Technology as Transformation

This post is part of our Re-imagining Cities discussion series, following the third edition of the NewCities Summit in Dallas in June 2014.

Technology and all its ancillary issues – from the rampant growth in mobile phone use, to the rising concern for privacy issues – dominated this discussion.

Both Bhikshesvaran and Rogers agreed upon the ubiquity and growing essentialness of the mobile phone. Rogers in particular asserted that his company, Nest, had “underscored the necessity of the mobile phone”, shifting its entire control system onto individual cell phones. Meanwhile, Bhikshesvaran echoed Rogers’ enthusiasm for mobile devices by asserting something the entire audience could relate to: that a mobile phone was probably the first thing we all touched in the morning, and ultimately the last thing we make contact with at night. “I can assure you,” assured Bhikshesvaran, “That around 84 per cent of São Paulo’s citizens use their smart phones while on their daily commute,” he added.

Most cities now are completely data-centric worlds – Arun Bhikshesvaran

Rogers in particular utilized the metaphor of a flood to describe the wealth of interconnected data that now spills from one technological device to the next, all connected to a centralized grid, and accessible to us from our car to the house.

This kind of technological ubiquity then spurred Bhikshesvaran to comment that everyday citizens have made the important leap from asking themselves the simple, “When do I need to get there?” to the more ambitious query: “Can I accomplish what I need from where I currently am?”

As for the thorny matter of technological privacy, Rogers used the tried and true reasoning that all technology is still created by flawed human beings. As such, human error is always a possibility. “It’s incredibly important in whatever technology we work with, that it be done in a secure manner, and that sensitive data is kept private,” Rogers says. “We do that by employing some of the best hackers around to keep the data base totally safe.”

Speakers

Arun Bhikshesvaran, Chief Marketing Officer, Ericsson
Matt Rogers, Co-Founder, Nest – @nestmatt

Moderator: Gareth Mitchell, Presenter, BBC Click Radio – @GarethM