Throughout history, face-to-face meetings between creative people have fostered progress in many different areas. The more people in one place, the greater chance of discussions and meetings that bring about new ideas. And, higher than average levels of education attract more educated people that in turn increases the probability of new ideas. There is a host of support for the idea of the city fostering creativity and innovation.I recently read the book Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser. Edward Glaeser is an economist and an adamant proponent of urbanization as a means to prosperity for mankind.  Glaeser’s view on cities is a bit more extreme than the one that most people have. He belives that suburbanization leads to long commutes and that cities should focus on building upwards and not outwards.  This is a call to action for the megacities being built today: build high and build dense. It’s also a hint to those in the western world: anticipate having less living space in the future. Galeser’s view on cities is that of an economist wanting to influence policy. It’s not about technology, but there is something to learn from Glaeser’s views when shaping the cities of the future.

That is, the ultimate triumph of cities will go hand-in-hand with the development of Information & Communication Technology.

Hand-in-hand with urbanization, Information & Communication Technology can lift human interaction to a higher lever. And while it can’t replace human interaction, we can prepare for our real-life meetings in a better way if we have access to more information. We can use follow-up meetings via video and exchange information in a much easier way. The cloud will lift us to a higher level. If IT solutions become available more quickly and more widely, we can invent new ways to do business, which is, in fact a human interaction, instead of spending time on IT development. ICT can promote the proliferation of information and collect data that, in turn, speeds up the innovative process stemming from face-to-face interaction between people.

After all, it’s an appealing view. Few of us would want to give up human interaction. When you meet someone on a social network that you build some kind of relationship with, you may want to meet him or her at some point. It’s simply a basic human need to socialize. The creative city we aim for will be creative because people interact, mostly face-to-face. We cannot change that, but we are in a tremendously good position to make those meetings more productive and to make the commute to them more pleasant and efficient.

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Let’s acknowledge that there are risks.

But let us also look back on experience and say that major changes, by definition, if they are imposed on us, cause resistance.

I attended M2M Forum Europe recently and listened to a presentation from the EU on the Internet of Things. Personal privacy was a key issue.  It seemed that EU was somewhat squeezed in between the will to push a positive development for society (e.g. smart metering) and safeguarding rights of individuals on the other.

The EU is talking about ‘the Silence of the Chips’ - the idea that data needs to be kept confidential and only be revealed in the ways agreed. To me, it seems that we look at privacy very selectively; we don’t mind posting very personal things on Facebook but we are afraid what someone can do with data on our electricity consumption. Let’s be realistic about it. The advantages of connecting things, such as an electricity meter, offsets by far the privacy problems that may come from it.

What we need is legislation on how data is stored and used. We need  the right to reject unwanted advertising and, as consumers, we have the power to walk away from those who are not serious about data integrity.  We can deal with it on Facebook.

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