Overview

It is 2050 and Johannesburg, South Africa, is the city that got it right. With no private cars, green spaces abound. Universal basic income and guaranteed housing leave people free to enjoy excellent public facilities. Peons (smarter than smartphones) and AI administrators run the city skilfully. But success has a drawback: everyone wants to live in the golden city. Thulisile Duma runs the Housing office which must accommodate arrivals in line with the city's standards. They plan to densify the last remaining pockets of entrenched privilege: twelve leafy northern suburbs. How will Thuli and her colleagues convince the residents of those elegant enclaves to cooperate? In the ensuing contention the brilliant data analyst, Oliver Dias, must investigate allegations that the peons are lying. What he learns raises a difficult moral dilemma. This cosy thought experiment previsions the workings of a benevolent city administration - a collaboration of people and machines dedicated to long-term human wellbeing.

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9789893591543

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Judy Backhouse writes optimistic future fiction to explore better futures for humankind and planet Earth. Before we can bring about better futures, we must imagine them so that they enter the domain of possibility. Stories are a way to expand our minds and adjust the possibility horizon. Judy retired in 2023 from a long career which included work as a mathematician, an information systems architect, a senior manager in the corporate world, advisor to the South African Minister of Higher Education, Head of the School of Economics and Business Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and a researcher at the United Nations University investigating how technologies can improve governance. Having earnestly pursued truth and explored the limits of evidence, she now (in the words of the immortal Le Guin) makes stuff up.

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