4 ms·

So the article talks about three concepts: “Driverless rooms”, “Lego skyscrapers” that are powered by smart contracts that these driverless rooms park at, and “

by so33 9y ago

So the article talks about three concepts: “Driverless rooms”, “Lego skyscrapers” that are powered by smart contracts that these driverless rooms park at, and “decentralized cities” that result because these rooms can rearrange themselves on demand. We can already have a “driverless room”; it’s called a Winnebago. Most prominent politicians, musicians, and celebrities will have well-appointed RVs that carry them around. Even if you take the driver out of the equation, logistical issues abound: Where do you do laundry? What about plumbing? Where do you put out the garbage? I am reminded about that episode in “The Office” where Dwight crams everyone into an overcrowded bus and has them do work there. Second, the article complains about overproduction and waste, but the proposed solution is to create skyscraper-sized parking lots? Even the picture that is supposed to idealize this shows the lego skyscraper half-empty. How will Bondi Beach look when this monstrosity looms over it? Finally, moving things around isn’t free. Yes, solar energy and electric cars means that it’s renewable. But doesn’t mean it’s unlimited. We are going to dedicate a large amount of energy generated in moving “mobile rooms” around 24/7 for lots of people. That power still has to come from a power plant somewhere. Life isn’t like AWS; you can’t just spin up a solarpanel2.large. I know this is essentially a piece of utopian fiction, but there are glaring flaws in this just aesthetically, let alone with other factors.

QAPereo 9y ago
Just to add to your objections about wasted energy, I’d add that energy and resources would be expended to build the parts for these things. Wear is proportional to use, so that’s another source of both dissipation, and material losses.
luma 9y ago
I feel like most of your questions were answered in the article. "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." Your Winnebago exists today for the wealthy and privileged. If you're extremely rich, life is largely automated and if you squint, plays out like the scenario proposed in the story except with other people (and liberal application of cash) playing the role of automated services. The vision is one were nearly _all_ services a traveller might interact with have seen the kind of automation we've seen in areas like agriculture. We've already replaced fields full of farm-hands with one guy and a combine. What happens to the travel business when every single service can be readily provided by a machine? What would the price to the user look like when there is no labor component (outside of occasional maintenance)? To answer the two questions you posed directly: Your laundry is picked up by drone back to central laundry, plumbing is hooked up when docked at the "hotel". The "parking lots" would look similar to modern-day highrise hotels or apartment buildings: individual units looking out over the city, but these ones can be swapped in and out. In this model, "parking" is hard to distinguish from "real estate" when we've made your residence fully mobile.
merb 9y ago
> you can’t just spin up a solarpanel2.large well if this was possible a lot of things would be easier. (but I would prefer solarpanel3.8xlarge and use a grid8s on top of it) edit2: i think a lot of energy problems would've been solved if we would see the world as a whole energy consumption. and if we could delivery energy more freely. i.e. at night some places do not need as much energy as others where it isn't night, etc. but well autonomy and money will prevent such global thinkings or make them worse than it is today
slim 9y ago
People are already moving around and getting parked at buildings for the night. What's new is we can now optimise. Among other things for energy consumption. For example, if they're going to travel for a meeting, they could travel while sleeping and be in the morning right at the meeting place. Taking the shortest route while avoiding traffic congestion.
Blazespinnaker 9y ago
The real problem is traffic. Hi density public transit from airport to hotel makes much more sense. What we need are residentiala and office skyscrapers built along high density electric rail. This has always been the solution. Sadly, people hate hi density public transit, and thus we pay for inefficiency.
natecavanaugh 9y ago
> Finally, moving things around isn’t free. Yes, solar energy and electric cars means that it’s renewable. But doesn’t mean it’s unlimited. I don't think it means unlimited, but perhaps essentially unlimited (do any of us realistically worry about the sun dying during even our most distant descendants?). This is very hand wavy, but I feel like once we are able to store the energy we create (and so easily discard without even a thought), we'll realize just how energy abundant we really are. I mean, the US had an over abundance of energy, it's just stored on our guts rather than a battery. We are constantly moving, our pets are, our entire life is filled with energy we never store or harness. Once we're able to store this, I have a feeling our worries about energy will take a back seat. Again, hand wavey, but that's also kinda like this article :)

by so33 9y ago

QAPereo 9y ago

Just to add to your objections about wasted energy, I’d add that energy and resources would be expended to build the parts for these things. Wear is proportional to use, so that’s another source of both dissipation, and material losses.

luma 9y ago

I feel like most of your questions were answered in the article. "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." Your Winnebago exists today for the wealthy and privileged. If you're extremely rich, life is largely automated and if you squint, plays out like the scenario proposed in the story except with other people (and liberal application of cash) playing the role of automated services. The vision is one were nearly _all_ services a traveller might interact with have seen the kind of automation we've seen in areas like agriculture. We've already replaced fields full of farm-hands with one guy and a combine. What happens to the travel business when every single service can be readily provided by a machine? What would the price to the user look like when there is no labor component (outside of occasional maintenance)? To answer the two questions you posed directly: Your laundry is picked up by drone back to central laundry, plumbing is hooked up when docked at the "hotel". The "parking lots" would look similar to modern-day highrise hotels or apartment buildings: individual units looking out over the city, but these ones can be swapped in and out. In this model, "parking" is hard to distinguish from "real estate" when we've made your residence fully mobile.

merb 9y ago

> you can’t just spin up a solarpanel2.large well if this was possible a lot of things would be easier. (but I would prefer solarpanel3.8xlarge and use a grid8s on top of it) edit2: i think a lot of energy problems would've been solved if we would see the world as a whole energy consumption. and if we could delivery energy more freely. i.e. at night some places do not need as much energy as others where it isn't night, etc. but well autonomy and money will prevent such global thinkings or make them worse than it is today

slim 9y ago

People are already moving around and getting parked at buildings for the night. What's new is we can now optimise. Among other things for energy consumption. For example, if they're going to travel for a meeting, they could travel while sleeping and be in the morning right at the meeting place. Taking the shortest route while avoiding traffic congestion.

Blazespinnaker 9y ago

The real problem is traffic. Hi density public transit from airport to hotel makes much more sense. What we need are residentiala and office skyscrapers built along high density electric rail. This has always been the solution. Sadly, people hate hi density public transit, and thus we pay for inefficiency.

natecavanaugh 9y ago

> Finally, moving things around isn’t free. Yes, solar energy and electric cars means that it’s renewable. But doesn’t mean it’s unlimited. I don't think it means unlimited, but perhaps essentially unlimited (do any of us realistically worry about the sun dying during even our most distant descendants?). This is very hand wavy, but I feel like once we are able to store the energy we create (and so easily discard without even a thought), we'll realize just how energy abundant we really are. I mean, the US had an over abundance of energy, it's just stored on our guts rather than a battery. We are constantly moving, our pets are, our entire life is filled with energy we never store or harness. Once we're able to store this, I have a feeling our worries about energy will take a back seat. Again, hand wavey, but that's also kinda like this article :)