# Exploring Data Generated by Pocket Devices (part 1 of 2)

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [18], part 1 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 1 of 2
[p. 1 to 4](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=1) LIMITED DISTRIBUTION Exploring Data Generated by Pocket Devices July 2013 Author Vinay Gupta LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION The Institute for Security & Resilience Studies (ISRS) at University College London (UCL) provides a hub for scholars and practitioners to address the challenges of resilience and security in the 21st Century. We bring together the public, private and third sectors to seek out ways to catalyse innovation - so that we can all better cope with, and flourish in, increasingly uncertain times. The contents and opinions expressed in this paper are entirely and solely those of the authors do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of HM Government or of University College London. This paper was first published in July 2013. Published by Institute for Security and Resilience Studies Gower Street London WC1E 6BT [number removed] [email removed] www.ucl.ac.uk/isrs Institute for Security and Resilience Studies Limited is registered as a company in England and Wales. Registered office: 1 Beauchamp Court, Victors Way, Barnet, Herts, EN5 5TZ. Registered number: 06842634. VAT registration number: 103324470. ~i~ LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION Table of Contents The Brief ...................................................................................................................... 1 Value and Networks ...................................................................................................... 1 What Happens When Things Change? ......................................................................... 1 Dotcoms – A little goes a long way .............................................................................. 3 The wealth of (sensor) networks ................................................................................. 3 Lightweight case studies – AirBnB and Uber ................................................................. 4 AirBnB – a decentralised hotel? ................................................................................ 4 Uber – a taxi in every driveway? .............................................................................. 5 Digital capital and physical infrastructure ..................................................................... 5 Barclays Cycle Hire aka Boris Bike ............................................................................ 6 Automated Transport Networks ............................................................................... 7 Pocket devices terminals to access networked property rights ....................................... 8 What is, what you know worth? .................................................................................. 8 Smart Cities: liquid networked property in the urban future ........................................... 9 The future hardware environment ............................................................................... 9 Privatopia .............................................................................................................10 Googleworld..........................................................................................................11 Singaporous ..........................................................................................................11 What’s Next? ...............................................................................................................12 Transportation ..........................................................................................................12 Logistics...................................................................................................................13 Energy .....................................................................................................................14 Blue light services .....................................................................................................15 Conclusion...................................................................................................................16 Bibliography ................................................................................................................18 Biographical Note .........................................................................................................19 ~ ii ~ LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION THE BRIEF 1. By 2020, very nearly every adult will have a cell phone, and a substantial majority will be smartphones. At the same time, advances in sensor technology make devices smaller, cheaper and more durable than ever before. In the US, there have been persistent suggestions of adding crude radiation sensors to cell phones to create a distributed sensor grid for radiological attacks, and security uses are only limited to available sensor technologies. A variety of medical devices (blood pressure, pulse rate, oxygenation) are becoming integrated into cell phones via small external devices aimed at athletes, and direct monitoring of other medical functions is (again) being developed at an ever- accelerating rate. Passive monitoring of cell phones is also extremely useful: traffic jams can be detected in real time, and the potential exists to monitor public panic events, civil unrest and similar disturbances in the normal flow of crowd behaviour. In some scenarios, life saving information could be transmitted directly to cell phones in an area depending on the threat at hand: a few

[p. 4 to 5](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=4) of cell phones is also extremely useful: traffic jams can be detected in real time, and the potential exists to monitor public panic events, civil unrest and similar disturbances in the normal flow of crowd behaviour. In some scenarios, life saving information could be transmitted directly to cell phones in an area depending on the threat at hand: a few minutes warning of an impending tornado, or spinal injury management advice beamed to everybody close to a car accident. 2. The two-way flow of data and advice presents a variety of huge technical problems: Consider creating suitable sensors and integrating these sensors into smartphones, as well as building business models for each kind of sensor’s deployment, working with smartphone manufacturers and operating system vendors to make the sensors visible to application designers, and getting software written for ordinary users to take advantage of these new capabilities. Actually getting a common platform and standard for advanced sensors on consumer mobile devices could have widespread implications in fields as diverse as medicine and robotics. It’s a unique systems integration problem even at the level of individual phones. When we then generalise to billions of phones, with a mixture of constant and intermittent data feeds, a variety of sensors available, and multiple hardware and software platforms, we see the scope of this problem and the potential for massive delays in deploying these new capabilities based on inadequate modelling and poorly managed standards processes. What are the fast tracks through this terrain to roll out both useful services now, but also to lay a strong foundation for the future of massively parallel sensor grids which can plug into smart cities, resilience, environmental monitoring, risk management and security roles? What are the correct primary metaphors to get diverse interests working together towards shared goals in this landscape? How do we facilitate the large scale cooperation necessary to achieve this? There are examples in previous times of correct standardization unlocking huge reservoirs of values (the PC itself, for example.) Can we replicate this success around sensor networks? VALUE AND NETWORKS What Happens When Things Change? 3. Thinking about the adoption of new technology in the early 21st century is easier if you have a theory of change. For our purposes in this paper, we are going to consider the politics of efficiency as a compass for looking at the changes wrought, and the positions taken, in an age of cheap information. 4. Consider a simple, abstract model of an ancient marketplace – a literal agora, a big square where people buy and sell. In this abstract marketplace are customers, vendors, guards, tax collectors, thrives and the like as one would expect. P a g e |1 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION 5. Now let's imagine our mythic marketplace grows in size by ten times over a period of years. What are some changes that come with the new scale? a. Economies of scale may allow vendors to produce goods more cheaply; b. Vendors and customers may both

[p. 4 to 5](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=4) like as one would expect. P a g e |1 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION 5. Now let's imagine our mythic marketplace grows in size by ten times over a period of years. What are some changes that come with the new scale? a. Economies of scale may allow vendors to produce goods more cheaply; b. Vendors and customers may both feel even more reason to come to the marketplace, each drawn to the venue by the greatly increased number of potential trading partners; c. More specialised vendors may arise as customers with specific tastes now exist in sufficient quantity to allow them to turn a profit; and d. Various fundamental costs of running the market (price of guard labour, particularly) may increase less rapidly than the taxes raised from the market, making it more profitable for those raising taxes. 6. As the market grows larger, and in certain respects more efficient, the shifting ratios of costs and benefits may create a series of tipping points or phase changes in the market: monopolies may arise or be destroyed, or new classes of trade become possible because of concentrated demand, or sufficient taxes may be raised to pay for new infrastructure for trade like roads or canals. There may be competition between different classes of actors to grab the lion's share of increases in fundamental efficiency too. 7. If we take the simple example of an economy of scale, where producing ten times as much of something halves the price of production, consider the following simple outcomes: a. retail price drops keeping pace with production cost: customers get the benefits of the economies of scale; b. retail price is maintained at the previous level, leaving vendors with much wider profit margins which they keep, benefiting from the economies of scale; c. retail price is maintained at the previous level, but heavy new taxes are levied against vendors, giving the tax collectors the benefits of the economies of scale. 8. Of course, in the real world, changes of this kind are rarely simple, and far more complex negotiations and transformations occur to capture the creation of new value as efficiencies increase in some given area. In this paper, we will suggest it is the conflict over the wealth created by increases in fundamental efficiency that is at the heart of the struggle to deploy “smart” technologies in nearly every area of ordinary life. 9. Instead of an economy of scale (although those exist too) we have an economy produced by ever-cheaper information and better-quality automated decision-making. One might even refer to these as the economies of omniscience. The conflict between various parties to capture this value creates a set of political conflicts which are at the heart of the problems deploying technologies like Smart Meters, never mind the whole scale reengineering of the urban network. 10. It is important to consider the whole smart cities / urban devices area as a series of efficiencies added to existing markets just as much as a

[p. 5 to 6](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=5) capture this value creates a set of political conflicts which are at the heart of the problems deploying technologies like Smart Meters, never mind the whole scale reengineering of the urban network. 10. It is important to consider the whole smart cities / urban devices area as a series of efficiencies added to existing markets just as much as a new set of markets being created. Resistance to change is usually rooted in a preference for an existing status quo, or a hidden cost to adopting the new methods that has not been taken into consideration. P a g e |2 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION Dotcoms – A little goes a long way 11. The classical dotcom business models included many simple reimplementations of existing business models. Most typically catalogue sales became e-commerce sites. Disintermediation of businesses that were not sufficiently agile killed market sectors like travel agents. The result was a general leap in efficiency, resulting in improved competitiveness, lower prices, and a general jump in customer satisfaction. 12. Then the second-order effects started to kick in. Amazon, having taken a sufficiently large sector of the mail order market, started to have new kinds of market power. It could track trends across extremely large numbers of people, and use this information to optimise what additional materials it attempted to upsell people or recommend when they were shopping. It could also target advertising more accurately using its models of people’s behaviour. All of this value was captured within Amazon because they were conducting the statistical analysis on data they had gathered - a market efficiency which only one of the players could capture. It is notable that the dotcoms are generally not paying regional sales tax either, at least in America. 13. The current “new new thing” in dotcoms is “social.” Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and many others all maintain a “social graph” about their users: a semantic map of who you know and who you talk to. Some of these networks (Twitter) are sparse - they just map whose tweets you want to read and who you talk to. Others (LinkedIn, particularly) are rich, they ask you to identify how you know people - employees, employers, co- workers, contractors and so on. At this point, none of the major online retailers (or even music services like iTunes or Spotify) have managed to successfully integrate social features. There have been several attempts, including Apple’s failed social network built into iTunes, but for whatever reason, the spark has not jumped yet. The social network we talk with - often including product recommendations - has still not become integrated into the retail systems which recommend products to us. This is extremely odd, all things considered, given how we tend to form tastes depending on what our influences our friends expose us to, and what we are recommended. 14. A similar mysterious market gap is neighbourhood networks. Although some apartment buildings now have Facebook groups, the needs of people to coordinate with their

[p. 6 to 7](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=6) systems which recommend products to us. This is extremely odd, all things considered, given how we tend to form tastes depending on what our influences our friends expose us to, and what we are recommended. 14. A similar mysterious market gap is neighbourhood networks. Although some apartment buildings now have Facebook groups, the needs of people to coordinate with their neighbours are not integrated into any of the social services, or into internet retail (i.e. bulk purchase, delivery cost sharing, holding deliveries for neighbours etc. are all unexplored.) The uneven and unexpected nature of success or failure in the social graph is very important when considering the wealth created by sensor networks. The wealth of (sensor) networks 15. We now have an analytical framework from which we can examine wealth creation by the extension of sensor networks, largely carried by building-integrated devices and phones, personal communications terminals and other “pocket devices.” As with many other new technologies, they are entering an existing marketplace filled with structural conditions sometimes created over centuries (consider London’s complex jurisdictions including the City of London.) It is the pervasive disturbance of existing conditions that creates both the resistance to change, but also the opportunities created by new technology. The critical challenge is figuring out how to divide the pie - and explain how the pie is being divided - to a population which is sceptical about technological change and the increasing shift of power toward vendors brought about by whole-systems integrations of the type managed by Amazon and Facebook. This is not simply limited to the financial rewards generated by these smart systems as they come into cities, but P a g e |3 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION also the shifts of risk, responsibility, differential empowerment of different demographics. 16. Below, in some short case studies, we will examine how dotcoms like Uber place pressure on taxis, and AirBnB puts pressure on hotels and contributes to changing San Francisco rental markets. Here is a common thread through both of these stories: a. A situation changes in a way which creates gains or efficiencies in an existing marketplace b. Different actors in the market place have strategic options to attempt to capture some of the value being generated by these shifts c. Parties losing power or control will resist the changes, unless the deal is sweetened in some way d. The goal of system integrators is to get the size of the pie to rapidly increase for all parties by deploying new technologies swiftly. 17. It is within this frame that we can actually ask some questions about the future of smart devices in a way which is politically and economically realistic, rather than being simple technological futurism. As the size of the pie is increased by these technologies, and as they change the shape and flavour of the pie, the political equilibria at the heart of our society, and particularly at the heart of our cities, change. Lightweight case studies – AirBnB and Uber AirBnB

[p. 7 to 8](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=7) which is politically and economically realistic, rather than being simple technological futurism. As the size of the pie is increased by these technologies, and as they change the shape and flavour of the pie, the political equilibria at the heart of our society, and particularly at the heart of our cities, change. Lightweight case studies – AirBnB and Uber AirBnB – a decentralised hotel? To make room for employees, Brian Chesky gave up his bedroom and lived through the Airbnb service until the company moved into its first office space. (Robin Wauters, TechCrunch.com, June 2010) 18. AirBnB is a successful company which operates a central reservations service for renting other people’s guest bedrooms as a sort of decentralised hotel. I have used the service myself several times, including one very successful holiday around Spain during which I barely touched hotels. AirBnB has a current valuation around $10,000,000,000 and was listed as one of the new Billion Dollar Startups by the New York Times. (The New Start- Ups at Sun Valley, Evelyn Rusli, The New York Times. 8 July 2011). 19. Why does AirBnB work? There are four key technical considerations: 1. AirBnB handles the money, taking payments and ensuring there are no billing problems. 2. AirBnB provides insurance on the transactions, particularly valuable for homeowners. 3. AirBnB provides a trust-and-accountability framework for substandard accommodations. 4. AirBnB collects enough offers into one place to establish market prices for this new class of services. P a g e |4 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION 20. There are also some minor transactional glitches which have recently been ironed out of the economy making AirBnB easier to use. Ubiquitous digital maps mean that finding one’s way to a quiet residential neighbourhood is easy, even in a foreign country. This makes the transactional friction substantially less than it would have been if, say, AirBnB had started in the 1990s when digital walking and public transport maps were still poor or non-existent. The impact is that real estate markets are starting to shift, because renting a room out for a week or a month can bring in as much money as sharing the house with a roommate (Short-term rentals disrupting SF housing market, SFGate, Carolyn Said June 10, 2012). New York City considers AirBnB a substantial threat to the current order of business, and is making moves to hammer the service (AirBnB Vows to Fight NYC Ruling Against Room Sharing, WIRED, Marcus Wohlsen, 6 June 2013). 21. AirBnB is perhaps best understood as a “smart city” version of the hotel. A smooth, highly liquid, instantaneous feedback digital market for accommodations, running on remote computer clusters, smart phone applications, decentralised trust networks, reviews-and-reputation, with digital images piped over a network to let people understand exactly what particular experience they are buying without the brand-name of Hilton or Motel 6. You can get better information about where you will be staying for the evening from AirBnB than from the Radisson web site: you can see the room, often right

[p. 8 to 9](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=8) applications, decentralised trust networks, reviews-and-reputation, with digital images piped over a network to let people understand exactly what particular experience they are buying without the brand-name of Hilton or Motel 6. You can get better information about where you will be staying for the evening from AirBnB than from the Radisson web site: you can see the room, often right down to the books on the bookshelf. 22. This is entirely typical of the way that digital networks intersect with the world, transforming the traditional structures and institutions. Uber – a taxi in every driveway? 23. Uber takes the conventional taxi model - tightly regulated vehicle fleets with centralised dispatch - and breaks it open in much the same way as AirBnB. A wide variety of commercial vehicles (rental limos) and personal vehicles become available for hire, often (but not always) from commercial drivers who are waiting for other gigs. These one-ride microcontracts work almost exactly like taxicabs, but with a digital network (a smartphone app) doing the dispatch and the usual internet profile system providing the trust network. Needless to say, Uber has run into the same kind of regulatory opposition as AirBnB, with New York City leading the charge. A NYC taxi medallion (license) typically changes hands for around $100,000 so there’s everything to play for. 24. Uber’s current valuation is around $3,500,000,000. (Uber Looking To Raise An Uber Round Of Funding Led By TPG, At A $3.5B Valuation Ryan Lawler, TechCrunch, July 2013). Digital capital and physical infrastructure 25. Uber and AirBnB have market capitalisations equal to many much older companies with vast physical assets. How is this possible? 26. The answer is that as digital networks interpenetrate existing markets - in this case, transportation and housing - the basis of value in these markets is transformed. Uber and AirBnB have huge market capitalisations because they are the mechanisms by which vastly larger pools of capital are managed. AirBnB has around 250,000 listings. (With Neighborhoods, Airbnb expands its horizons, CNN, Jessi Hempel, November 13, 2012). P a g e |5 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION 27. How much value is that? 250,000 homes at an average value of $200,000 each would give a total value of $50 billion. Roughly 1/3 of each home is being let, giving about $16bn of rough capital value. AirBnB is being valued by investors at a very substantial fraction of the capital assets that it makes a market for. Uber does not disclose how many cars it has on the books, but at $20,000 per vehicle, the numbers add up almost as fast as housing (given that 100% of each car is in use at the time it is being accessed, rather than a fraction of a house). 28. (All of these estimates are very approximate, and cannot likely be made accurate without very extensive access to proprietary data). 29. Subtracting out unrealistic dotcom value still leaves several billion dollars of value being captured by the control structures which give access to -

[p. 9 to 10](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=9) use at the time it is being accessed, rather than a fraction of a house). 28. (All of these estimates are very approximate, and cannot likely be made accurate without very extensive access to proprietary data). 29. Subtracting out unrealistic dotcom value still leaves several billion dollars of value being captured by the control structures which give access to - and make a market for - precise access to physical capital assets when required. This is a pure information market which is extensively dependent on pocket devices for access to the physical needs and wants of ordinary people. 30. The transformation of life brought about by pocket devices is most clearly felt in places where information changes the mechanisms by which people access the physical capital assets around them. Let us look at two more examples: Barclays Cycle Hire aka Boris Bike 31. 8000 bikes at nearly 600 stations, with nearly 50000 rides being taken in a single day. Nearly half of the bicycle users are new users who would not otherwise cycle in London. 32. The critical pocket device aspect of this is that finding out where you can get a bike - how many are in any given location, for example - is only possible because of the digital network. Similarly, figuring out where there is an empty stand to check the bike in at your destination is also done using a digital device. The overall characteristics of the network - for example, picking up bikes in places where too many accumulate and trucking them to bikeless locations - are also managed by digital systems. 33. These bikes are not actually bikes any more, any more than an AirBnB house is still a conventional single family dwelling, or an Uber’ed limousine is just another hire car. The digital network which provides coordination functions is actually a fundamental domain- crossing infrastructure which carries the goods where they are useful, in a manner similar to conventional non-digital markets of the past. 34. The critical distinction is that market makers - Uber, AirBnB and the Boris Bike administrators - have a fundamental top-down understanding of the system at all times because the assets which are inside of the asset management network are completely legible and controllable through software and digital networks. The element of making the previously-invisible economic opportunities visible is key to understanding why these new networks are rapidly displacing more conventional market access systems, and moving the markets in new directions. Although superficially bicycle hire, car rental and rooming houses have always existed, enormous value is being liberated by the shifting landscape of digitisation. The top-down god's eye view of these kinds of markets has never existed before, and whole systems optimisations like trucking bikes to where they will be needed ahead of time would be much harder in a network of small, independent bike hire shops. The efficiency gains of these systems are substantial, and there is now a P a g e |6 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION

[p. 9 to 10](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=9) of these kinds of markets has never existed before, and whole systems optimisations like trucking bikes to where they will be needed ahead of time would be much harder in a network of small, independent bike hire shops. The efficiency gains of these systems are substantial, and there is now a P a g e |6 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION head-on struggle for who will control this value: customers, vendors, taxmen, or these new digital market-makers, the brokers. Automated Transport Networks 35. An Automated Transport Network (ATN) is a head-on collision between the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) (and any similar self-driving train system) and the Boris Bike. A simple ATN is in use at Heathrow Terminal 5, the “Heathrow Pod.” In the system, small six-seater self-driving smart electric vehicles navigate special tracks. Self-driving is already reliable within safe limits in a tightly controlled environment, as we have seen with the driverless self-driving trains of the DLR. In an Automated Transit Network, passengers summon podcars by going to stations and indicating where they want to travel to, rather like calling an elevator. When a car is free, it picks up passengers, and takes them to their destination. These self-driving pod cars can pre-position themselves according to anticipated needs, a much more elegant solution than trucking Boris Bikes around London to meet demand. Larger podcar networks begin to take on the characteristics of packet switched networks like the internet, where cars are routed across a complex network by software which computes optimal routes, including awareness of all the other cars in the transit network. A large ATN is a little like a road network with self-driving cars, if the roads were free of all other vehicles and the system was globally controlled by a central intelligence that never makes mistakes. Indeed many ATN proposals suggest running many of the ATN tracks above existing roads and occasionally buildings. 36. ATNs have been discussed and implemented on a trial basis for almost 50 years. In Morganstown, West Virginia in the USA an ATN project started in 1970 and is still running today. However, as more sophisticated digital systems come into play, the barriers to these kinds of systems come down and down. An ATN system with tight controls can use the combined battery capacity of its entire fleet as a peak electrical grid load resource, for example. It can swarm cars to areas where a large mass of people will seek transport at an anticipated future time (the end of a concert, perhaps). It can route cars by the most efficient route for the network perhaps at the cost of suboptimal routing for the individual, and so on. More or less any given algorithmic optimisation or preference can be added to an ATN network, including premium access for a higher price, direct routing in which high priority traffic displaces other traffic to less direct routes, and choices about which events to pre-position the car fleet for. All of these decisions are possible in software,

[p. 10 to 11](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=10) individual, and so on. More or less any given algorithmic optimisation or preference can be added to an ATN network, including premium access for a higher price, direct routing in which high priority traffic displaces other traffic to less direct routes, and choices about which events to pre-position the car fleet for. All of these decisions are possible in software, without having to modify the fundamental hardware of the network. 37. At this point, we cannot easily imagine what an ATN-like transformation might look like in terms of other physical assets. But imagine a “fully decentralised hotel” in which an AirBnB-like marketplace is paired with a comprehensive system of electronic locks. A guest rents a room and has a “key” transmitted to their personal electronics. This key then opens the door for as long as they have paid for the room. Sensor networks inside of the room monitor for abuse (i.e. fire) and take intelligent action to protect the room, much as ATN network cars which detect attempts to damage them could auto-drive to the nearest police station. The relationship between owners of assets, users of assets, and the customary markets is completely transformed: goods and services fluidly interpenetrate as higher-order synchronisation functions are managed by digital networks which ordinary people access through their “phones.” Pocket computing terminals plug everybody using them into a nascent “Enterprise Resource Planning” P a g e |7 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION system which actually manages assets across a huge number of owners, peering both individual and company assets in a single accessible web. Pocket devices terminals to access networked property rights 38. Once a pocket device like a cell phone is understood in its true context - as a node in a set of enterprise resource planning type systems which mesh together to give fluid access to resource on demand - it becomes much easier to reason about their utility when used as sensor nodes under non-normative conditions like natural disaster. 39. It is the embedding of complex property rights in the electronic network which the pocket device gives access to that is the key to understanding the future sensor-grid environment. The phone is the access terminal to the digital property rights network, including the markets, property rights registers, and logistical/technical data including transport availability, energy prices and so on. All of this information is built on the same social foundations of the pre-Medieval marketplace, scaled and expanded to a real-time data environment. The information about where the train is, when it arrives, and how likely it is to be on time is information about a networked property right - “can I exercise your option to ride the train at this time?” 40. The traditional marketplace conflicts between Customers, Vendors, Guards, Tax Collectors and Thieves still underlie the struggles in the integration of pocket devices into our lives and society. What starts with electronic photo albums to be shared with grandma escalates into a whole scale fluidisation of property rights at the heart of

[p. 11 to 12](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/SMART_CITIES/The_Smart_City.To_Whos_Advantage.Pocket_Devices_and_Data_Trails.Vinay_Gupta.pdf#page=11) option to ride the train at this time?” 40. The traditional marketplace conflicts between Customers, Vendors, Guards, Tax Collectors and Thieves still underlie the struggles in the integration of pocket devices into our lives and society. What starts with electronic photo albums to be shared with grandma escalates into a whole scale fluidisation of property rights at the heart of our societies - housing and transport today, perhaps intellectual property, seat reservations at restaurants, concert tickets - even food supply, water supply and electrical power supplies tomorrow. Although the pocket devices start as simple terminals, once the terminals are sufficiently widespread, the entire world starts to look like a trading floor. What is, what you know worth? 41. In this environment, ordinary people may now ask: “What is the data that I generate worth? What can I exchange it for in this global marketplace? Who can I trust to give me a fair price?” 42. In the pre-medieval marketplace individuals had a little knowledge, and could use it for competitive advantage in their local marketplace. There was no possibility of aggregating the data about what was in the marketplace to increase efficiency. 43. In the networked property rights environment, extremely large analytics analysis can produce efficient decision-making on a scale never before imagined. A simple example of this is targeted advertising in which the data trail left by an individual’s day-to-day activities is aggregated and correlated with the behaviour of a billion or more other individuals. The insight into an individual’s behaviours and preferences from just their history is relatively small. But compared with a billion other individuals, spotting trends and correlations, and the increase in effective economic behaviour is large. How large? 96% of Google’s revenue of $38,000,000,000 is generated from targeted advertising, with targeting guided by detailed profiles of user search history, browsing behaviour, contents of emails and so on (96 percent of Google’s revenue is advertising, who buys it?, VentureBeat, Meghan Kelly, January 29, 2012). P a g e |8 LIMITED DISTRIBUTION LIMITED DISTRIBUTION 44. It is all grist for the mill. But all of this value was generated from individual users simply living their lives. Google has managed to create $15 per year of value from every human being on the internet ($38bn of revenue, 2.5bn internet users). This is the value of correlated behavioural data. Profile data is valuable. Aggregated profile data is incredibly valuable. Smart Cities: liquid networked property in the urban future 45. Smart Cities envisage applying this kind of monitoring and optimisation to cities: enterprise resource planning and logistics optimisation type approaches. If the data from people’s netsurfing activity is worth an 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

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Continues in https://guptaoption.com/texts/18-2.md (part 2 of 2).
End of [18] Exploring Data Generated by Pocket Devices, part 1 of 2. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.