23 November 2024

Centre for Digital Rights

Non-profit
Online Panel
24 June 2020

Beyond Smart Cities

A smart city panel with Harvard scholar Shoshana Zuboff and guest experts. Moderated by The Logic’s David Skok.

Media Partner

Block

 

“Smart” cities are not new but they’ve increasingly captured the imagination of urbanists and politicians looking for answers to the challenges of contemporary living. In 2017, Sidewalk Toronto launched with much fanfare and promised to create a new neighbourhood “from the internet up,” one that would set new standards for city building, from data governance to sustainable architecture but also ubiquitous sensing and surveillance.

 

In 2019, the project was cancelled but the lessons it generates could help inform future “smart” city development. In this panel, some of the key protagonists and observers in the Sidewalk drama join Harvard professor emerita Shoshana Zuboff to discuss the implications for democracy when Big Tech and surveillance capitalism come to town.

 

SHOSHANA ZUBOFF – Charles Edward Wilson Professor Emerita, Harvard Business School, and author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Follow @shoshanazuboff.

 

DAVID SKOK – Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Editor-in-Chief, The Logic. Follow @dskok.

 

ANA SERRANO - Chief Digital Officer, Canadian Film Centre. Follow @acserrano.

 

NATASHA TUSIKOV – Assistant Professor in criminology, Department of Social Science, York University. Follow @NTusikov.

 

ANDY BEST – Executive Director, Open City Network. Follow @OpenCity_Andy.

 

MICHAEL BRYANT – Executive Director and General Counsel, Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Follow @MJ_Bryant.