Anonymous got this sandcastle started with the following comment:
"Here is a thought...Pandora is a great Oakland business...Pandora transformed music discovery across genres by breaking apart the music genome...how can Smart Oakland channel (or even work with) Pandora to break apart the transportation genome for the smart city of the future...
How can my trip to and from my place of work (actually think multiple places as we will all have more than one in short order, hence multiple commutes each day) become the most interesting part of my day because I am 'discovering' new people, facts, opportunities, exploring passions, helping people, helping the planet... Imagine waking up and your route to work is planned for you by your virtual smart city planner factoring in weather, how well you slept, your daily meeting schedule, other interesting people you might want to meet and could do so as part of your commute given your browsing history, your social graph, your star sign, your shared interest with another Oakland resident in antique clocks from the 1850's...whatever..."
Pandora is in the business of "Redefining Radio for a Connected World". This is made possible by a system of "personalization technologies":
Pandora is not a smart transportation technology company like Streetlight Data, but that doesn't mean its business model and core technologies (Music Genome Project, Machine Listening and Statistical Techniques, and Data for 40B+ Thumbs) should be ignored here. On the contrary, the kind of bold and innovative thinking that the US Dept. of Transportation is calling for with the Smart City Challenge demands that we ask ourselves what the Smart City of the future looks like through the lens called Pandora.
Pandora is not a smart transportation technology company like Streetlight Data, but that doesn't mean its business model and core technologies (Music Genome Project, Machine Listening and Statistical Techniques, and Data for 40B+ Thumbs) should be ignored here. On the contrary, the kind of bold and innovative thinking that the US Dept. of Transportation is calling for with the Smart City Challenge demands that we ask ourselves what the Smart City of the future looks like through the lens called Pandora.
(Source: "You Listen and Pandora Listens Back," NYTimes, )
“A few services, like Pandora, Amazon and Netflix, were early in developing algorithms to recommend products based on an individual customer’s preferences or those of people with similar profiles. Now, some companies are trying to differentiate themselves by using their proprietary data sets to make deeper inferences about individuals and try to influence their behavior.”This sort of "behavioral targeting" is now ubiquitous in the world of "online ad customization".
With the coming "Internet of Things," resulting in larger and larger portions of the world being effectively "online," what is stopping Oakland and its radio-revolutionizing-resident Pandora from working together with others who are already dedicated to improving safety, enhancing access to mobility and addressing climate change through smart transportation systems?
Moreover, how could such a strategic partnership, led by the compass that is the City of Oakland's values and priorities, fail to adequately address "the ethics and accuracy" of the human-machine-data systems that will drive the smart city of the future?
“I’m optimistic that the benefits to society will outweigh the risks,” [Cornell] Professor [Vitaly] Shmatikov says. “But our attitudes will have to evolve to understand that now everybody knows more about who we are.”
Come on Pandora (and Streetlight Data and other potential partners), let's start an evolution!
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