Technology & Society
Connectivity, automation, and everyday technology are changing how cities run, how people work, and how communities live. This section looks at the programs, policies, and tools putting technology to work for real people, and what those changes mean for daily life.
We cover topics such as broadband access, digital equity grants, public-sector AI tools, and community technology projects. Each article explains who is affected and what changes for them, and links to official sources so you can check the details and find help or funding where it is available.
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Jacksonville’s Project Guardian Uses AI to Flag Heirs’ Homes
LISC Jacksonville and the Duval County Property Appraiser use AI and public records to find heirs’ property owners at risk of losing their homes. The results are self-reported.
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NJ Transit Bus Tracking Upgrade: Accuracy Up, Wi-Fi Added
NJ Transit says new GPS hardware lifted bus arrival-prediction accuracy from 74% to 86% and brought free Wi-Fi to more than 1,500 buses. The agency has not published how it measured accuracy.
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Armstrong’s $100M West Virginia Fiber Plan Spans 10 Counties
Armstrong says it is building more than 500 miles of fiber across 10 West Virginia counties with $100 million in public and private money. The company counts 5,000 homes and businesses. The governor estimates 10,000.
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Rapid City Plans 350 More Streetlight Monitors
Rapid City Public Works wants to add 350 Ubicell monitoring devices to about 650 already bought, so crews learn of outages without waiting for calls. The cost is just under $49,000, and the council vote was pending when reported.
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Kent County Pilots AI Sorting to Pull Plastics From Trash
Kent County, Michigan is piloting an AI sorting system at its waste-to-energy plant to pull plastics and cardboard out of trash before it burns. Costs to the county and results are not yet public.
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Newtown, CT Launches Online Building Permit Portal
Newtown, Connecticut moved its building permits online on September 1. The vendor claims up to 95% faster processing, but the town has not published any results.
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Chicago Funds Free Home Internet for 28,000 CPS Students
Chicago will pay about $2 million to keep Chicago Connected running for more than 28,000 CPS students, taking over costs once shared with providers and community groups.
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Kansas Unemployment Overhaul: What the State Reports
Kansas replaced a decades-old unemployment system with a cloud platform built with AWS. The state reports faster training and mostly online claims, but we could not confirm a processing-time figure.
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Connecting the West Links Utah, Colorado, Wyoming Highways
A $20 million federal grant is funding a vehicle-to-everything network along 1,200 miles of interstate in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. Equipment is going in, but evaluation has not produced safety results yet.
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Lee County, Florida Adds a Private Low-Level Weather Radar
Lee County, Florida has installed a Climavision X-band radar to watch the lowest part of the atmosphere, where federal radar is weakest. The company paid for it, and the data is not public.