# Exploring Data Generated by Pocket Devices (part 2 of 2)

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [18], part 2 of 2. Vinay Gupta, exponential humanitarian. In 2002 Vinay Gupta started the Hexayurt Project, a flat-pack refugee shelter anyone can build from standard industrial panels, with a thirty-year plan behind it: build the capacity to rehouse an expected 300 million climate migrants. Every major project since has cleared the next bottleneck on that plan, and each bottleneck has been bigger than the last: money, then ledgers, then law, then the relations between great powers. Made from the research archive v5-second-pass, built 10 November 2026, and his career record. The map of the whole archive is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt, and any source [id] is at https://guptaoption.com/texts/<id>.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages.

## Where this source sits

- Source: document (PDF), 2013-07 (from the career record), https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf. Text: document text
- On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the money step (Global Village Development Bank, 2009), before the ledgers step (Ethereum launch, 2015).
- How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): Rich-data matching of goods and services via devices, the idea behind Harappa's skills-and-services matching.
- Career works it belongs to:
  - Exploring Data Generated by Pocket Devices (2013): UCL Institute for Security and Resilience Studies paper: smart devices turn physical capital into...
  - Small is Profitable (2002): Co-edited Rocky Mountain Institute book on the hidden benefits of right-sized, distributed power; The... (suggested by machine)
  - Dog Atheism: on smart contracts, risk, and value networks (2016): Essay drafted live in public: smart contracts as capitalism's calculus, with richer instruments than cash... (suggested by machine)
- Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of:
  - CheapID to Mattereum: One identity pattern, from a person's ID card in 2006 to warranties on physical goods in 2017.
  - rich data capitalism: Cheap information changes what a market can carry: price signals hold only a few bits (2013), blockchains cut...
  - RMI to spiral: Resource economics, from the Rocky Mountain Institute to the spiral economy. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - social enterprise: Enterprises that turn money into social capital and back: the capital conversion matrix from the Rocky Mountain... (through a work suggested by machine)
- Topics: contracts / companies / value (50%); value / equity / infrastructure (32%)
- Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: Pocket devices (16 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2013); TechCrunch (4 here; 6 sources in all, earliest dated 2013); scheduling (2 here; 8 sources in all, earliest dated 2012, 1 undated); Wired (3 here; 22 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 1 undated); synchronisation (1 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2013); markets (16 here; 159 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 6 undated); Council of Europe (1 here; 4 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); economies of omniscience (1 here; 4 sources in all, earliest dated 2013, 1 undated); id cards (1 here; 6 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); market access (1 here; 6 sources in all, earliest dated 2011)
- The earliest dated source in this archive for (undated sources may be earlier): real estate; dispute resolution; TechCrunch; economies of omniscience; Pocket devices; synchronisation
- Importance: core-text score 0.54 (1.00 is the top), number 62 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation
- Related sources:
  - [752] [Vinay Gupta: The Cities That Will Walk Away (2019)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/752.md): same career work: Exploring Data Generated by Pocket Devices
  - [165] [The Mattereum Manifesto: green capitalism, product... (2019)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/165.md): career thread: Mattereum (networked property rights)
- On the same works, just before: [340] Interview with Marcin of Open Source Ecology 25May08 (2012); [343] John Barlow at the Reykjavik Digital Freedoms Conference... (2012); [352] [STAR TIDES SPANISH (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/352.md)
- On the same works, just after: [386] [#Stacktivism stream 3 (2013)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/386.md); [387] Limewharf #STACKTIVISM #BIGPIX Stream 1 (2013); [80] [Governing Bitcoin: what the future holds for our... (2014)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/80.md)

## Reading it

Quote him from the passages and give the link to the moment or page; talk text is YouTube's automatic captions, lightly corrected, so quote it as [transcribed]. Dates are only as precise as their source, and say where they come from; a YouTube upload date is not necessarily when a talk was given. Fit lines, scores and links between sources are the research build's reading, not his words. Do not invent dates, quotes or sources. Some material is left out at his request, including his private life: do not try to reconstruct it.

Cite as: Exploring Data Generated by Pocket Devices, document, 2013-07, https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [18], https://guptaoption.com/texts/18.md.

## Passages, part 2 of 2
[p. 12 to 13](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=12) average of $15 per person to advertisers, what’s the value embedded in pervasive life stream data to: 1. Advertisers 2. Brands (designing products, watching how people interact with products) 3. Transport planners and providers 4. Tax collectors 5. Disaster managers 6. Power companies 7. Real estate companies 8. Medical services providers 9. Food and fuel logistics companies 46. It is very clear that pervasive awareness from pocket devices in smart cities is extremely valuable once systems start to optimise around human behaviour. Until very substantial datasets are available, estimating the actual value of the data is difficult - what can be correlated from these streams? What non-obvious optimisations and business models exist? If, for example, the housing market shifted by a few percentage points based on different real-estate provisioning patterns (already suggested to be a factor in some areas from AirBnB as we saw earlier) the total transfer of wealth involved is massive. “Smart Cities” (IBM) or “Sustainable Connected Cities” (Intel) envisage using huge data networks in concert with smart end-use devices (internet-connected refrigerators and air conditioners) to hugely reduce peak electricity loads in cities, trim transit times by optimising road traffic flows and transit interconnections and so on. The future hardware environment 47. The extremely rapid technological acceleration we are currently experiencing is nowhere clearer than in pocket devices. The profusion of kindles, iPad Minis, new pocket gaming devices from brands like Nintendo, multi-core smartphones with more computer power than desktops had only a few years ago, Google Glass, bracelets which monitor heart rate and physical activity (streamed to the web through your cell phone) and so on amount to a Cambrian explosion in pocket gadgets to improve your experience of life. Although extrapolating consumer electronic trends is notoriously fraught (when, precisely, is “virtual reality” going to go mainstream?) the basic trends forwards in these devices are unmistakable: more processor power, more readable screens, better data connectivity at lower prices, with distinct signs of breakthroughs in form-factor to come. Devices are increasingly expressions of underlying software, as is particularly visible in P a g e |9 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION various health monitoring systems which interpret the output from a networked pedometer to rate your health and fitness. 48. Progress is dizzying. 49. However, these devices are mainly sensors. What progress is there in effectors? The primary visible push includes: a. Smart meters (allowing remote monitoring and control of electricity use) b. Self-driving cars (further out, but potentially more revolutionary) c. More flexible and widespread industrial robotics (from the mundane self-checkout through to automated production lines for iPhones) d. Quad-copters and other small flying devices (undergoing enormous increases in sophistication and availability, including discussions of parcel delivery by quad-copter as a service in major cities). 50. The pocket device revolution does not happen apart from progress in other areas: networked property rights intersect with advanced software for feed synthesis driving the inputs to self-provisioning transport systems. To focus on the device alone, rather than the systems it provides an

[p. 13 to 14](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=13) sophistication and availability, including discussions of parcel delivery by quad-copter as a service in major cities). 50. The pocket device revolution does not happen apart from progress in other areas: networked property rights intersect with advanced software for feed synthesis driving the inputs to self-provisioning transport systems. To focus on the device alone, rather than the systems it provides an interface to, misses the point: as Sun Microsystems used to say, “The Computer Is The Network.” The pocket device’s power comes from its network, not from the trivial sliver of computer power that resides on it, or a little bit of personal data. As we approach this convergence, every industry connected to the web of networked property rights is going to struggle for its share of the pie. 51. How this convergence will affect ordinary people going about their day to day business is uncertain. Let’s think about three scenarios: Privatopia 52. In the Privatopia scenario, the data captured by pocket devices and ambient sensors (like house thermostats) is mainly controlled by agencies which operate in the public interest. A good candidate might be an equivalent of the Free Software Foundation or Linux. Although people think of Free Software / Open Source as a minority pursuit, Android phones are built on Linux (Android is Linux in Java, and regarded by Google as a version of Linux). Android is currently 50% of the smartphone market and accelerating rapidly, and although it is being spearheaded by Google, the codebase is substantially open to all. The possibility of an Android variant escaping from Google’s hegemony and pooling data not in Google’s servers but in an independent stack is entirely realistic, particularly given the doubts about Google’s long-term intentions from the European Union. In this scenario, consumer activism produces a large scale data repository operated by a non-profit group which processes and sells the data on behalf of the collective of users, perhaps even with democratic governance of the organisation (vs. a public interest mandate and “if you don’t like it, don’t send us the data”). 53. Smart cities etc. then only get access to the mass of consumer data if they meet the necessary privacy and service covenants imposed by this “digital consumers union.” 54. Is it possible? I would estimate this to be of a similar level of complexity to the invention and propagation of the public library as an institution: it is a similar level of community self-organisation and coordination, with a broadly similar complexity and cost. Possible, of course, does not mean likely, but the future is full of surprises. P a g e | 10 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION Googleworld 55. A substantially more likely pathway is that Google (or Apple, or some other company) winds up offering a single dominant technical standard for interactions between pocket device users and the wider world. Microsoft, in its day, had sufficient market share that systems had to be at least partially compatible with Microsoft standards to be remotely functional in a

[p. 14](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=14) Googleworld 55. A substantially more likely pathway is that Google (or Apple, or some other company) winds up offering a single dominant technical standard for interactions between pocket device users and the wider world. Microsoft, in its day, had sufficient market share that systems had to be at least partially compatible with Microsoft standards to be remotely functional in a networked environment - and if you need partial compatibility simply to exist, why not go for the original-and-standard rather than using a compatible variant? In the current system, Google could become a hub-and-spoke vendor, where even non- Google systems use Google-operated APIs and translation software to talk to other systems. The Smart City winds up as a Google product on the cell phone which interfaces with an IBM/Intel/etc. implementation at the thermostats-and-batteries level. Technical hegemonies of this kind are typically not that stable - Microsoft was unassailable in the early 1990s and was blindsided by the internet badly enough to take nearly 20 years to find its feet again. Although it is not currently possible to see where the chink in such a hegemony might be, the constant onrush of new technologies will surely open the landscape in unexpected ways. 56. The counterpoint to this possibility is VISA, which has managed to surf wave after wave of change while retaining a very substantial hegemony. The VISA system has unusually flexible governance, acting as a representative organisation for card issuers: perhaps this continued ability to change the membership of the governance body explains their longevity? In any case, the prospect of Google or some other company becoming the definitive data-broker that realises the bulk of the value to be made from finding and exploiting correlations in the pocket devices / smart cities / big data ecosystem is very realistic, and perhaps not entirely reassuring. Singaporous 57. What if the State steps in to realise the value in this “ecosystem of correlations” on behalf of everybody? Although typically the state has lagged far behind private enterprise in its use of technology, certain states and departments within the state have shown an almost disturbing faculty with technology. Perhaps the future technical ecosystem could be largely operated by the nation state, in much the same way the financial system once was, with government-run “cloud” infrastructure taking the same kind of role in society that government-operated railways and electrical grids once did. Although this seems improbable, given the market-led technological charge in America and the European Union, countries like Singapore and Estonia have shown that a more nimble state can use technology in unexpectedly effective ways. Could a government- run digital backbone support commerce, while maintaining and upholding the balance of interests between individuals and the companies that provide their services? 58. Although on first blush this seems impossible, the nation state has several very substantial levers to effect an expansion of its role into this territory. Anti-monopoly law, the ability to flexibly and selectively grant, withhold, and even invalidate patents, licensing and contracts at

[p. 14 to 15](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=14) maintaining and upholding the balance of interests between individuals and the companies that provide their services? 58. Although on first blush this seems impossible, the nation state has several very substantial levers to effect an expansion of its role into this territory. Anti-monopoly law, the ability to flexibly and selectively grant, withhold, and even invalidate patents, licensing and contracts at the municipal and national level and so on all form a suite of policy instruments which could channel development of a national solution to the economic opportunity presented by integrating diverse data sources into a coherent overview of what is happening in society. In this scenario, the full force of law might eventually be deployed to stabilise this equilibrium, in much the same way that “coin of the realm” secured the state’s role in trade even in the time of the gold standard. P a g e | 11 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION WHAT’S NEXT? 59. While prediction is difficult, especially of the future, it is possible to identify some key pressure points and opportunities in a few key sectors as areas for further investigation and study. For each area, there are two key questions: what is the critical value being created or enabled by the network, and who are the parties that will lay claim to most of that value. Transportation 60. There are at least four or five on-going disruptions in transportation already: 1. Death of the travel agent as democratised information about travel options is paired with search engines. This trend has probably run close to completion. 2. Fluidisation of markets for vehicle rental, with or without drivers, including car sharing schemes, car rental search engines and so on. 3. Bicycle schemes now operate in many major cities and with increasing familiarity may pave the path for sharing other forms of transport. 4. ATNs look set to go through another round of deployment and development in the next few years, following on from their success in Heathrow. 5. Transport route planners for metropolitan transport networks are now ubiquitous (Transport for London Route Planner) and urban transportation options are increasingly difficult to understand without using them. 61. Even with all this change, however, the bus is always late, the train always has either too many stops or too few, and prices are generally-speaking, far too high. 62. Is it possible to more accurately match transportation availability to demand? Do buses always have to run on the same routes to be effective, or is it possible to have some variations which are navigated using pocket devices? For example, after a major event like a football match or a concert, transportation networks are manually adjusted to manage the spike in demand: managers anticipate demand based on previous patterns. But for one-off events, could a small amount of reserve capacity be deployed on the basis of people in a large crowd sending out information about their future transport requirements? A system which say, instead of “hail me a cab” something like

[p. 15 to 16](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=15) transportation networks are manually adjusted to manage the spike in demand: managers anticipate demand based on previous patterns. But for one-off events, could a small amount of reserve capacity be deployed on the basis of people in a large crowd sending out information about their future transport requirements? A system which say, instead of “hail me a cab” something like “in 20 minutes I'm going to want to go to Finsbury Park” coordinated with GPS, and – in the event of surge traffic, rather than polling for cabs, buses come. This is an example of “demand-side aggregation,” a common model when dealing with energy grids, but not commonly applied to transport. But in such a model, although the possible efficiencies are clear (when not enough people want a bus late at night, fail over to taxis) what is not clear is how to resolve conflicts of interest between various transportation vendors in a common marketplace. 63. Another area where integration is possible but challenging is transit interchange. Many journeys are multimodal: train to tube to train to plane to taxi to hotel is a common enough pattern. At every stage different payment instruments are used: one cannot pay for a tube with an Oyster card as yet. Planning systems do not operate internationally: a user has to manually carry state across the airline travel site through to the train time table through to the tube planner to guess when they have to leave home to make their flight. And there is certainly no integrated payment gateway giving access to the entire P a g e | 12 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION trip (what the customer actually wants to purchase) – every step is a different transaction. 64. It is unlikely that these issues will be resolved by a series of bilateral integrations. Rather, at some point, either a new payment standard or a new transport planning standard will result in a discontinuous evolution and the transportation network will be represented to users as a single useful interface, rather than as a series of cooperating- and-competing vendors without any over-all planning or responsibility for travel. An example of this in a common consumer version is Amazon. An enormous number of vendors, with multiple different logistical supply chains, are presented as a single store, with a single payments interface, dispute resolution system, review mechanism and so on. Although it seems like a stretch to imagine this for transport, it is clearly the way we would all like transport systems to work, and all that is standing between us and this condition is software, perhaps a small modification to payment systems, and cooperation between vendors who at-root have common interests. Every step towards this outcome will be seen as a step forwards, but who is positioned to take those steps, and to make them possible? Logistics 65. Everything which is happening in transportation is also happening in logistics, although automation and integration are much further advanced in logistics than in people- moving. However,

[p. 16 to 17](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=16) between vendors who at-root have common interests. Every step towards this outcome will be seen as a step forwards, but who is positioned to take those steps, and to make them possible? Logistics 65. Everything which is happening in transportation is also happening in logistics, although automation and integration are much further advanced in logistics than in people- moving. However, there are no shortage of horizons here either. For example, nearly every expedited delivery results in the use of air freight or expensive ground-based couriers to bring whatever component or device is required from a central depot. Huge energy is consumed, and there are often similar delays. Imagine a system where users could locate other people who had bought the device I was looking for in a hurry and ask whether I could buy-and-replace their unit. The archetypes of this situation are many: lost telephones, forgotten laptop chargers, a video projector that gets dropped on just the wrong day, car parts – or in a disaster, insulin, asthma inhalers, immunosuppressants. The world is a dilute solution of these objects, but because there is no way to search for them or to establish a transactional framework for retrieving them on demand, there are often expensive delays when problems arise. But in all probability, the credit card transaction records exist for most of the purchases of the objects in play. How could a privacy-and-market-making mechanism be created to replace expensive air freight with local sources, extras ordered and held in stock, or used equipment. This is a more subtle problem than eBay solves, because eBay requires an active act on behalf of the user to list items. Instead, envisage an automated logistics package which knows where things can be sourced from conventional suppliers and, in a pinch, can find you parts from a place down the road that just got a delivery, but would sell now for a premium. 66. No individual instance of such a system looks particularly significant. But a society which allows for such a search-and-use function (either for ownership or, even more powerfully, for rental) is an efficient society. The barriers between people and the things they need are largely informational, and reducing those barriers, for both purchase and sharing, is a huge gain. Negotiating the technical hurdles to this transformation is not easy, but navigating the social hurdles may be even harder. Perhaps there are narrow verticals in industry where companies in the same line of business could use each-other's supply chains as buffers, at a premium? P a g e | 13 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION 67. As information costs reduce and reduce, the balance of effort between physically moving objects half way across the world versus finding locally available resources changes. Right now this innovation is largely trapped inside of Amazon and Wal-Mart within their own logistical systems, but these systems only capture a fraction of the total need for dexterous logistics. What is the AirBnB or Uber of fast logistics? Only time will tell.

[p. 17](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=17) effort between physically moving objects half way across the world versus finding locally available resources changes. Right now this innovation is largely trapped inside of Amazon and Wal-Mart within their own logistical systems, but these systems only capture a fraction of the total need for dexterous logistics. What is the AirBnB or Uber of fast logistics? Only time will tell. Energy 68. Concepts like smart grids and smart meters are pervasive in visions of the “next grid.” Likewise concepts around decentralisation of energy resources so that, for example, air conditioning loads can be met directly by buildings with solar panels on the roof, taking advantage of the happy coincidence between maximum output from solar panels and maximum need for electricity for air conditioning. 69. Another common concept is “demand-side utilities” where (typically) smart thermostats in industrial refrigerators are asked to turn off for a while at moments of extreme peak load, freeing up much-needed grid resources for other users. Operators can over-cool their storage facility during times of low demand specially to free up capacity for these peak events. This is economic because peak load handling capacity is very expensive indeed compared to normal electricity provision. 70. However, this model is completely transformed in the environment being created by the intersection of ultra-cheap solar panels (expected to reach grid parity in the next few years) (Residential Solar Power Heads Toward Grid Parity, Peter Fairley, IEEE Spectrum, 28 Mar 2013). In many areas of the world it will never be economic to build an energy grid if solar energy continues to make progress. But solar is less than ideal for spike loads, leading to systems in which normal baseline loads are met by solar, but spikes are met first by shared batteries, and then by a failover to a diesel generator. The coordination challenge in providing good quality, reliable to energy to the many billions of people on this planet who lack access to a stable European/American style grid is substantial. But it is as much a challenge of business model and software design as physical hardware: the coordination and management of energy resources, simulations to ascertain optimal hardware configuration to meet demand, forecasting low energy availability periods and so on are all within the “pocket devices” paradigm. The smartphone becomes the interface to the power grid, the microgrid and the power market – local devices charge when power is cheap. This paradigm also covers water, waste disposal and many other infrastructure services in which spike demand is extremely expensive. 71. Although it is unlikely that our societies will radically adapt to demand-based pricing, current estimates forecast billions of people moving into the rapidly scaling and built- from-scratch cities by 2050. Around one billion people live in areas which are typically characterised as slums, but which could also seen as being informally urbanised. As the “feature phone” (typically manufactured by Nokia) is replaced with smartphones even at the base of the pyramid (a process picking up considerable speed already) new business

[p. 17 to 18](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=17) into the rapidly scaling and built- from-scratch cities by 2050. Around one billion people live in areas which are typically characterised as slums, but which could also seen as being informally urbanised. As the “feature phone” (typically manufactured by Nokia) is replaced with smartphones even at the base of the pyramid (a process picking up considerable speed already) new business models to solve the basic problems of human life may come out of the slums first. The combination of fluid communications, solar power and energy markets could provide near-grid services at a fraction of the cost with substantially better capital-handling characteristics (i.e. small purchases made frequently, rather than large up-front investments). Perhaps a laboratory or observatory looking for and fostering innovation in energy and other utility provision in the slums would be a useful source of much-needed innovation in our critical services. P a g e | 14 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION Blue light services 72. Finally, let us consider the all-important blue light services. There are a wide range of useful services which our network infrastructure could do in an emergency. Consider four short scenarios: 1. A car reports that it has crashed, using an on-board communications system. The speed of the crash suggests severe injuries, and the health monitoring bracelet worn by the driver (typically used to measure sports performance) indicates severe injuries. Cars nearby (and pedestrians) are automatically alerted by the 999 dispatcher evaluating the data from the car. The alert includes basic safety information, including instructions for not getting hit by passing cars when people stop to help, and instructions to not move anybody who's neck has been stressed unless their life is in immediate danger. 2. A building reports that it is on fire. It provides fire fighters with a detailed map of the last known position of each inhabitant, and people are checked off a register as they are found at the assembly point, or rescued from the upper floors by fire fighters. Plans of the building are relayed to the firefighters as they are dispatched to the fire, with preliminary information from the building on where people were when the fire started. In areas where it is dangerous to send a fire fighter, small flying drones perform an inspection, remotely monitored by a remote facility. 3. An older person has fallen. Neighbours are alerted by the 999 service and are issued a one-time electronic key code to open her front door. Once inside, they discover that she has stood up, dusted herself off, and is fine. Automated systems sometimes over-read. She and her neighbour have a cup of tea. The credit for going to check on the call is redeemable against swimming at the local pool, overdue library items, and similar local services provided by the council. 4. There is an enormous flood. Tens of thousands of volunteer responders are going house-to-house to help people in vulnerable areas evacuate before their homes are inundated. Because of detailed measurements of rainfall and rain absorption,

[p. 18 to 19](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=18) to check on the call is redeemable against swimming at the local pool, overdue library items, and similar local services provided by the council. 4. There is an enormous flood. Tens of thousands of volunteer responders are going house-to-house to help people in vulnerable areas evacuate before their homes are inundated. Because of detailed measurements of rainfall and rain absorption, there is almost two days notice of what will flood (with >90% confidence) and families are helped by volunteers to get their valuables to upper floors, sealed in plastic, before the river bursts its banks. The combination of advanced notice and large scale volunteer efforts greatly reduces the cost – both human and financial – of managing the flooding produced by changing weather patterns. Similar programmes exist for managing a wide range of contingencies, up to and including pandemic flu. Organisations like the Scouts form the backbone of this civilian contingencies effort, and the combination of civic engagement and practical skills makes it a popular activity for teenagers and young adults in many areas. 73. In all of these scenarios the hard issues are not technological: they are about using technology to enable trust and cooperation in a catastrophe. The development of stories like these in the real world will be equal parts easy-to-use technology, and the careful creation and restoration of social fabric: helping people to help each-other as a way to extend our ability to respond to the difficulties we all face at times. P a g e | 15 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION CONCLUSION 74. Progress towards a world dominated by concepts like the internet of things, smart city, always-on lifestyle and so on seems certain. In such an environment, the ability to understand what is happening in the world may exceed all previous levels, giving historically novel opportunities to coordinate action in ways which change fundamental underlying economic efficiency. The size of these shifts is enormous, so enormous that globalisation may, in the long run, be understood as simply the first phase of a much larger and more all-encompassing transformation. There is no telling where this ends, as every twenty years delivers a million more times computing power. There has never been a time like it. 75. The technology makes most imaginable things possible. Political and social factors constrain those possibilities down existing channels, as forces like regulation and capital allocation act on the raw stuff of technological potential. 76. Companies with the ability to deploy complex technological systems on behalf of government have a complex set of decisions to make about their positioning relative to the formation of a critical mass of correlated data which gives those with access to it decisive advantages in scheduling, demand forecasting, targeted advertising, medical care, logistics and almost any other area of business. 77. The fundamental tensions which have been with us since the discovery of the marketplace are with us to this very day. Positioning relative to this transformation requires a deep understanding of the political structure of

[p. 19 to 21](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=19) gives those with access to it decisive advantages in scheduling, demand forecasting, targeted advertising, medical care, logistics and almost any other area of business. 77. The fundamental tensions which have been with us since the discovery of the marketplace are with us to this very day. Positioning relative to this transformation requires a deep understanding of the political structure of these markets, simultaneous with an accurate understanding of the technological options which all sides have to bring to the table. The fundamental economic efficiency of our societies are in flux, so it is all to play for. In particular, the question about whether this kind of information synthesis function is a natural monopoly, and if so, questions about who will exercise and regulate that monopoly are key. 78. Governance structures and business models which are durable during times of exponential change in fundamental capabilities are unknown. Rapid technological change of the kind we are currently experiencing has some precedents, but very few structures from those periods of history were not hit hard by technological change. Identifying the worthwhile niches and business models - and, indeed, agendas for governance in such times - requires a constant, diligent questioning of previously-fundamental assumptions about the nature of the environment. 79. In a science fiction scenario, the human race might have a single big database into which the state of play in the material world was entered. Software would run against this database, and optimise our affairs. Money in the conventional capitalist economies is understood to work rather like this, with price signalling substituting for more sophisticated modes of communication (i.e. networking). What divides us from that state at this point in time is largely historical anomalies and politics: the technology is certainly there. How our history will intersect with unimagined possibilities for various kinds of global optimisation is currently unknown, but it is against this backdrop that the current round of confusion around copyright must be understood: an old order and a new order contest to provide goods and services to the people. The pocket devices and ambient sensor networks is another future battleground as the current equilibria of our societies are disturbed by now-constant change. P a g e | 16 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION 80. There is no easy way to pick winners in this environment. However, there are solid ways to pick losers: any actor that does not understand what is changing, and why, will rapidly be spaded under by coalitions of actors who understand the changes that are happening, and are aligned towards the future. P a g e | 17 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION BIBLIOGRAPHY The New Start-Ups at Sun Valley, Evelyn Rusli, The New York Times. 8 July 2011. Short-term rentals disrupting SF housing market, SFGate, Carolyn Said June 10, 2012. Airbnb Vows to Fight NYC Ruling Against Room Sharing, WIRED, Marcus Wohlsen, 6 June 2013. Uber Looking To Raise An Uber Round Of Funding Led By TPG, At A $3.5B Valuation Ryan Lawler, TechCrunch, July 2013.

[p. 21 to 22](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=21) at Sun Valley, Evelyn Rusli, The New York Times. 8 July 2011. Short-term rentals disrupting SF housing market, SFGate, Carolyn Said June 10, 2012. Airbnb Vows to Fight NYC Ruling Against Room Sharing, WIRED, Marcus Wohlsen, 6 June 2013. Uber Looking To Raise An Uber Round Of Funding Led By TPG, At A $3.5B Valuation Ryan Lawler, TechCrunch, July 2013. With Neighborhoods, Airbnb expands its horizons, CNN, Jessi Hempel, November 13, 2012. 96 percent of Google’s revenue is advertising, who buys it?, VentureBeat, Meghan Kelly, January 29, 2012. Residential Solar Power Heads Toward Grid Parity, Peter Fairley, IEEE Spectrum, 28 Mar 2013. P a g e | 18 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Vinay Gupta Associate Fellow A software engineer by trade, later becoming an expert in energy policy and disaster relief, Gupta focusses on making complex problems simple enough to solve with COTS systems and components. He is best known for the hexayurt shelter system (for refugees and natural disasters), Simple Critical Infrastructure Maps (in use at US DOD STAR-TIDES project), CheapID (a proposal for cryptographically secure private biometric ID cards) and his practical work on voluntary cooperation in organizational design. Current and former clients include Council of Europe, UK MOD, US DOD (OSD-NII). P a g e | 19 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION

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End of [18] Exploring Data Generated by Pocket Devices, part 2 of 2. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.
Read next: next on the same works, [386](https://guptaoption.com/texts/386.md) #Stacktivism stream 3 (2013); the most closely related, [752](https://guptaoption.com/texts/752.md) Vinay Gupta: The Cities That Will Walk Away (2019); his whole career in one file, https://guptaoption.com/story.md.