4 ms·

Sounds like an old way of living to me, and one achievable by removing cars almost entirely from our lives. The most connected I’ve ever been to community was l

Sounds like an old way of living to me, and one achievable by removing cars almost entirely from our lives. The most connected I’ve ever been to community was living in large asian cities without a car.

npunt 3y ago
Sort of, but the communities you're describing have a lot more likelihood of being stuck in the place they are. Stuck means less likelihood of people finding the right place for them, because they have less to choose from. Better automated transport infra means being less stuck by virtue of having less time to go further distances, and in better conditions. Even in high density car-less environments with great transport, you've still got all the attention and friction entailed with being on public transport and last mile issues walking to/from it (effectively traveling through 'far community' to get to 'close community'). This means more need to be co-located to avoid these through 'far community' journeys, which limits ones options for finding their best life. Meanwhile radically different automated transport infra could mean things like 'you walk into the elevator-like transport connected to your house and 5 minutes later you're at your friends house'. No crazy subway, no need for attention, just hop in the pod and do what you'd already be doing at home like reading or work. This means you could go from ~20,000 people within 10 mins of you to ~100,000 (or insert your number). And ultimately this means more ways that we could optionally have larger social units, because there would be more 'space' for them to live within 10 mins of you. E.g. if my friends wanted to all live right next to each other they'd need to find enough land that it'd be like 3 hours away and a huge inconvenience for anyone living in a city. So the only people who would do that are crazy committed to the commune life, and thus quite distant culturally too. If it was 30 mins away instead due to better transport, culturally we'd see a lot more mixing of different types of lifestyles. I think all this represents a new way of living. It's not near future stuff I admit, but driverless tech is the next on the 'move atoms' tech tree that brings us toward these opportunities.

npunt 3y ago

Sort of, but the communities you're describing have a lot more likelihood of being stuck in the place they are. Stuck means less likelihood of people finding the right place for them, because they have less to choose from. Better automated transport infra means being less stuck by virtue of having less time to go further distances, and in better conditions. Even in high density car-less environments with great transport, you've still got all the attention and friction entailed with being on public transport and last mile issues walking to/from it (effectively traveling through 'far community' to get to 'close community'). This means more need to be co-located to avoid these through 'far community' journeys, which limits ones options for finding their best life. Meanwhile radically different automated transport infra could mean things like 'you walk into the elevator-like transport connected to your house and 5 minutes later you're at your friends house'. No crazy subway, no need for attention, just hop in the pod and do what you'd already be doing at home like reading or work. This means you could go from ~20,000 people within 10 mins of you to ~100,000 (or insert your number). And ultimately this means more ways that we could optionally have larger social units, because there would be more 'space' for them to live within 10 mins of you. E.g. if my friends wanted to all live right next to each other they'd need to find enough land that it'd be like 3 hours away and a huge inconvenience for anyone living in a city. So the only people who would do that are crazy committed to the commune life, and thus quite distant culturally too. If it was 30 mins away instead due to better transport, culturally we'd see a lot more mixing of different types of lifestyles. I think all this represents a new way of living. It's not near future stuff I admit, but driverless tech is the next on the 'move atoms' tech tree that brings us toward these opportunities.