Last Saturday, Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad published an interview with Dirk Helbing, a TU Delft professor who works on engineering social technologies for a responsible digital future.
In the article, the TU Delft and ETH Zürich professor voices his concerns with regard to the use of data and surveillance. "Corporations and governments have collected huge amounts of data in the past couple of years, based on the idea that we can optimalise the world through monitoring. In times of globalisation and digitalisation, though, the world has become so complex, that this is not at all possible." The combination of mass surveillance and big data may even lead to a new form of totalitarianism, Helbing states.
Earlier this year, Helbing spoke at the Urban Transformation Conference in Rotterdam, where his lecture on Nervousnet was part of the Smart & Vital Cities route in which the Centre for BOLD Cities was launched.