SMART CITY FANATIC

It's time for transport to become truly smart, mobile and connected. Thankfully, the UK Parliament agrees! On September 9, 2020, the UK government released a response to the Smart Data Review from the previous year. "Smart Data's next moves. Open Banking, which predated it by about a decade, was mentioned as an example of how to "put consumers and SMEs in charge of their data and enable innovation." The primary motivator being legislation to support and assist in its adoption. Transport is mentioned specifically in relation to "legislating to require participation." The authors make it very clear that they want to "mandate corporate involvement in Smart Data programmes across the economy" through law. Data within various accounts of any method of transportation can be linked using "bottom-up" ways to open and smart transport data. However, a "top-down" mandate requiring participation from the entire industry speeds up adopt...

  Notice. I did not provide a question mark there. Did not even finish the sentence. I know: how rebellious! Truth is, more mundane than any specific grammatical experiment or bid to stand out in the saturated blog-o-sphere. My point is that, the MOMENT I keyed in 'why is my train' on Google, I was greeted neither with philosophical propositions on existence, nor vocal praise posts about 'why is my train so GREAT?'. The majority? ALL. TERRIBLE! As in everything short of 'why is my train so sh#t?!'.  That speaks volumes on the current state of affairs with rail transportation. Seriously. Algorithms do not lie. Facts are never post truth. And the simple fact here is that, statistically, the majority of queries surely are about why train and rail services are failing to satisfy travellers.  Does that mean all train routes are bad? That every carriage is awful? NO! And for the sake of socio-economic sanity? PLEASE STOP this NONSENSE about 'yeah they are gonna re...

  In short? It becomes just like a CITY! Seriously. The Smart City theme is everywhere. Even here.  Elon Musk now owns Twitter.   Anyone would swear it were some Armageddon level event; an end of the world scenario? Threats of multiple migration toward exodus; political meltdowns and so on.  People are forgetting a few critical points, there: 1: Musk is a POST Ideological figure.   His concern is about FREEDOM. Liberation from needless cost, concern, red tape and so on.  Now, whilst of course no science, tech or business can be truly 'neutral' at a moral level, it is spectacularly unfair to paint Elon as some agent for the resurgent right wing.  FREE speech means just that: FREE (as in, unfettered) but also SPEECH (as in aiding communication, commerce and evading the destructive trolling of old) .  Ergo.. 2: Twitter becomes a truly 'open' space.  Much like what we said about Facebook last week: think upon a social media platform as a virtual ...