There was an oblique message buried in a New York Times story on the growing crisis in commercial real estate in cities. Yes, this is exactly the kind of article that people pass over because it seems like it doesn’t have broad application. In fact, it does. It affects the core of issues like our city skylines, how we think about urbanism and progress, where we vacation and work, and whether the big cities are drivers or drains on national productivity.



When it comes to privacy and overall security of some of people’s most sensitive (financial, but also, “behavioral”) biometric data, massive global banks and payment processors, and burgeoning biometric surveillance was always going to be that perfect “match made in hell.” 



