Imagine living in a city where artificial intelligence controls everything. Does it sound scary to you? Although we are still far from seeing this happen, initial steps have been taken. For the time being, the companies working on the development of smart cities focus on making the lives easier for its inhabitants. As everything else in life, there are pros and cons to this solution. Living in a smart city and are we ready for it is the question we will try to answer today.
Are Smart Cities a Reality?
In short, yes. In some places in the world, such as in China, smart cities are becoming a reality. If you think about it a bit deeper, each and every one of those reading this article has a smart phone, or a smart watch, for example. Life has become unthinkable without the gadgets.
On the other hand, the gadgets show their full potential when using a certain app. And that is when thing get a bit more complicated. Nowadays, we have apps for just anything you can imagine. Moreover, some of those apps may pose a threat to our own privacy.
Anyhow, it seems that people got used to this idea and have accepted the fact that someone out there can potentially possess their private data. We may as well have taken the first steps to accepting the lives in smart cities. The question remains will the AI become so advanced to overcome our own intelligence and take over the cities?
Getting back to reality and more positive aspects, smart cities do provide relief from everyday hassle. And there are many advantages, especially in cutting the costs of living.
Smart Cities Advantages
We mentioned China, but there are indications of smart cities developments in US as well. Take Nevada, for example. If there are readers among you who are living there, we would appreciate the feedback on how far the project has come. We wrote about it last year, and you can check the details on Nevada smart city here.
If we would have to list some of the advantages of living in a smart city powered by blockchain technology, we would mention the following, listed below.
Energy supply
Personally, I think this is the best and biggest advantage of smart cities if we want to keep our planet sustainable. Smart cities should rely on green energy resources, thus increasing the global green footprint. Furthermore, the blockchain based system of energy supply would make households energy independent. Moreover, they would be able to produce energy and trade with it.
Water supply
If a city connects to a blockchain-based water supply system, there should be just enough water for everyone. Now, you can imagine how far we are from this stage, having in mind the fact that global water resources and decreasing. However, blockchain-based water supply could potentially be the solution. It should regulate the usage to make the supply sustainable.
Regulation of Traffic
This one is pretty self-explanatory. The aim is to eventually have the cities with no traffic jams but more functional transportation. We are still to see how this would affect the oil industry and whether electric cars would take over the streets.
Cleaner Cities
Recently, I read an article on smart cities that mentioned the Spanish telecommunications company, Telefonica. This company reportedly developed a system that notifies the trash collecting companies when the public containers get full. It purportedly saves the time, the money and provides better KPIs (key performing indicators).
Cleaner Air
With cleaner cities, the air should be cleaner as well. Again, smart cities by definition, should provide better living conditions. The way to achieve this is to have indicators of air pollution, or noise, for example. In order to eliminate the pollution, the system needs to collect the data on the exact whereabouts and particle concentrations.
Can Living in a Smart City Improve Lives?
The world is hectic at the moment. We are all aware of it. However, underneath the everyday routine, our daily lives, jobs, schools, entertainment, and so on, there are people working diligently and passionately on developing the blockchain technology even further. Their estimate is that smart cities could improve the quality of our lives up to 30%.
What do you think? Is this good enough of a percentage for you to accept living in a smart city? Or, if you prefer more playful topics, head right to our bet safe and crypto accepted casino and spin the reels in our Spins Elevator promotion!
