Cityfi would inspire inventions like this

GREENSBORO, NC -- In our entry to Greensboro's Strong Cities, Strong Communities Challenge, my partner Andrew Brod and I discuss the numerous benefits of city-wide public Wi-Fi. We are calling it Cityfi.

One of the things we suggest is that a city blanketed with public Wi-Fi would make Greensboro a hotbed for innovation and invention, especially for wearables (fitness bands, smart watches, etc.) and for the Internet of Things.

In describing the Internet of Things, we wrote this:

"The Internet of Things generally describes connecting ordinary things to the Internet so that they can convey information about their location or condition. A smoke detector might alert the fire department, for example, or a refrigerator might text to its owner a reminder that it’s out of milk. A municipal environment in which there is pervasive wireless Internet will be an attractive place for the innovators and inventors of such devices."

Today there is news of a company inventing a battery that uses Wi-Fi to bring smoke detectors online. From MIT Technology Review:

"A startup has come up with a simple way to make smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors more useful: a nine-volt battery with built-in Wi-Fi. The battery can alert you on your smartphone if the alarm goes off or the battery itself is about to die."

Nineteen years ago, I made the rounds in Greensboro talking to anybody who would listen about this great thing that was about to explode called the Internet. It is going to revolutionize just about everything, I'd explain to anybody willing to listen. Some people got it.* Some people were way ahead of me, kindly patient with how little I actually knew.

Others, doubtful and not to be convinced, said things like "Why would I need email when I have a fax machine." Really. An important man, rocking back in his big chair behind his polished oak desk actually said that to me.

Sometimes technologies reach a tipping point — a point where it is not hard to see that a significant leap forward—better yet, a wave—is coming. I see the same thing with the new generation of Wi-Fi and I'm hopeful our entry into the SC2 Challenge will do well so that Greensboro will take notice of this: There is a transformative opportunity here. We should prove ourselves vibrant and progressive and take it.



* I continue to have a special fondness for Ed Mathews, the meteorologist from WFMY, because he was one of the early "visionaries" -- one of the first people of influence to say yes in my search for collaborators. I am certain it sounds like no big deal now, but at the time, around 1996, when Ed and I arranged for him to email me the weather forecast twice a day, which I copied, added some graphics to, and pasted "by hand" onto The Wire's local weather web page, it was a pretty damn big deal. Even Ed's employer wasn't online yet, much less with twice-a-day weather.

There were plenty of other people who saw the future too. But not enough of them among the movers and shakers to put us in the fast lane of the nascent Internet industry. On the eve of what would prove to be the decimation of of our textile and furniture industries, there was simply a lack of enthusiasm among the powerful and entrenched economic forces to kickstart Internet related business. I imagine, sometimes, how different things might be now for Greensboro if we had diversified some of our capital and tried to lead in technological innovation.

I hope we do things differently this time. I hope we can see that there is something coming and that it is our chance to reach for something better than the status quo. Better than our fax machines.

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