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What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

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Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#91

Post by closeparen »

nitrogen wrote: post #49
jeffbee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All NIMBY power derives from the fact that authority is vested exclusively in the people who already live somewhere, and none is given over to people who could live there, or would like to, if policies could be changed. The only thing that has eroded NIMBY power in California in my lifetime has been state laws, and only very recently, and only just barely.

authority is vested exclusively in the people who already live somewhere Isn't that the definition of democracy? Why should I be able to take what someone else has just because I want it?

Democracy means you have to contend with the whole community. It's not just the rich who get to vote on tax policy, not just the manufacturers who get to vote on environmental regulation, etc.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#92

Post by wendyshu »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #79
wendyshu wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sidewalk would collect more personal, identifiable data on pass-through commuters than governments and companies already do? Maybe, and if so it's a valid point. But I'd bet (money) not. No facial recognition would be used. Doubt they'd track you in a bus. They were well aware of privacy concerns and their data collection would be under intense scrutiny. Data wouldn't be used outside Sidewalk without consent, de-iden…

Your first sentence is exactly what I was speaking to. As for the rest, I'm not much of a gambler. Alphabet's current policies on data collection are typically opt-out, so I didn't hold out much hope when I largely saw a lot of hand-waving surrounding data policies until the project was pressed by the public about it. That cost me a lot of confidence the project. And I come from the place of following the project eag…

If they wanted to do mass device fingerprinting (minimally, de-identified by default, not shared, etc.) they could do that already without a smart city so that's completely orthogonal.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#93

Post by dkn775 »

gamblor956 wrote: post #21
treis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>New, centrally planned cities have only ever been a disaster that quite quickly make apparent the shortcomings of the design professions. I can think of Washington DC and Salt Lake City that were planned and aren't disasters.

The planned parts of DC and SLC are the old parts of the city. The rest of those cities were not planned in the same way, and it shows in the haphazard geography and zoning. (For example: why does SLC have 24/7 factories a block from housing?)

Columbia MD is pretty successful

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#94

Post by vanusa »

tptacek wrote: post #33
etimberg wrote: post #7

As someone who lives in Toronto, the collapse of this project is a great outcome. While the goals of the project seem forward thinking and could benefit society in the long run (in terms of renewable building, etc) Google is 110% the wrong company to be involved. Imagine you lived there and your google account gets banned by some overzealous ML model. Do you just get locked out of your house? If Google, or any other…

Imagine you lived there and your google account gets banned by some overzealous ML model. Do you just get locked out of your house? No.

That's a broad claim - please substantiate.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#95

Post by sebastien_bois »

sandworm101 wrote: post #77
strig wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most hesitate at allowing their employers to track them after hours Is that a real thing?

Do you have a work-issued cellphone? I do. I also carry my own phone but my job requires that I have the work phone on me 24/7 when out of the office.

On-call? Do you get on-call pay?

If not, have you asked for 3x normal salary, since they apparently think they own you 24/7?

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#96

Post by sebastien_bois »

wendyshu wrote: post #56
jszymborski wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy paranoia? Under what pretense should Canadians presume Google a good faith actor? Their business model has been to incrementally make the web their walled-garden fiefdom. Why shouldn't we think that their Toronto project was anything less but an attempt to expand their iron grip into the physical world? Ceding that much power, to a foreign entity no less, is a question of sovereignty.

Privacy is very important to some people, but I don't think it's a good argument against the project. Their collection and use of data would have been under great scrutiny. And if you don't like it, just don't move there. It was a small experiment not a takeover of the city.

AFAIK it wasn't going to be a condo-like development, with restricted access to residents-only, so anyone could walk within the Sidewalk area, and potentially be tracked, willingly or not.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#98

Post by tptacek »

vanusa wrote: post #94
tptacek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you lived there and your google account gets banned by some overzealous ML model. Do you just get locked out of your house? No.

That's a broad claim - please substantiate.

That's a broad claim - please substantiate.

No.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#99

Post by jayparth »

etimberg wrote: post #46
wendyshu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who lives in Toronto, I'm disappointed we couldn't even have this as an experiment with smart city technologies. "It's time to build" and all that.

Agreed that it is unfortunate we could not have this experiment, but perhaps Waterfront Toronto can go back to the drawing board and do the experiment with local companies and homegrown technology.

I would doubt that any company would take such a bet now. If not Google, then why would, say, Shopify stand a better chance? I'm an entrepreneur from Toronto and I won't bet the next three years on my life on a municipal government that has shown a bias against action again and again.

Not even sure that data privacy killed this project. It was probably the bias against action that plagues every branch of government nowadays.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#100

Post by GhostVII »

Personally, I don't want a smart city, I already have a smart phone and that's enough for me. When I walk outside my apartment, I want to be escaping from my technology as much as possible, rather than being exposed to more of it. Give me trees, bike paths, and metal benches, not more screens and automation. And a lot of the automation they talked about sounds like it would be taking away low skilled jobs, which we are going to need more of unless someone implements UBI.

Maybe I'm just getting old though, it's all downhill once you hit your 20s.

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