4 ms·

... but what's the actual value here? OK, create an incredibly complex transportation system that adds a ton of mechanical failure points—so buddy can read his

... but what's the actual value here? OK, create an incredibly complex transportation system that adds a ton of mechanical failure points—so buddy can read his book uninterrupted, take a nap, or watch a TV show? And what's the net gain for humanity here? If they feel they need to nap in public then maybe their work-life balance is problematic. Who's going to pay for this system? If they pass the costs onto the consumer, the average schmoe isn't going to be able to afford to travel with what maintaining a system of this complexity would cost. What about fail states? What happens when a pod transfer issue means the whole train is brought to a halt? What happens if there's an unexpected obstacle in front of the car running alongside the train? Quite honestly, most people probably don't even need to be in the office, let alone all the time. The solutions are travelling less, not increasing the complexity of the transport infrastructure and consuming more juice just because someone doesn't want to stop what they're doing for a minute or two. People say WFH is apparently bad for productivity—so what's coding from a train? Productivity is measured in value generated and quality of that output, not time invested. As for cars and trains matching speeds to facilitate transfer of a pod, what's that going to do to the price of real estate so transport can do that all over the place? The office is dead. Long live the office.

nostrademons 3y ago
> OK, create an incredibly complex transportation system that adds a ton of mechanical failure points—so buddy can read his book uninterrupted, take a nap, or watch a TV show? And what's the net gain for humanity here? Yes, that's precisely the point - to get back the hours spent commuting so you don't have to think about them and can do other more productive or enjoyable things with that time. If you spend 8 hours working at $50/hour and then 2 hours commuting, that's $100/day or roughly $2000/month in saved time. Most people would consider that worthwhile. > If they feel they need to nap in public then maybe their work-life balance is problematic. No shit, but cutting time wasted in commuting is generally an easier sell than cutting time spend actually working or engaged in leisure activities. > What about fail states? What happens when a pod transfer issue means the whole train is brought to a halt? What happens if there's an unexpected obstacle in front of the car running alongside the train? The same way we've made air travel so safe that you don't need to think about it, despite the tens of thousands of parts in a modern jetliner. Engineer the hell out of it, and build in multiple redundancies and failsafes. > Quite honestly, most people probably don't even need to be in the office, let alone all the time. If remote work actually worked, we should do that instead. Not everyone is a software engineer or knowledge worker, and it's likely that the fraction of people who are is going to go down in the future.

nostrademons 3y ago

> OK, create an incredibly complex transportation system that adds a ton of mechanical failure points—so buddy can read his book uninterrupted, take a nap, or watch a TV show? And what's the net gain for humanity here? Yes, that's precisely the point - to get back the hours spent commuting so you don't have to think about them and can do other more productive or enjoyable things with that time. If you spend 8 hours working at $50/hour and then 2 hours commuting, that's $100/day or roughly $2000/month in saved time. Most people would consider that worthwhile. > If they feel they need to nap in public then maybe their work-life balance is problematic. No shit, but cutting time wasted in commuting is generally an easier sell than cutting time spend actually working or engaged in leisure activities. > What about fail states? What happens when a pod transfer issue means the whole train is brought to a halt? What happens if there's an unexpected obstacle in front of the car running alongside the train? The same way we've made air travel so safe that you don't need to think about it, despite the tens of thousands of parts in a modern jetliner. Engineer the hell out of it, and build in multiple redundancies and failsafes. > Quite honestly, most people probably don't even need to be in the office, let alone all the time. If remote work actually worked, we should do that instead. Not everyone is a software engineer or knowledge worker, and it's likely that the fraction of people who are is going to go down in the future.