Editor Zhu Tao
Nassim taleb has a thought-provoking question in Anti-Vulnerability: What is modernization? Can modernization bring changes to the fragile situation?
This question is just the time to reflect on Zhengzhou after the rainstorm. A test from extreme weather made the city suddenly out of order, completely exposing the fragility behind digital intelligence.
On July 20th, the rainstorm hit Zhengzhou, and the city was once cut off from water, electricity and internet, which also paralyzed the digital life of this city with a population of 654.38+0.2 million. Mobile payment can't be used, * * * bicycles can't be unlocked, taxi software can't hit the car, new energy vehicles have no electricity to charge, and it's difficult to place a takeaway order.
Without the internet, people can't move.
In addition to various convenient digital applications, Zhengzhou's proud "smart city" project also suddenly failed. In 20 19, Zhengzhou started the construction of "urban brain" in an all-round way, and completed the construction of basic platform in early 2020. However, in the flood, except for conventional applications such as cameras, intelligent systems performed poorly.
Taking Jingguang Road Smart Tunnel in Zhengzhou as an example, the so-called "thinking" and "talking" smart system can not only provide early warning and rescue, but also provide help and accurate positioning, and suddenly "flameout". According to the description of the survivors in the dangerous situation of Jingguang Road Tunnel, people did not really feel the "wisdom" of these systems.
The story of Zhengzhou is not an isolated case. With the improvement of the digital level of the city, it is not uncommon that the key infrastructure business of the whole city is interrupted and the city operation is almost stopped due to unexpected events. For example, during the period of 20 19 -2020, the main line of Venezuela's national power grid suffered many cyber attacks, resulting in a large-scale power outage and chaotic economic and social order. Also, in 2020, about 40,000 users were forced to lose power in new york due to multiple substation failures. The subway stopped, the elevator was paralyzed, and the whole city was dark. A similar incident happened in Japan. One day in May, 20 19, two railways suddenly lost power. Just because two bugs climbed into boxes with switches, 26 trains were affected and about 12000 passengers were stranded.
As Naseem said, the increasing technological knowledge in the modern world also makes things more unpredictable. The closer you are to nature, the more you may be able to cope with sudden changes; The more artificial it is, the more likely it is to be "fragile".
In today's world, science and technology network is not only a "icing on the cake" plug-in application, but also a basic base for urban operation. People's food, clothing, housing and transportation, the production and operation of enterprises, and the public management of the government must be based on the network. Once there is a problem with the basic base, the whole society may suddenly fail.
"Why is the" city "effect of smart cities difficult to show?
Such incidents have once again sounded the alarm for the construction of smart cities that are galloping forward and ready to go. In 2008, IBM put forward the concept of "Smart Earth", which ignited the upsurge of intelligent construction in international cities, and China joined in. According to IDC's "Global Smart City Expenditure Guide" published in February 2020, the investment market expenditure of smart cities in China will reach 26.6 billion US dollars IDC 2020, second only to the United States. Today, all sub-provincial cities in China, 87% cities above the prefecture level, and more than 500 cities in total, have clearly put forward or are building smart cities.
Big data drives operations, everything can be programmed, and everything must be interconnected ... A series of eye-catching concepts make people have high hopes for smart cities, but in practice, in addition to emergencies that cause cities to stop working, smart city projects fail and fail frequently.
Since 20 13, the smart city project of 654.38+75 billion yuan invested by Wuhan has finally failed after several years of twists and turns and disputes. Originally planned to invest 40 billion US dollars, Songdo, South Korea, which is known as a world-class smart city, began to fully operate in 20 15, and was later evaluated as a "Chernobyl-style ghost town" and a "desert on earth". During the epidemic in 2020, the true "IQ" of various intelligent systems was exposed. In some first-and second-tier cities, issuing notices and popularizing prevention and control knowledge have actually returned to the "original stage" of communication. The epidemic situation report, personnel management and data statistics still rely on manual paper reports, and the letter of introduction from the unit is needed to collect materials from the Red Cross. .......
We can't help but ask, why is the "city" effect of smart cities difficult to show? Why is there a "cerebral infarction" in the "brain" of the city?
Although there are external factors such as lagging managers, inadequate technical details, and inadequate data, the core problem of smart cities is that their planning and construction are being divorced from their origins.
Although the focus of smart city is "people-oriented" in definition and theory, it is alienated into "technology-oriented" in practice, and technical tools have become the core role of urban construction.
The reasons are as follows: on the one hand, the construction of smart cities in China is born out of the government information project, and there is still a thinking inertia based on system construction; On the other hand, in the existing performance evaluation system, technology orientation and quantity preference are still the mainstream. Many city managers interpret smart cities as a new wave of image projects, ignoring the actual needs, and the project construction is just "high above", and various smart systems are developed and built in disorder.
The deviation of ideas will inevitably lead to the dislocation of practice. Generally speaking, there are four main problems in the current construction of smart cities.
First, attach importance to construction and despise operation. Urban construction pays more attention to the construction of hardware system. With the investment, the data center has been built, the cloud computing capability has been built, the smart platform on the high building has been built, and the "city business card" has been created. But how to maintain the efficient operation of the whole hardware system is not considered. For example, after the completion of the community, there is no property, and it is not long before the owners live in it, and the community becomes dilapidated.
One of the core reasons for the failure of Wuhan Smart City Project is that a lot of money and energy have been invested in purchasing IT software, IT integration and cloud services, but the cost of business planning, integration and operation has not been fully considered, resulting in the mismatch between equipment and demand, and finally it can only be reduced to castles in the air.
The second is to attach importance to economic benefits and ignore the value of people's livelihood. Many cities often give priority to projects that can directly bring local economic output, such as attracting investment, and pay insufficient attention to public services. In addition, it is prone to "government-centered" situations, and urban construction ignores people's needs and feelings. For example, the failure of the Songdo project in South Korea is the blind construction of reinforced concrete and optical fiber network, which not only far exceeds the needs of urban residents and the cost of living is too expensive, but also makes residents feel that they are living in a "high-tech prison" because of the lack of necessary humanistic care.
The third is to attach importance to technical efficiency and ignore safety precautions. Quite a few cities only pursue high-tech projects as high as possible, but they don't have enough network security defense capabilities and information protection mechanisms to adapt to them, which leads to frequent incidents such as data leakage and invasion of privacy, which not only poses a great threat to the public's personal property, but also brings important challenges to national security. For example, from June 2065438 to June 2008, Singapore was attacked by hackers, and the personal data of10.5 million citizens and the outpatient prescription details of10.6 million people were stolen, including the data of Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
The fourth is to value wisdom over wisdom. A large number of intelligent projects have been launched, but the construction of information-based talent team has failed, and the digital literacy of staff is insufficient. No matter how expensive the project is, it is also "useless" and "ineffective".
The second half of smart city: from "face" of science and technology to "lining" of people's livelihood
Therefore, after experiencing extensive development, smart city construction needs to reflect and return to its origin in time, from technology-centered to people-centered, from pursuing high-tech "face" to paying attention to people's sense of gain. We need to realize that urban construction is not a short-term task of the government, but a long-term project that really benefits the people.
On the one hand, people should be the center. First, it is reflected in the overall planning, functional design and project arrangement of the city with the public demand as the starting point and the goal of meeting people's needs for a better life, so as to provide people with a more convenient life and a safer environment. The second is to strengthen people's livelihood security, focusing on the construction of emergency safety systems and other projects that are related to the vital interests of the people and the safety of life and property.
On the other hand, prevent technical failures. First of all, we must establish an open and diversified network system. "In the case of being unable to get rid of the Internet, the best way is to make the network work normally under extreme circumstances", such as building a space-based Internet, a temporary base station for emergency communication, and building offline digital payment. And pay attention to keep some artificial facilities without network. "Wisdom" does not mean the insulation of "tradition" and the substitution of "manpower". Second, it is necessary to strengthen long-term operation, give full play to technical utility and project functions through the operation of data, services and industries, stimulate long-term endogenous hematopoietic capacity, and avoid intellectual incompetence. The third is to strengthen the construction of digital talents and improve the application efficiency of intelligent hardware and the service level of smart cities.
In a word, the all-round penetration of technology into human production and life is inevitable, and what we must think about is how to get along with technology. The key lies in taking people as the center, making technology better serve mankind, and realizing the mutual promotion and integration of scientific and technological innovation and humanistic care.