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Τετάρτη 16 Νοεμβρίου 2016

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

                    



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

DHμοσιεύτηκε στις 18 Δεκ 2015
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.

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