The world is changing, says our Prime Minister Renzi, and basically he is right, because what is changing the social structure is a new way of interpreting relationships, institutional relationships, social connections.
The wave of new technologies that is us'overwhelming' because taken a bit by surprise by the invasive force with which they invest us – and we shouldn't have been so 'naive'! – has for some time already divided public opinion, in a capillary way, between Integrated and Apocalyptic, to quote the great Umberto Eco.
Integrated are all those who enthusiastically applaud the advent of new technologies, which undermine the boundaries, until now solid and certain, of the entire social world: 'everything becomes techno, nothing will be as before‘
Apocalyptic are all those who see in this new progress everything 'wires and net', the literal beginning of the end of the world.
But between these two groups, these two strands, these two philosophies and ways of interpreting progress and human advancement, there is a third who interprets the change imposed by new technological discoveries as a need to reshape human intelligence. So a solicitation to a new intelligence. In fact, administering and developing an urban nucleus has much more to do with the management of information, data, than with some more or less attractive gadget for young or less young people. It's all about using creative and technological intelligence to share so that cities and their citizens can be ever smarter. And it is only with the participation and care of the commons that this knowledge will be fertile and produce equitable and sustainable well-being.
The fourth edition of Smart City Exhibition (Bologna Fiere 14-16 October), takes place in this climate, will be all about the analysis of technological data and their possibilities renovation of social forms. Even the event itself is renewed in form: the work program that has always distinguished the offer of #SCE – this is the acronym and hashtag for those who want to participate on the internet – is accompanied by less formal moments of comparison and debate, outside the exhibition perimeter, like a great festival of technological offerings and ways of interpreting the future. Hence the name chosen for the 2015 edition of SCE: Citizen Data Festival.
We embrace the city, because "intelligence" is not hidden in single devices or single applications, but in the ability to build, share and use knowledge – said Carlo Mochi Sismondi, President of ForumPa, the Public Administration Forum which, also every year, gives us moments of instructive discussion on the new ways of citizenship and participation and on the new forms of relationship between institutions and between institutions and citizens in Italy, in the light of the laws that are gradually drawn up, with an eye to everything that characterizes public and private services.
Both for SCE and for ForumPa, it is an exchange of information which means knowledge and registration of social modalities
It is only with this centrality of shared knowledge that cities and their citizens can be intelligent, as Mochi-Sismondi says. And it is only with the participation and care of the commons that this knowledge will be fertile and produce equitable and sustainable well-being.
Event organizers complain: All the deadlines imposed have passed without results by art. 20 of Legislative Decree 179/12 "Growth 2.0" and none of the tasks that the AgID had been carried out in accordance with the law, despite the efforts of many subjects, ANCI primarily. So as of today:
– we do not have the National Plan of Intelligent Communities and therefore we do not even have an annual report on its implementation;
– we cannot have the "guidelines defining technical standards, including the determination of the ontologies of services and data of intelligent communities, and procedural as well as innovative financial tools for the development of intelligent communities";
– although the 90 days allowed by law have not passed, but almost three years, we do not have “the national smart community platform and its components, which include: to) the catalog of the reuse of systems and applications; b) the catalog of data and information services; c) the monitoring system”;
– nor do we have the famous "statute" of intelligent communities with a shred of definition of what a city must guarantee to its citizens to be considered smart.
At the Citizen Data Festival we will work against the trend, typical of our country, of burning ideas, paradigms and innovations without living them and putting them into practice. – said the President of ForumPa, who is also the organizer of the Smart City Exhibition – This is what still keeps us in the bottom positions in the digital economy rankings and it is this fate that seems to be affecting the smart city paradigm as well, which after being a hype for a couple of years, can no longer find the necessary political attention.
The full program it can be viewed by clicking on the link, while for the most hardened twitterers the official hashtag is #SCE2015