This essay first appeared in print in the January 2020 issue of Revelstoke Mountaineer Magazine, part of a series of stories that explored the coming decade for Revelstoke.
By Jean-Marc La Flamme
Our challenges solved with open data and citizen engagement.
The end of the decade, a time to reflect on the past as we plan for the future. What will the next 10 years hold for us? Do you understand our community priorities? Do they match other communities? What about your personal priorities? Is it family, finance or climate and future? Or all? Are you getting the time to work on them? How do we actually deal with the big ones? Some are focused on the now, and some the future. The two are intertwined but most focus on the former and cant seem to get to the latter.
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” — Peter Drucker
What if we all understood that we can have everything we have ever wanted today instead of in 10 to 20 years? Real affordable off-grid homes, greenhouses, free transportation and amazing passion projects. Oh, and unlimited activities and experiences. We have the technology to make this happen. Elon Musk is a popular example of how anyone can push our world forward by decades.
This could be our reality right now if we could all decide on a plan together. An Official Community Plan is a start, but the most successful communities have a transparent process of co-designing and futurescaping their futures with the world’s best solutions. This can happen today, but it won’t happen in a committee or behind closed doors with a few people sitting around a table.
A good business has a plan and its team, investors and loyal customers should get that plan. It incorporates not only financial and operational management but is plugged into the competition, market and its data from around the world. Above all it has robust internal communication technologies to get its team on the same page in real time.
Everyone always says, ‘We need more communication,’ but we have always evolved our communication. From the early days of gathering around the fire, to vehicle transportation to meet others, and telephone, radio, TV, internet and software that assists with communication.
Today the vast majority of our communication is online, but the user experience of these tools we are using haven’t changed much from 10 years ago. We got sucked into the social media giants that did not build them for city development. Facebook and Google took most of our data to make trillions and we stuck in a newsfeed feedback loop and echo chamber.
But all this communication contains the solution to our challenges. It’s now up to us to co-design our communities and co-create its priorities. We have the made in Canada tech to do it today efficiently. Most agree these platforms should not be centralized by billionaires or governments. If data is the new oil, we should own our data and tools.
Through the power of exponential technologies, the costs have dropped to build tools and everything in our lives including homes, food and transportation.
Cities can play a unique open innovation role. While tech companies excel at early product development, testing in a predictable lab setting is only the first step. The next step is to place your product in the real world to learn what you do not know.
Cities excel at owning and operating infrastructure like roads and sidewalks. They also work with utilities and telecommunications companies to provide basic services to residents. If cities offer sections of their infrastructure to tech companies and convene their largest service providers to do the same, they can create test environments to jumpstart innovation.
Smart cities are bringing all the players together to understand what opportunities, challenges and problems come along with similar new technologies.
Communities also support education systems. Workers of the future need to be proficient in both understanding and utilising technology. Many countries teach tech as the equivalent of a foreign language. They require proficiency. Starting in 2020, coding will be mandatory in Japanese schools.
Our new framework in Canada is called Open Smart Cities. Residents, civil society, academics, and the private sector collaborate with administrators to mobilize data and technologies when warranted in an ethical, accountable and transparent way to govern the city as a fair, viable and liveable commons and balance economic development, social progress and environmental responsibility.
Look around at all of the devices used today and think about a future – the internet of things – when devices will talk to other devices. Individuals with these skills will have steady, well-paying employment opportunities. After all, smart cities will require smart workers.
This learning does not have to be linear and will not end when a standard education program is complete. Smart companies and smart cities will provide technology education on-demand for everyone who wants to learn. Acquisition of technical knowledge will be expected, admired and rewarded. Innovation requires curiosity about what could be.
Air taxis, deliveries via drone and shipping robots are among the many technologies that once sounded far-fetched and yet are being deployed today and will be here in a few years. A recent study by Bloomberg showed that 80 per cent of millennials would be willing to buy an autonomous car. By contrast, the same study showed that over 50 per cent of people aged 55 and over said they would never trust a robot to take the wheel. These two age groups will have to find common ground to advance autonomous technology.
Smart cities are identifying key stakeholders and partners and bringing them together to collaborate. They are not only open to innovation but are facilitating open innovation in new and exciting ways.
When we are ready to launch our own tools we will be part of creating the next phase in our lives exponentially faster than today’s Kootenay Time.
And this is critical to execute given our climate crisis and other global challenges like Artificial Intelligence.
Just like Revelstoke’s Cronometer has a dashboard for your health data, analysis and reporting of solutions for diet and exercise, so must we have for our Smart City, so we can find solutions in real time with experts and data from around the world.
Take the next decade into our hands and fully manifest our wildest fantasies.
Choose your own adventure and let’s set these goals together on our own platforms in 2020.
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