They're watching your every move: What are Smart Cities?

Smart Cities will frolic in urban areas in the future.

Billions of people are being confronted by different governments around the world to create "smart cities." These "smart cities" are urban areas that are covered with internet-connected devices that will, not only be a means of communication, but also control the transportation systems in the area. The basic goal of these cities is to create super-efficient structure that will help improve the well-being of the populace.

MUNTINLUPA, PHILIPPINES (Catholic Online) - Smart Cities will soon dominate urban areas from Boston to Beijing, with the aim of creating an improved urban area conducive for the well-being of the people. Such cities will be covered with several internet connected devices that will control communication, transit, data collection and basically almost every technologically influenced function in the city.

The tech utopia will gather a massive amount of data from its inhabitants. Several experiments where staff wear devices around the clock for 10 days were closely monitored, revealing details of their daily activities. How they slept, where they traveled and how they felt, as dictated by their heart beat, was measured.

With this type of data gathered from people, business owners and companies will have a greater idea on what the current demand of the market is. Unfortunately, such information might prove to be too sensitive and might go against the usual norms of society. Businesses, the government and authorities will face a lot of ethical questions if all these plans push through.

In a fully "smart city" every movement of an individual can be tracked. This, of course, will open potential invasion of privacy issues.

This kind of tracking may already exist via various applications and social-media platforms. The difference would be with "smart cities" data will be centralized in a single system and can be easily accessed by anyone with the means and financial capabilities to do so.

Day to day routines of the general "market" can now be gathered and analyzed by businesses and the government.

This is a dream come true for companies. They could easily adjust to the needs of the market with the information gathered from the "smart cities" data gathering system. This is also good news to the government and authorities, for they can easily monitor illegal activities via these technological tools.

It will all boil down to the invasion of privacy of those in the "smart cities." With the endless possibilities, risks and worries that "smart cities" will bring, will they really exist in the future?

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