UPDATE - The World in 50 Years - E2 - Our Cities

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• published: 18 Dec 2015
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Episode II “The City” The infrastructures of large cities in the industrialized world are already becoming very difficult to manage. Technological trends in the coming decades will likely move towards a centralized management system to coordinate a city’s energy consumption, traffic and data networks. This way traffic - for example - could automatically be diverted in the even of an accident and medical assistance immediately be called onto the scene. As practical as this model may seem, it’s not without potentially serious pitfalls. These highly sensible data systems could become a tempting target for hackers and terrorists. For this reason the development of networked city models is going hand in hand with that of data security. Even with that, the experts agree that data systems will never be absolutely secure – not even in 50 years. In 2057 the budding but talented hacker Paul, our protagonist of the second episode, manages to penetrate his megapolis’ data network. The pre-teen boy lives with his divorced mother, a police detective in the department for “Critical Infrastructures”, and his grandfather, a former famous hacker-with-a-cause. One day after school, Paul decides to give some virtual cartoon characters of his own design a taste of urban life. Using his grandfather’s equipment and his own nascent genius he accesses the city’s network and programs his “friends” onto all of the city’s holographic advertising spaces as colorful 3-D projections. But in the process, he makes an egregious error, and little by little city’s entire network and the vital infrastructures it drives come to a crashing halt. While Paul gradually begins to understand the mess he has made, the police, in particular his mother’s department, launch a manhunt for the perpetrator. Police investigations reveal to the audience the technology and methods of future crime-fighting efforts and their invasion into individual privacy. In London, the city with the most surveillance cameras in the world today, scientists are developing so-called smart cameras. They could be utilized to reduce crime dramatically according to the experts. VMAD – Video Motion Anomaly Detection – is the name given to the technology, which teaches data-enabled cameras which movements of the human body are normal and which should arouse the attention of law enforcement. As an added capability, the system can follow the extended path of a single individual as long as the subject has a few recognizable features. Scientists from various fields discuss what consequences the increasing need for security might have on the integrity of our private lives. They voice their opinions on the issue of data protection and the individual’s right to informational confidentiality. After the first phases of the investigation, the police have set their sites on Paul’s grandfather, the former hacker, who for his part is preoccupied with helping his grandson out of this calamity. Together they attempt to root out the error and save the city from a total meltdown. For both parties a race against time ensues. Paul manages to rectify the situation at the last minute. The second episode’s fictional plot serves to reveal visionary technologies to our viewers while introducing them to the city of the future. We see how people live their everyday lives – working, having fun, shopping – and how developments in robotics, automobiles and traffic tie into it all. As in the field of data processing, the desire for safety dominates research and development in the automobile industry. Accident-free driving is the ultimate aim of traffic and driver-assistance systems. The driver is to relinquish more and more responsibility to the systems networking all of the car’s electronic components. At the same time, vehicles will be able to communicate with one another independently via sensors and cameras. Engineers and scientists envision a seemingly utopian scenario of completely data-streamed rivers of traffic, in which vehicles silently glide through town piloted automatically and accidents are a thing of the past (our present). The Boeing corporation and Mollers International are developing flying cars that are almost completely independent of surface traffic. But since the airspace is already overfilled today, it would seem to experts that so-called “Personal Air Vehicles” would be used exclusively by police and rescue teams. The first existing prototypes can transport up to six people, are easy to fly and are capable of negotiating short distances in surface traffic. The purpose of these new airborne “cars” is to get help where it is needed rapidly. By the time they go into series, they should be able to reach speeds of up to 500 km/h.