Huffington Post

[Commentary]  Bill Gates is setting aside $80 million and over 24,000 acres to build one. Over in India, they’re planning to construct over 100 of them. They’re smart cities (SC), and they’ve been in development longer than you might think. This landscape of the future is gaining momentum as it enters the third stage of its evolution: the “city as a service.” The United Nations predicts a world population of 9.7 billion by 2050, leading to an urban population boom of 63%.

[Commentary] The repeal of network neutrality isn’t great news for consumers. Giant internet service providers that control their own media empires will be able to push you toward their content while serving up their rivals’ content at molasses-slow speeds. Consumers could be driven into walled content gardens where what you read and watch will be partly determined by which company provides your internet service. That’s probably bad for you. But it would be good for us.

[Commentary] The only sure fire strategy to regain control of this vital underpinning of modern economies is for us to own the broadband networks themselves. Only then will we able make the rules that serve the public interest. Decisions about caps and rates and access, about the digital divide and net neutrality and privacy can and should be debated and made at the local level, not in some distant boardroom or in even more distant federal agencies and federal courts.

As far as media markets go, you’d be hard-pressed to find one with a greater need for fair and sober reporting than Flint (MI). The city’s march into the 21st century has been set to a drumbeat of setbacks and injustices: the decline of its manufacturing sector, a dysfunctional city government, the poisoning of its water and the subsequent cover-ups by public officials.

With network neutrality repeal, internet service providers (ISPs) are free to block or throttle any content they don’t like. That could include video, text and images distributed by people whose voices are underrepresented in mainstream society, including women and people of color.

[Commentary] On November 16, the Federal Communications Commission granted TV licensees the right to provide what it euphemistically called “the next generation TV broadcast standard.” Although this giveaway of spectrum rights (popularly known as the “public airwaves”) to media plutocrats had substantial benefits for the American public, it also had needlessly high costs.