Big Tech, data privacy and the monetization of everything with Josh O'Kane

In 2017, a Google affiliate called Sidewalk Labs waltzed into Toronto with plans to reimagine urban planning “from the Internet up,” promising a utopia that would begin on 12 acres of brownfield land on Lake Ontario. What happened instead was a two-and-a-half-year battle over the future of cities and their development, data regulation, and the power of the private sector in the public realm.

In this session, Josh O’Kane, author of the best-selling book Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy, will unpack how Sidewalk struggled to translate its idealism into reality and the role of Canadian policy in that failure. In a fireside chat, Josh will also reveal why the giants of Silicon Valley see cities as their next major frontier and what this means for the City of Vancouver as it continues to attract new tech investors.