[Editor Charlie sez: Welcome to the Goo town–the end of privacy.  This is how they force you to get rid of independent travel.]

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store

16 Tons, written by Merle Travis

Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs venture has chosen Toronto as its urban laboratory – one in which humans may ultimately be optional.

Sidewalk CEO Dan Doctoroff has fantasised how convenient a city would be without people.

Google won’t take over the entire city – at least not just yet. It’s opted to redevelop 12 acres of the the city’s waterfront, with 800 acres sitting idle next door – a space the size of Venice. Sidewalk describes it as “the first neighbourhood from the internet up” and “a neighbourhood built as an urban innovation platform”, one that will be “a fully Google-fied neighbourhood” in the words of WiReD mag, which admits that there’s an element of “Minority Report” dystopia to the plans.

Data rules in the Googlezone, with everything monitored and analysed. It’s what Google calls “the programmable public realm”.

“Building on a robust system of asset monitoring, Sidewalk can make areas of the public realm reservable for a wide range of temporary uses without impinging on the public’s overall needs,” the company burbles. Following the modern urban prejudice against automobiles, only self-driving vehicles (“taxibots” and “vanbots”) and car-sharing rides will be permitted in the Googlezone. But it will have an API.

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