Nick's Non-fiction

Welcome back for another episode of Nick’s Non-fiction with your host Nick Muniz! In 1850 amidst old foggy London town the Crystal Palace was built setting the precedent for convention centers equipped with rudimentary hvac and human processing. The age of indoors has fully taken over, Anthony Townsend elaborates on in Smart Cities how technology brings people into urban areas the same way air conditioning once popularized the suburbs. Technology moves fast as we see the 72º Songdo convention center pioneering dynamic ticketing based on social credit score and smart re-booking. Throughout the book Townsend focus’s on reshaping culture through civic programs and further developing autonomous energy grids. An anecdote about a 1999 hacker successfully compromising part of the Manhattan power grid admits that technology inevitably has hiccups. Hiccups always happen at the worst time like on your way into an interview. What happens when the impending fleet of driverless cars experiences a bug or a blackout causes