The Internet of Things is more revolutionary than the Internet of people, and IBM is leading the pack. The more this technology congeals into Smart City practices, the closer we will be to outright Scientific Dictatorship, or Technocracy
Non-monetary transactions between devices in the Internet of Things can produce a permanent audit trail recorded by blockchain technology. This would be a marriage made in hades.
The stampede toward Smart Cities in America is underway, with 133 major cities competing for five grants from the Smart Cities Council which states, "We envision a world where digital technology and intelligent design have been harnessed to create smart, sustainable cities with high-quality living and high-quality jobs."
Every conceivable corporate manufacturer of connectivity products is stampeding into the Smart City market. Technocrats are bent on creating a scientifically managed society centered around cities.
Sterling Ranch, built to be a sustainable-development laboratory, is a hotbed of research for every Smart City planner in the world. Residents have submitted themselves to every conceivable intrusive and invasive monitoring technology, to be poked, prodded, numbered, analyzed, etc. In short, it is a Technocracy.
Smart Cities are predicated on Total Information Awareness and the Internet of Things represent the perfect web of data collection. The USPS, however, is a federal agency, meaning that data would be collected by it but shared with the city.
Data collection on all citizens was abhorred just two years ago, but now it is necessary to move into the future? Technocrats in rogue intelligence agencies have kick-started the scientific dictatorship.
A must-read article correctly connects the stampede for cashless banking with totalitarian police states, where ownership of data mean ownership of people.
There are alternative futures for cities, other than the 'smart city' meme touted by the United Nations and Technocrats everywhere. Further, it is not a foregone conclusions that Technocracy will win.
As the cashless society expands, the poor are forced to comply or they will become even poorer and then excluded from economic life altogether. However, Technocrats are dead serious about 'no person left behind'.