Toronto Is Building An Ambitious “Smart” Neighborhood From The Ground Up

It is not the first smart city—municipalities around the world have adopted smart infrastructure like artificial-intelligence-enabled traffic lights—but it might be the most ambitious. The project’s 200-page wish list of features is astounding. The “vision document” imagines not only the revitalization of a 12-acre plot that has sat largely vacant since its heyday as an industrial port, but its transformation into a micro-city outfitted with smart technologies that will use data to disrupt everything from traffic congestion to health care, housing, zoning regulations, and greenhouse-gas emissions. Long before flying cars, smart sensors won’t just be in our mattresses or our bidets, they’ll be embedded in the walls of our homes and the concrete beneath our feet.

The Broadway Version Of ‘Network’ Has A Lot To Say For Today, But The People Doing It Aren’t Sure Exactly *What*

“Beyond its eerily accurate forecasting about the corporatization of news media and the degradation of truth, this Network has a timely and more fundamental message about the power of anger and what happens when society unleashes it en masse. It just might not be the message that audiences expect, or one that its principal constituents see eye-to-eye on. They have been trying to discern its meaning since they staged it in London, and are still negotiating with the play and with each other.”

Ravel’s Heirs Sue To Pull ‘Bolero’ Back Under Copyright

The composer’s heirs raked in up to €100 million from his greatest hit before Ravel’s music went into the public domain in 2016. Now those (rather distant) heirs have filed a lawsuit against SACEM (France’s ASCAP) arguing that Alexandre Nikolaievitch Benois, the set designer for the ballet for which Bolero was composed, should legally be considered a co-creator of the score. (Why? Because Benois didn’t die until 1960.)

Souls Grown Deep, A Foundation That Saves And Collects Works By Overlooked Black Artists In The South

The Atlanta-based organization currently holds more than 1,000 works, by artist ranging from the self-taught Nellie Mae Rowe (whose materials include old egg cartons and chewing gum) to the quilters of Gee’s Bend, Alabama. Along with collecting work themselves, the staffers of Souls Grown Deep are working to place pieces by their artists in museum collections.