent i.e. profitable.
It not only lays bare the bankruptcy of our collective urban imaginations, it reinvents the spatial brutalities of caste
Janaki Nair, In pursuit of smartness - The Hindu