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Will the high-tech cities of the future be utterly lonely?
- gokusaaaan 9y agoman, can't wait for tech to come out that chops out the need to socially connect, depression caused by the lack same is absolutely annoying
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Noos 9y ago"Do you have serious loneliness and depression? I have an app for that! Friendsy, in which a cute little virtual kitten gives you points to spend at Amazon if you perform social interactions! remember, 1000 points is $5 off your next order. That's only 25 Hellos, or four Meetup meetings a month!"
- rak00n 9y agoThat's still a better idea than juicera.
- hfsktr 9y ago"By 2050, more than 66 percent of the world's population will be living in so-called "smart cities." These are metropolitan areas where everything will be digitally connected. ... we'll have smart hospitals, farms, and highways, and it's likely they'll all talk to one another. Connected devices will monitor everything from air quality to energy usage and traffic congestion." While that might lead to efficiency that makes me feel it's more of a dystopia than a place I'd want to live. To me says: there will be someone monitoring you to make sure you are a good little cog and don't disturb the status quo.
- andy_ppp 9y agoYes, what are poor people really for when we have full automation...
- paulryanrogers 9y agoIIRC, this is explored in Soylent Green: furniture and food
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago>"By 2050, more than 66 percent of the world's population will be living in so-called "smart cities." These are metropolitan areas where everything will be digitally connected. ... we'll have smart hospitals, farms, and highways, and it's likely they'll all talk to one another. Connected devices will monitor everything from air quality to energy usage and traffic congestion." This sounds silly. Where's the margin in all these devices and connections?
- beaconstudios 9y agosounds like a Brave New World-type dystopia to me.
- tzs 9y agoOff Topic: that site is doing something I've seen on a lot of sites: not correctly taking into account that menu banner overlay on the top when the user hits space to scroll a page. On Firefox it works correctly. The page scrolls up just enough to make what had been the bottom visible line become the top visible line. On Chrome and Safari it scrolls a few lines too far. If I go in to the inspector and delete that menu overlay it is then clear that it scrolled the amount that would have been correct had the menu overlay not been there. As I said I see this quite a bit around the web. I'm curious why. Is there a bug in calculating the size of the visible region in Webkit browsers in the presence of overlays? Are the sites using some non-standard CSS that is only supported in Firefox? Is this one of those things that you just have to have separate code for different browsers and these sites didn't realize that and only tested with Firefox so didn't realize they weren't done yet?
- return0 9y agoI see that all the time too. It's extremely frustrating , but i think the solution is that browsers should implement some sort of visual indication of where the bottom of the screen moves.
- marsrover 9y agoLately I don't seem to have time to feel lonely. Can't say that I don't miss it sometimes. I feel like being lonely every now and then is good for you. Being lonely all the time, that's a different story.
- Kenji 9y agoOur language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone. - Paul Tillich
- xg15 9y ago> But in a future where robots sound and objects look increasingly sentient, we might be less inclined to seek out behaviors to abate our loneliness. Indeed, one recent study titled "Products as pals" found that exposure to or interaction with anthropomorphic products — which have characteristics of being alive — partially satisfy our social needs, which means the human-like robots of tomorrow could kill our dwindling urge to be around other humans. So basically Chobits was right all along. https://youtu.be/aB50gL4rpiM https://youtu.be/aB50gL4rpiM
- derekp7 9y agoOr Tom Hank's character in Castaway, putting a face and hair on a basketball and calling it Wilson.
- norea-armozel 9y agoAs someone who's fairly reclusive outside of work I'm frightened by this prospect. I'd rather be anxious and have to deal with people from time to time than be so utterly alone that I'm forced to treat my cereal box as a surrogate for a friend. That just sounds horrible on so many levels.
- Chestofdraw 9y agoSwap out 'cereal box' for 'WoW char' or similar and it's already a reality for some.
- okasaki 9y agoI'm always amused by people expressing alarm from future things that they won't be there to experience. Like a Victorian ranting about Tinder. Who cares what you think? You'll be dead, and the people alive then certainly won't share your reservations.
- gkilmain 9y agoI'll be 75 in 2050.
- neom 9y agoI doubt it. I spend my days looking at this "smart city" trend, it seems that in the future modern services will allow cities and city planners to focus on more things like community spaces and social infrastructure. As it stands today I'd hazard over 85% of the productivity within a city at the government layer is spend managing and dealing with existing infrastructure. Very bullish on cities. Highly recommend reading Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier by Edward Glaeser
- crimsonalucard 9y agoThe key to making societies not lonely is communal dining areas for every 100 or so people.
- Animats 9y agoIt worked for Britain in WWII.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Restaurant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Restaurant
- crimsonalucard 9y agoAnthropologically, humans are primarily tribal creatures who form strong bonds with small groups. One consistent thing across most cultures is that although everyone goes hunting and farming during the day, at night they gather around the fire or table and share. It works because this is the way we have evolved to live.
- dbg31415 9y agoNo, we'll still have Tinder... for our avatar-on-avatar VR sexcapades. * Demolition Man sex scene - YouTube || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k80UQWWUIYs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k80UQWWUIYs
- kristofferR 9y agoI think the claim made in the article, that minor social interactions like receiving a "Thank You" from the cashier instead of using a self-checkout booth, prevents loneliness is really dubious. In fact, the article also mentions shallow conversations as creating loneliness, so it contradicts itself there. I don't get what the article is trying to say. Loneliness is a communication, information and anxiety problem. The first two, communication and information, are problems technology can easily help solve. Helping people getting over their anxieties is way harder of course, but technology used properly can help there too. People/governments just needs to take the issue seriously and start doing stuff to solve it.
- VLM 9y ago"Loneliness is a communication, information and anxiety problem. The first two, communication and information, are problems technology can easily help solve. Helping people getting over their anxieties is way harder of course, but technology used properly can help there too." I find it utterly fascinating that this summer is the 50 yr anniversary of the "Summer of Love" where the problems of loneliness of young boomers was solved by contraceptives, weed, and music, and now that generation is in total control culturally and politically, the solution to the problem half a century later is obviously a really nice new fitbit. (edited to add, and both solutions were the most "California" solutions imaginable in that era)
- Arizhel 9y agoThe boomers are only partly in total control now; the Xers also have a lot of control. Regardless, the hippies who went to the Summer of Love are a tiny minority of the Boomers. Most boomers were rather conservative. The hippies either died out or faded into obscurity, while their mainstream peers are the ones who have taken control of society and given us a giant mess.
- VLM 9y agoThe article seems like three disconnected stories. I'll try to do a better job of combining the stories: When the automation eliminated the blue collar jobs, my friends, if I had them, would laugh because we are white collar. When the automation eliminated the rural jobs, my friends, if I had them, would laugh because we were superior urbanites. When the automation eliminates my white collar urbanite job, there is no one left to laugh at me, because urbanites are lonely and have no friends. But on the bright side we'll spend the income we don't have, from the jobs that don't exist anymore, on fitbits to make us happy, instead of spending the money on other people. The progressive stack was to eliminate the family, no more babies, then eliminate the pets, no more fur babies, finally eliminate the jobs to eliminate the human-like machines such as fitbits. The last step will be eliminating the remaining people. Devices becoming more human like, is good, because humans won't be able to afford living in the expensive cities without any jobs and no personal relationships. In the old days people worked and retired to a pension and were given a pocketwatch they don't need at a retirement party. In the new days people will be downsized as population only increases and the number of jobs only decreases, teased by being shown a fitbit they can't afford and don't need, and left to die under the freeway overpasses unemployed. Although historical experience indicates the outcome will look a lot like Mogadishu shaken with the French Revolution and a sprinking of Detroit, we would like to think instead that our biggest problem will be solving loneliness, because lonely people are unproductive. People have to be productive, British Stiff Upper Lip and all that, even though we no longer have any jobs for them to be productive in. If they were not lonely they would not notice they are unemployed. I like to think I did a better more serious and thoughtful job than the article. Its a little funny because the topic is of course ridiculous but I still think I made numerous serious points.
- e40 9y agoYour comment reminds me of Black Mirror ep Fifteen Million Merits.
- wallflower 9y agoI am reminded of the videogame in Spike Jonze's "Her" in which the main protagonist after coming home from his day job ghostwriting hikes through landscapes with his AI buddy. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr7aI0RqtXc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr7aI0RqtXc
- jrs95 9y agoWait..cities aren't already utterly lonely?
- shriphani 9y agoI can assure you that the loneliness is because of the clown city planners who think humans enjoy living in boxes. People will organically cluster to optimize proximity to others + get personal space when they need it. Hopefully we will reject the clown-car of urban design and return to our organic roots. It is costing people their livelihoods, their soul, their spirit. All because someone who dresses like a penguin has a broken model of the world.