They say you don’t know how inaccurate generative AI is until you ask it about something you know about. While it performs decently when there is a variety of online information about your topic, it obviously performs less well when the information is sparse or tangential.
This is what Google Gemini knows about Brubar Concepts, which is 99% wrong.
A Brubar Concepts employee—me—was taking MBA classes at Cal State Fullerton, but the company itself was never there, but in Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana (at the abandoned Kaiser Steel Mill plant). I didn’t work for Motorola until a decade later. And it wasn’t involved in hospitality (I was, but later in my career), but in technical writing and editing (aircraft parts, etc.).
One amusing aside that will confuse Gemini even more. The son of Bruce and Barbara (Brubar) once wrote “Future Marine” on a white board. I thought that meant he was going to enlist. Turns out he was referencing a boat company.
(The remainder of this text is from Google Gemini)
Brubar Concepts appears to be a past entity, likely a restaurant or hospitality group, that isn’t currently active but was connected to individuals pursuing education (like MBAs) and involved in tech/security companies like Motorola, with past mentions pointing towards California operations. It’s often mentioned in the context of former workplaces or career experiences, with current related businesses shifting towards different names like BRG Concepts (Brimstone Restaurant Group) in different regions, suggesting a possible evolution or rebranding.
Key Takeaways:
Historical Company: Brubar Concepts was a company where people worked, but it seems to have dissolved or changed forms, with former employees mentioning it alongside now-defunct companies.
Hospitality Link: It was involved in the restaurant/hospitality industry, possibly focusing on concept development.
Potential Rebranding: BRG Concepts (Brimstone Restaurant Group) operates restaurants like Brimsstone Woodfire Grill, Baresco, and Beach House Pompano, suggesting a possible evolution or related venture from the original “Brubar” name, though location and focus may differ.
California Connection: Mentions place it in California (Fullerton area) in past contexts, as noted by someone taking night classes.
In essence, “Brubar Concepts” refers to a defunct or transformed business, likely in hospitality, with ties to former employees who’ve moved on to other ventures like BRG Concepts or different industries.
Now this is not the most robust proof of identity. As I recently noted in my JEBredCal blog (one of my other Google identities), it’s extremely easy for multiple people to use this day pass at different times during the day. Even the 7-day and 31-day passes, which must be signed and may be compared against an identity document, are not necessarily free from fraud.
However, this is not critical to Omnitrans, who would rather put up with a small amount of fraud than inconvenience its riders with multiple identity checks.
Identity proofing is more critical in some situations than it is in others.
Of course, if Omnitrans really wanted to, it could achieve the need for fraud prevention by using relatively frictionless forms of identity proofing. Rather than demaning to see a rider’s papers, Omnitrans could use passive methods to authenticate its riders. I won’t go into all the possible methods and their pros and cons here.
However, I would like to explore one possible identity proofing method to see if it would solve the Omnitrans pass use issue.
You’ll recall that many identity experts recognize five factors of authentication:
Something you know.
Something you are.
Something you have.
Something you do.
Somewhere you are.
Well, because I felt like it, I proclaimed a sixth factor of authentication.
Why?
I said, because I felt like it!
Whoops, “why?” is the sixth authentication factor. I still haven’t rendered it into the “somexxx you xxx” format yet.
Can Omnitrans use the “why?” factor to test the reasonableness that any particular trip is performed by the person who originally bought the pass?
Possibly.
Applying the “why?” question to bus boarding data
Assume the most challenging scenario, in which Omnitrans knows nothing about the person who purchases a 31-day pass. The person pays in cash and is wearing a face mask and sunglasses throughout the entire transaction. Therefore, the only identity information associated with the pass is the location where the pass was purchased, the date/time it was purchased, and some type of pass identification number. For this example, we’ll assume the pass number is 12345.
So Omnitrans really doesn’t know anything of importance about the holder of pass 12345…
…other than how it is used.
I’m making the assumption that Omnitrans logs information about every use of a pass. Since you don’t need to use your pass when you leave the bus, the only information available is when you board the bus.
So let’s look at some fake data.
Date and Time
Bus
Location
Monday, July 25, 2022, 6:39 am
87
Euclid & Holt, Ontario
Monday, July 25, 2022, 6:35 pm
87
Amazon LGB3, Eastvale
Tuesday, July 26, 2022, 6:39 am
87
Euclid & Holt, Ontario
Tuesday, July 26, 2022, 6:35 pm
87
Amazon LGB3, Eastvale
Wednesday, July 27, 2022, 8:42 am
87
Euclid & Holt, Ontario
Wednesday, July 27, 2022, 6:35 pm
87
Amazon LGB3, Eastvale
Thursday, July 28, 2022, 6:39 am
87
Euclid & Holt, Ontario
Thursday, July 28, 2022, 6:35 pm
87
Amazon LGB3, Eastvale
Thursday, July 28, 2022, 7:20 pm
61
Plum & Holt, Ontario
Thursday July 28, 2022, 9:52 pm
61
Ontario Mills, Ontario
Friday, July 29, 2022, 6:39 am
87
Euclid & Holt, Ontario
Friday, July 29, 2022, 8:35 am
87
Amazon LGB3, Eastvale
Friday, July 29, 2022, 10:00 am
66
Vineyard & Foothill, Rancho Cucamonga
Friday, July 29, 2022, 11:26 am
14
Fontana Metrolink
Friday, July 29, 2022, 11:53 am
82
Fontana Metrolink
Friday, July 29, 2022, 12:08 pm
66
Fontana Metrolink
Hypothetical logging of trips on Omnitrans Pass 12345.
Even if you are not familiar with California’s Inland Empire, you can probably classify these trips into the following categories:
Trips that are probably legitimate.
Trips that may or may not be legitimate.
Trips that are probably fraudulent.
Trips that are definitely fraudulent.
For the most part, you can’t know with certainty about the legitimacy of most of these trips. Here’s a story that fits the facts.
Jack Jones starts his new job at Amazon on Monday, and works Monday and Tuesday with no incident. Jack overslept on Wednesday and was written up. He made sure to arrive at work on time Thursday, and at the end of the day he celebrated with a dinner at a restaurant in the Ontario Mills shopping center. After arriving at work on Friday, Sara Smith picked his pocket and took his pass, fleeing the scene an hour later and making her way to Fontana. She creates several clones of the bus pass and sells them at a discount before fleeing herself. Therefore, all trips beginning on Friday at 8:35 am are fraudulent.
But that might not be the true story. This one also fits the facts.
Jack Jones starts his new job at Amazon on Monday, and works Monday and Tuesday with no incident. On Wednesday Jack calls in sick, but lets his housemate Bob Brown (who also works at Amazon) use his pass on Wednesday and Thursday. By Thursday evening, Jack is feeling better, retrieves his pass from his housemate, and goes to Ontario Mills for the evening. On Friday Jack goes to work and is fired. He boards the 87, misses his stop in Ontario, and stays on the bus until he reaches Rancho Cucamonga. Despondent, he decides to visit his friend in Fontana. However, his Fontana friend, Sara Smile, secretly created several clones of Jack’s bus pass and sells them at a discount. Therefore, the Wednesday trips, the Thursday day trips, and all Friday trips beginning at 11:26 am are fraudulent.
Or perhaps some other set of facts fit the data.
It’s possible that the pass was stolen before it was ever used and all of the trips are fraudulent.
Or perhaps every trip before arriving in Fontana is legitimate, but how can we tell which one (if any) of the three trips from Fontana was undertaken by the true passholder?
But the data that Omnitrans captured provides a way to challenge the pass holder for possibly fraudulent trips.
If Omnitrans is really suspicious for some reason, it may choose to challenge every trip that didn’t take place at the “regular” times of 6:39 am or 6:35 pm. “Why are you boarding the 87 bus at this hour of the morning?” “Why are you boarding the 61 bus?”
Or Omnitrans may assume that all of the trips are reasonable and don’t necessitate a challenge. Yes, someone can go to work late. Yes, someone can go to Ontario Mills for the evening. Well, all of them are reasonable until Friday at 11:53 am, when a passholder boards a bus at the same location where the same passholder supposedly departed at 11:26 am.
Now even if strict identity checks are used with the “why?” statement, the data alone can’t detect all fraud. If Jack Jones and Bob Brown both work the day shift at Amazon, but on alternate days, how can Omnitrans detect the days when Jack Jones leaves Ontario at 6:39 am, vs. the days when Bob Brown leaves Ontario at 6:39 am?
Again, no identity proofing method is 100% foolproof.
But the “why?” question may detect some forms of fraud.
Or are there really only five factors of authentication after all?
Now I’ll grant that “why?” might not be a sixth factor of authentication at all, but may fall under the existing “something you do” category. This factor is normally reserved for gestures or touches. For example, some facial liveness detection methods require you to move your head up, down, right, or left on command to prove that you are a real person. But you could probably classify boarding a bus as “something you do.”
Anyway, thank you for engaging my tangent. If I can think of a “why?” example that doesn’t involve something you do, I’ll post it here. That will help me in my hopeful (?) quest to become the inventor of the sixth factor of authentication.
What about the businesses in cities where my bus trips took place?
But back to the businesses in Ontario, Eastvale, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, and other cities: need some content help? I can create esoteric long-winded content like this, or (what you probably want) more concise, customer-focused content that conveys your important message. My regular work includes case studies, white papers, proposal services, and other types of content. If you need someone to help you create this content:
Following the second driest year on record and with near record low storage in California’s largest reservoirs, Governor Gavin Newsom today issued a proclamation extending the drought emergency statewide and further urging Californians to step up their water conservation efforts as the western U.S. faces a potential third dry year.
Regardless of how one feels about governmental powers, I think all of us can agree that if all people and businesses in California use the maximum amount of water, things won’t be so good.
What may IEUA cities do starting June 1?
As a result of the current drought conditions, the Metropolitan Water District has asked the Inland Empire Utilities Agency (IEUA) and five other agencies to take emergency actions effective June 1.
[T]he MWD has asked six of its member agencies to consider requiring its customers to restrict outdoor watering to just one day per week, or find other ways to conserve water, according to the large water agency that provides water to 19 million people in six counties.
As a regional wastewater treatment agency, the Agency provides sewage utility services to seven contracting agencies under the Chino Basin Regional Sewage Service Contract: the cities of Chino, Chino Hills, Fontana, Montclair, Ontario, Upland, and Cucamonga Valley Water District (CVWD) in the city of Rancho Cucamonga.
In addition to the contracting agencies, the Agency provides wholesale imported water from MWD to seven retail agencies: the cities of Chino, Chino Hills, Ontario, Upland, CVWD in the city of Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana Water Company in the city of Fontana, and Monte Vista Water District (MVWD) in the city of Montclair.
Notice that MWD has only asked that the IEUA “consider” restrictions. Why can’t MWD mandate them? Because the MWD is not the only water provider for the agencies in question. Take the city of Upland, for example:
The City water interests are a result of either a direct water right or indirectly through its shareholder interest (entitlement) in two private mutual water companies. The City has a 93% shareholder interest in West End Consolidated Water Company (WECWco.). The water received from WECWCo. is local groundwater. The City has a 68% shareholder interest in San Antonio Water Company (SAW Co.). Both local groundwater and surface water from San Antonio Canyon is provided by SAW Co. San Antonio canyon surface water supply is subject to availability and is closely tied to rain and snowpack. This local surface is treated at the City’s San Antonio Water Treatment Plant. In addition to the local surface and groundwater supplies, the City invested and owns 22% interest in an 81 million gallon imported water treatment plant, Water Facilities Authority (WFA-JPA), Agua de Lejos located on Benson Avenue north of 17th Street. The WFA water treatment plant receives Northern California State Project imported water from Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) through Inland Empire Utilities Agency (IEUA) our MWD member agency. In 2013, IEUA completed regional pipeline facilities and began delivering recycled water. Recycled water is predominantly available in the southeastern sector of the City and is mostly used for large landscape irrigation areas, such as the Upland Hill Country Club Golf Course, City Parks, several school grounds and the Euclid Avenue median.
Anyway, if you live in one of the named cities, or in any city in California, be sure to keep up with your local city to see if water restrictions will affect you.
The U.S. Census provides “quick facts” about U.S. jurisdictions, including business facts. While the business facts are ten years old, they still provide an indication of business health.
For Fontana, the U.S. Census Bureau has documented almost 14,000 firms, over $1 billion in manufacturers shipments, and over $2 billion in retail sales. These figures have presumably increased in the last ten years.
If you own or manage one of these thousands of businesses, and you need to let other businesses know about your offerings, perhaps you should turn to the Fontana, California content marketing expert. Bredemarket can assist your firm with the following:
I recently learned that Bill Fries passed away earlier this month. You may not recognize his name, but people of a certain age are very familiar with his voice.
Fries, an advertising executive, provided the voice of the character “C.W. McCall” in the 1970s song “Convoy,” which dealt with truckers using citizens band (CB) radio to communicate with each other about driving conditions and “smokeys” (police officers enforcing the then-universal 55 mph speed limit). The music was provided by Chip Davis, famous today for Mannheim Steamroller.
Across the United States, more than 70% of all goods used in our daily lives—from food to manufactured products—are transported to our stores and homes by trucks. As the nation’s demand for goods continues to reach record levels, our cities are facing an increase in congestion, noise, and air pollution.
The statement on trucking above was taken from the Volvo LIGHTS website. LIGHTS is an acronym for Low Impact Green Heavy Transport Solutions, where “Low Impact” aims to reduce impacts on congestion, noise, and air pollution.
Regardless of how you feel about the good and bad points of fossil fuels, battery power, solar power, nuclear power, coal power, etc., battery power is a part of our transportation solutions. The Volvo LIGHTS project lists five community benefits from using electric trucks. All five are listed here, but I’m only going to highlight one of them.
Less Congestion from being able to make deliveries at night with much quieter truck engines
This particular benefit addresses both congestion and noise, and the other four benefits address these two impacts as well as the impact of air pollution.
Volvo LIGHTS is performing several proofs of concept, three of which are taking place in the Inland Empire.
From Volvo LIGHTS (additional details here, including the vehicles deployed and the charging infrastructure):
TEC Equipment owns the West Coast’s largest network of full service, heavy-duty truck dealerships. Through the Volvo LIGHTS project, they introduced a comprehensive sales and service strategy for battery electric trucks and provided fleet operators the opportunity to lease battery electric trucks from TEC Equipment for real-world trials.
In August 2021, TEC Equipment was named Volvo Trucks’ first EV Certified Dealer in North America, indicating that their maintenance and repair crew at their Fontana dealership is fully trained and equipped to meet the service needs of fleets operating these advanced zero-emission trucks.
Back in 2020, TEC Equipment commented on the initiative on its website:
“We are proud that our Fontana dealership will be first in in North America to pilot the Volvo VNR Electric model,” said David Thompson, president and CEO of TEC Equipment. “Through the Volvo LIGHTS project, we are gaining valuable hands-on experience for our drivers and maintenance staff to ensure that we are well prepared to support the widescale deployment of these advanced, zero-emission trucks throughout the Southern California freight corridor.”
Dependable is demonstrating the ability for battery electric trucks and equipment to successfully transport goods in its daily routes, as well as at its warehouse facilities. To ensure the ongoing reliability of the trucks and maximize uptime, DHE is road testing Volvo’s remote diagnostic onboard technology, which will alert TEC Equipment in advance when its battery electric trucks need maintenance.
The onsite smart chargers use Greenlots’ cloud software to integrate with Volvo’s truck telematics to balance the needs of the vehicle, facility, and utility grid. To further mitigate grid impacts and energy costs, DHE also integrated onsite solar panels and hopes to garner the benefits of second-life batteries.
In this Vimeo, Dependable’s drivers identity other benefits of electric trucks, including an increased ability to hear emergency vehicles, as well as a decrease in smelly fuel-saturated clothes after your shift is over.
Incidentally, the references to “Greenlots” on the Volvo LIGHTS website for Dependable (and for NFI, below) are outdated. Shell acquired Greenlots in 2019, which now does business as Shell Recharge Solutions. Shell isn’t putting all of its eggs in the fossil fuels basket.
NFI is demonstrating the ability for battery electric trucks and equipment to successfully transport goods in its daily routes, as well as at its warehouse facilities. Having confidence that the trucks can reliably complete their routes was critical for NFI. Their fleets are road testing Volvo’s self-learning driveline control algorithms enabling drivers to optimize energy usage and range.
The onsite smart chargers use Greenlots’ cloud software to integrate with Volvo’s truck telematics to balance the needs of the vehicle, facility, and utility grid. To further mitigate grid impacts and energy costs, NFI continues to explore the viability of onsite solar panels.
NFI is working with Volvo, Daimler, and others on an ambitious project to “[o]perate the first 100% zero-emission drayage fleet in the U.S. with the deployment of 60 battery-electric tractors.” NFI wants to achieve this by 2023.
What does this mean?
These and other initiatives allow trucking companies to realize the benefits described above, from improved distribution to nicer smelling uniforms. The initiatives also allow flexibility should our diesel supplies be threatened.
And the Inland Empire, with its extensive warehousing footprint, provides an ideal proving ground to see whether these technologies will work in practice.
But I don’t know that electric trucks will give us any good songs.
Bredemarket presently offers its services to identity/biometrics, technology, and general business firms, as well as to nonprofits. I offer my services to firms in my hometown of Ontario, California, as well as firms in Eastvale, Fontana, Montclair, Rancho Cucamonga, Upland, other cities of the Inland Empire West, and throughout the United States.
This post concentrates on the services that Bredemarket can provide to businesses in my local area. Read on if you own a small, arty business in the Emporia Arts District of Ontario…
…or perhaps a larger, less arty business north of Holt in Ontario, or perhaps even a business in one of the other cities that I mentioned, or one of the ones I didn’t (sorry Narod).
There are a lot of local businesses out there
Even if you don’t count sole proprietors (such as myself) or freelancers, there are somewhere around 7.7 million businesses in the United States. (This figure is from 2016; I’m not sure if it’s gone up or gone down in the last five years.) Now if you include sole proprietors in the total, then you’re talking about 32 million businesses. (This particular number may have actually increased over time.)
Obviously I can’t target them all. Well, I could try, but it would be a little ridiculous.
So what if I took a subset of those 32 million businesses and tried to see if Bredemarket could serve that subset?
The local small business persona
When you want to market to a particular group, you develop a persona that represents that group. You can then develop a profile of that persona: the persona’s needs, aspirations, and expectations; the persona’s underlying goals and values; and perhaps some other elements. The persona may be developed via extensive research, or perhaps via…a little less quantification.
When I initially looked at this topic last September, I concentrated on a particular persona, but my thoughts on this topic have evolved over time. While I will still serve artists as I initially proposed last September, I’m now thinking of other businesses that can best use the type of content that I provide.
For example, the business may be an incorporated business that is based on the Inland Empire West, provides its products or services to customers in the local area, provides excellent service that is loved by its existing customers, and needs to get the word out to new potential customers by creating content that can be downloaded from a company website, shared via a company social media account, or handed out at a trade show or other in-person event.
Regarding the values of this particular persona, you can probably already deduce some of them based upon the customer love for the company.
The business puts the customer first and strives to provide services that satisfy its customers.
However, the business also prioritizes the well-being of its employees.
While the business may not have explicitly articulated a vision, its actions testify to a vision of excellent service, customer satisfaction, and care for employees.
But what does this business need in terms of types of content? For my example, these businesses are ones that need customer-facing content such as the following:
A document (online or printed) that explains the product(s) or service(s) that the business provides, and that discusses the benefits that the product(s)/service(s) offers to the customers. This document may take the form of a product/service description, or it may take the form of a white paper. For example, your business might issue a white paper entitled “Seven Mandatory Requirements for a Green Widget,” and the white paper just might happen to mention at the end that your green widget just happens to meet all seven mandatory requirements. (Coincidence? I think not.)
Portion of the concluding section of a white paper in which Bredemarket provided the text.
A document (online or printed) that tells a story about how an individual customer benefited from the product(s) or service(s) that the business provides. You could call such a document a case study, or you could call it a testimonial. Or you could call it a casetimonial.
These types of documents are more valuable to some businesses than to others. Your average convenience store has little need for a 3,000 word white paper. But perhaps your business has this sort of need.
How many words should your content contain?
When I originally wrote this last September, I started off by discussing my two standard packages, based on word length. But now that I’ve thought about it a bit more, there are some questions that you need to ask BEFORE deciding on the content length. (We’ll get to content length later.)
(Owen Lovejoy) “How long should a man’s legs be in proportion to his body?”
(Abraham Lincoln) “I have not given the matter much consideration, but on first blush I should judge they ought to be long enough to reach from his body to the ground.”
Abraham Lincoln. (Legs not shown.) By Hesler, Alexander, 1823-1895 – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID cph.3a36988.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18705107
So how far away is the ground? Let’s ask some other questions first before we determine the answer to content length.
Bredemarket’s initial questions for you
Before I create a single word, I start by asking you some questions about your content to make sure our project starts on the right foot. (Even though I am left-footed.)
What is the topic of the content?
What is the goal that you want to achieve with the content?
What are the benefits (not features, but benefits) that your end customers can realize by using your product or service?
What is the target audience for the content?
Once I’ve asked you these and other questions (such as a potential outline), we will both have a good idea of how long the final piece needs to be.
The length of the content also dictates the length and complexity of the review process.
Returning to the content length question
Once we have a good idea of the content length, there are three options that we can pursue to actually create the content.
If your content is longer, say 2800 to 3200 words, then I create the content using a similar (but more detailed) process through my Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service.
If your content falls between these two lengths, or is longer than 3200 words, or needs a more rapid delivery time, we’ll talk and come up with a solution.
(And we’ll even come up with a spiffy name if you like)
(Thanks to Route 66 News for sharing the links to the California Historical Route 66 Association/Beth Murray Facebook post and the Bono’s Restaurant and Deli Wikipedia link that I cite below.)
Those of us who live here know three things about California’s Inland Empire:
The Inland Empire has been heavily influenced by the citrus industry.
The Inland Empire has been heavily influenced by Route 66.
On occasion, those influences merged together.
One of these “get your citrus kicks” Inland Empire mergers of the citrus industry and Route 66 occurred in 1936. In that year, Bob DeVries built a huge fruit stand that looked like an orange and placed it near Fontana, California. Because that’s what people did on Route 66.
“We squeezed oranges for 14 to 18 hours daily. We worked until 9 to 10 p.m. each day to make enough juice to see the next day. We would put it in gallon bottles and put them into Coca-Cola cases with ice. We picked the fruit and also got some at the citrus plant on Mango Avenue (still there). They paid $2 a trailer load.
“This was not the only thing sold at the stand. The large black olives and the pimento stuffed green olives were the first seen by the easterners. We made $20 a week, which was considered good in those days. The olives sold for 98 cents a gallon. Honey was from Colton, dates from Indio, and the Cherry Anne drink was sold by the gallon (or glass for a dime).”
Hey, twenty dollars a week wasn’t bad in the late 1930s.
But time passed, and the orange stand in Fontana, as well as similar orange stands throughout California, began to decline in the same way that Route 66 itself declined.
After the 1950’s the stands began to decline as roads were converted to higher speed freeways which made it more difficult to easily pull over and stop for a glass of orange juice. This combined with the emergence of air conditioning in cars, began the decline of the giant orange juice stands.
The Giant Orange ended up with the Fontana Historical Society, who gifted the orange to Joe Bono.
Perhaps you’ve heard of Joe Bono’s (claimed) cousin (I couldn’t substantiate the Wikipedia claim; Sonny was born in Detroit and moved to Los Angeles as a child, but to my knowledge never lived in Fontana—although of course he lived in Palm Springs later).
Coincidentally, the Bono family was a long-time competitor of the DeVries family, and had its own orange back in the day.
Anyway, Joe Bono placed the DeVries-built Giant Orange in front of his restaurant and promptly put his name on the orange. Eventually the restaurant closed, was reopened, and closed again.
According to Murray, the Fontana Historical Society reclaimed the Giant Orange, which is now in the parking lot of Fontana Public Works.
There are plans to restore the orange to its original 1936 glory. But the restored orange will not have Bono’s name on it. Apparently the “Bono’s” on the orange has been a point of contention for years.
THERE IS something of importance that needs to be corrected in the information in newspapers. The Orange (was in 2013) at Bono’s Restaurant and has the name “Bono’s” on it. This is incorrect. The Fontana Historical Society loaned it to him when it had to be moved from the Wal-Mart store. The Society cannot give it to an individual, only to another historical non-profit. The name on it should be “Fontana Historical Society Orange Stand.” The lady who donated the Orange has been very angry about the name situation.
A little postscript: if you own a giant orange, restaurant, or other Fontana business and need some help promoting it, you might want to contact the Fontana, California content marketing expert, Bredemarket.
And for those like me who now have an ear worm in their head, here’s a song from Joe’s purported cousin and his then-wife.
The Thales website has an article that apparently was originally written in late 2018 or early 2019, but was (as of today) last updated in October 2020. The article is entitled “Digital identity trends – 5 forces that are shaping 2020.”
For purposes of this post (and yes, “for purposes of this post” is a common phrase I use when encountering a listicle), I’m going to focus on the third of the five forces, an accelerating shift towards smart cities.
I first encountered smart cities six years ago, when MorphoTrak’s Vice President of Sales sent a colleague and myself to a smart cities conference. Inasmuch as MorphoTrak was a biometric company, I was obviously paying attention to the presentations that related to biometric identity, but I also paid attention to one of the speakers from my area – Acquanetta Warren, then (and now) mayor of the city of Fontana, California. I wasn’t able to find any accounts of her 2014 presentation, but Warren spoke about smart city needs in 2017.
Fontana (Calif.) Mayor Acquanetta Warren said that Smart City developments can be particularly important in light of natural disasters and emergencies, such as the destruction Hurricane Harvey caused in Texas.
“What happens when that happens?” Warren said. “Does everything stop? Are we able to text or email each other to let each other know ‘we’re trapped, we’re in these positions, come and help us?’ ”
Mayor Warren’s comments illustrate that there is clearly a continuum on the smart city spectrum. When you read some smart city concepts and implementations, you get a view of systems of systems tracking automobiles and parking spaces, calculating anticipated carbon monoxide levels, and doing other “smart” stuff.
Mayor Warren is interested in more basic needs, such as the ability of a Fontana citizen to get help if the San Andreas Fault does its thing.
This is a much simpler model than what Thales envisions in its article. In Fontana, I can report a graffiti violation anonymously. In the Thales model, “digital identity is the key that unlocks the individual’s access to a rich array of services and support.” And no, your Facebook or Google login doesn’t count.
Smarter cities worry privacy advocates, Back in 2018, the ACLU was urging public discussion about proposals in Portland, Maine to outfit street lights with wi-fi hotspots – and other monitoring sensors.
Proponents said there was nothing to worry about.
“We are very interested in deploying a variety of sensors that may be able to help with vehicle counts in intersections, numbers of pedestrians or bikes using a trail or bike path,” said Troy Moon, the city’s sustainability coordinator. “Some of these may look like a camera but only detect shapes.”
Opponents were not reassured.
“I always figured Big Brother was going to be some giant face on a wall, not a tiny camera hidden inside a light bulb,” said Chad Marlow, advocacy and policy counsel for the ACLU. “But what is particularly troubling here is the stealthy way in which the product is being marketed and pitched to the press; to wit, as an energy-efficient light bulb with built-in monitoring technology.”
And those who have followed the topic know that concerns have only accelerated since 2018. Just to cite one example, San Francisco has passed a strict ordinance regulating introduction of any surveillance technology.
This has resulted in a near-bifurcation in the adoption of smart city technologies, as countries such as India adopt a leading role in smart city adoption, while countries with greater privacy concerns such as the United States are slower to adopt the technologies.
I guess you can call these latter countries leaders in the “average intelligence” city movement. These countries will adopt some digital measures to improve city management, but will not go all out and do everything that is technologically possible. For example, a municipality may use technology such as Adobe Experience Manager Forms to enable digital form submission – but they’re not going to track your movements after you submit the form.
Because of the debate and the concerns, these latter countries will continue to be “average intelligence” cities in the future, while cities in other parts of the world will become smarter, for better or worse.
Bredemarket 