[ccebook.cn]The World in 2010

Transport is perhaps the industry in which the trend has gone furthest. Several cities have installed dynamic
toll systems whose charges vary according to traffic flow. Drivers in Stockholm pay between $1.50 and $3 per
entry into the downtown area. After the system—which uses a combination of smart tags, cameras and
roadside sensors—was launched, traffic in the Swedish capital decreased by nearly 20%.
More importantly, 2010 will see a boom in “smart grids”. This is tech-speak for an intelligent network
paralleling the power grid, and for applications that then manage energy use in real time. Pacific Gas &
Electric, one of California’s main utilities, plans to install 10m “smart meters” to tell consumers how much they
have to pay and, eventually, to switch off appliances during peak hours.
Smart technology is also likely to penetrate the natural environment. One example is the SmartBay project at
Galway Bay in Ireland. The system there draws information from sensors attached to buoys and weather
gauges and from text messages from boaters about potentially dangerous floating objects. Uses range from
automatic alerts being sent to the harbourmaster when water levels rise above normal to fishermen selling
their catch directly to restaurants, thus pocketing a better profit.
Yet it is in big cities that “smartification” will have the most impact. A plethora of systems can be made more
intelligent and then combined into a “system of systems”: not just transport and the power grid, but public
safety, water supply and even health care (think remote monitoring of patients). With the help of Cisco,
another big IT firm, the South Korean city of Incheon aims to become a “Smart+Connected” community, with
virtual government services, green energy services and intelligent buildings.
What could stop the world from becoming smart? Surprisingly, the main barriers are
not technological. One is security: such systems will be vulnerable to all sorts of
hacker attacks. Another is privacy. Many people will feel uncomfortable having their
energy use and driving constantly tracked. Bureaucracy will also slow things down.
For SIS to work, in many cases several administrations and departments have to
collaborate.
Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
The year will see
a boom in
investment in
“smart grids”
And then there is the worry that all these systems will one day gang up on their creators, as in “The Matrix”.
Last July computer scientists, artificial-intelligence researchers and roboticists met in California to discuss the
risk. But the vendors of smart systems insist that the idea will remain just science fiction. “These systems are
designed to operate only within certain boundaries,” says Bernie Meyerson, of IBM’s systems and technology
group. “They don’t go off into the weeds.”
Ludwig Siegele: technology correspondent, The Economist
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