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69 J.L. Pol'y & Globalization 132 (2018)
Smart Cities and Global Village

handle is hein.journals/jawpglob69 and id is 133 raw text is: Journal of Law, Policy and Globalization www. ISSN 2224-3240 (Paper) ISSN 2224-3259 (Online) Vol.69, 2018 ISTE Smart Cities and Global Village Nabeel Jurdi American University in the Emirates, International Academic City, Dubai M3A 2K7, UAE Abstract The focus of the Smart City concept is fundamentally that effective internet technologies, the use of the Internet of Things (JoT), and improving opportunities to advance community growth in a manner that benefits all. The underlying assumption is that smart city creates conditions where crime decreases, poverty decreases, and unemployment decreases through expansion of opportunities for entrepreneurship, while natural resource utilization improves with technological efficiencies.This is problematic because implementing technologies automatically eliminates a significant portion of the population from participation and access because they either lack initial financial resources to join the tech revolution, or lack the comprehension and education to make use of the technologies. Concurrently, others will take advantage of the JoT to maximize illicit profits rather than join the legitimate economic community.A good example of this is the underlying tech used by the residents of Artemis, the recent novel by Andy Weir. It is the ultimate smart city but there are still legitimate and illegitimate uses of tech, crime, corruption, and varying levels of poverty and wealth through the population. Keywords: Smart Cities. Global Village. Marshall McLuhan. Security. Data. Technology. Entrepreneurship. Wealth. Communities. Economy. United Arab Emirates (UAE). Dubai. Tolerance. Artimus. IoT. NARRATIVE The World in general, and the United Arab Emirates, specifically Dubai, has been focusing on Smart Cities where happiness and tolerance exist among all the UAE Communities. After attending few conferences, workshops and listening to a few so-called scholars at academic Institutions, no one can really come up with a clear and crisp meaning to the concept called Smart Cities. Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates said, 'Smart city' is one of those all-encompassing terms that everyone defines however they want. The term 'smart cities' is not as new as been thought. The phrase Global Village has the same meaning and was introduced by Marshall McLuhan (1962) and popularized in his book The Gutenberg Galaxy: the making of typographic man.2 McLuhan's concept of global village was not understood by many, particularly, by scholars in the field of Media and Mass communication. They understood the term to mean that the world we live in has shrunk and has become a global village. To many this was due to technological advances that occurred across many fields. McLuhan's concept about dramatic technological innovations was not just meant to bring nation- states closer to each other, but the true meaning was more noble than that, and the meaning was far more obvious. It was meant for the nation-states who have wealth/science/agriculture/education/medicine/security/ and prosperity to help and assist those who have-not; to reduce, if not eliminate poverty and misery among poor nations. In other words, McLuhan proposed the transmission of knowledge/prosperity/security/tolerance and technology to all who needed them; a concept the same as that of smart cities. This explanation might shock some scholars in the media field due to the fact that this has not been previously proposed in the literature. The underlying concept of the smart city is not innovative. This is an old concept, long described in one form or another throughout the science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s, if not earlier. McLuhan drew on these concepts and expanded them into the realm of fact with his work on the global village. The smart city is a modern-day rebranding of an earlier concept, one with significant negative international perspectives, globalization. Now it is being proffered on a much smaller scale than Hillary Clinton's, It Takes a Village.3 Since the meaning of global village is clearer than before, and its meaning expands beyond the use of technology, the same applies to smart cities. Everyone we spoke to implied the term means the transformation and the use of data and technology for the sake and well-being of the communities; such as the uses of smart phones/social media/smart clocks/computers and new technological innovation that will bring wealth and transform communities.4 Michael Totty expounds on this in a Wall Street Journal article. Steve Olenski writes 'Matt Hamblen, Just what is a smart city?, Computerworld, 01 Oct 2015. Available at: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2986403/internet-of-things/just-what-is-a-smart-city.html 2 Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The making oftypographic man, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962). 3 Hillary Clinton, It takes a Village and other Lessons Children Teach Us, (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1996). 4 Jesse Berst and David Logsdon, The Hill: At Smart Cities Week, tackling opportunities and challenges, Smart Cities Council, 17 Oct 2016. Available at: https://smartcitiescouncil.com/article/hill-smart-cities-week-tackling-opportunities-and- challenges 5 Michael Totty, The rise of the smart city, The Wall Street Journal, 16 Apr 2017. Available at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-the-smart-city- 1492395120 132

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