The Google smart city fiasco in Toronto

Le fiasco de la smart city de Google à Toronto

Bernard Fallery ()
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Bernard Fallery: MRM - Montpellier Research in Management - UM1 - Université Montpellier 1 - UPVM - Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 - UM2 - Université Montpellier 2 - Sciences et Techniques - UPVD - Université de Perpignan Via Domitia - Groupe Sup de Co Montpellier (GSCM) - Montpellier Business School

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Abstract: Between utopia and dystopia, the concept of Smart city is in question. The smart city is a dream, but the concrete achievements of capturing behaviors were quickly contested by citizens. The well-documented story of the Google fiasco in 2020 in Toronto illustrates this technological solutionism which envisaged building a platform city, a calculated city. Hyper-connection and algorithmic optimization can then be analyzed at the level of ethics. We can argue that none of the three major ethical principles – that of person, that of duty or that of utility – will be able to found an ethics for digital technology. The inevitable conflicts will not be to be resolved but to be lived, in an ethics based on complex thought.

Keywords: hyper-connection; solutionism; ethics of complexity; Toronto; Smart city; Ville intelligente; hyper-connexion; solutionnisme; éthique de la complexité (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04423807v1
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Published in NETCOM : Réseaux, communication et territoires / Networks and Communications Studies, 2024, 37-1/2, ⟨10.4000/netcom.8248⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04423807

DOI: 10.4000/netcom.8248

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