Reimagining Big Cities

The Ultimate Megacity: 100 Million People
A City In The Amazon
Cities Can Be Much Larger

"If we don’t get cities right, it’s hard to imagine a healthy future for humanity." https://t.co/cb0etM2wE1 pic.twitter.com/BgtjJ5vU1P

— Chris Dixon (@cdixon) January 5, 2016

So you turn Boston to DC into one megacity, connected by a bullet train, or even a hyperloop, such that it doesn't matter where you live. Chances are you are doing a lot of telecommuting. But when you do have to show up, it is no different from getting on the subway in NYC from one end to another. Sometimes it's 30 minutes, what if it is 60 minutes? It's not like you are driving. You are making yourself useful. Maybe you are meditating. Maybe you are reading. Maybe you are checking email.

When self driving cars and semis take over, and when we can grow 100 times more food with 10 times less land, we could afford to have an Amazon size forest in America. How would that be a bad thing? There would be the ultimate megacity in the northeast, and there would be other big cities. And they would all really be one big city, because hyperloop speeds are mind boggling. 760 miles per hour. Coast to coast travel would not be a major undertaking. You probably would not want to live on one coast and work on another, but what if you did not have to show up at the office every day? What if there was this one day when everybody showed up for in person meetings, but other four days they were telecommuting mostly?





5/8/23 Update: Goshen (NY) puts Third World corruption to shame, thanks to greedy, corrupt, unethical lawyers like Andra Dumais. ..... I toppled a Third World dictator and German Radio called me Robin Hood On The Internet. I am not going to get intimidated by some small-town racist. Andrea Dumais is a small-town racist. ....... You are treating me worse than the people 2,000 years ago.

How Do You Explain The Rejection Of Good Ideas?

Interesting CRISPR history https://t.co/HsVJrFd6Ud The seminal observations were rejected in every high-IF journal! pic.twitter.com/cnmT9zXAhT

— Victor de Lorenzo (@vdlorenzo_CNB) January 15, 2016

"It’s hard to recall a revolution that has swept biology more swiftly than CRISPR." https://t.co/bjzIYtcQZB pic.twitter.com/YjQnA1YRIE

— Chris Dixon (@cdixon) January 17, 2016

Great ideas, by definition, are not obvious. Precisely because most people can't think it, they are great.

Pinterest was rejected by pretty much everybody in the Valley. It had to become a hit in Iowa first, of all places.

"The history also illustrates the growing role in biology of discovery based on big data." https://t.co/bjzIYtcQZB pic.twitter.com/0SsnY1edX4

— Chris Dixon (@cdixon) January 17, 2016

BG = Before Google

Before Google. People would call librarians with stupid questions. Love these 4 from @nypl New York Public Library pic.twitter.com/n17OlnIoay

— Paul Kirby (@paul1kirby) January 15, 2016

Productivity And Political Innovation Going Hand In Hand

English: The Communist States (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A lot of Silicon Valley types, when they talk about massive increases in productivity they see before their eyes coming in the near future, forget to realize that there will have to be accompanying political, social and policy innovation. There has to be. Imagine every part of your body grew, but not your thumb. Your thumb got stuck at age one. That won't be pretty.

If we could grow 100 times as much food, maybe it will make sense to give everyone food stamps. Everyone who wants them can have them. Why not? We can already give everyone free internet access. Nanotechnology should do the same to housing. It should become super cheap to build houses. You could be buying houses like you buy computers today. It is not a 30 year plan. It is one simple transaction.

Maybe we will end up communist. Like China, a communist country, has ended up being uber capitalist, or "socialism with Chinese characteristics." To each according to his/her need, at least for the basics of life, like internet access, food and shelter. Even a minimum basic income. If your accessing the internet is making people money, maybe you should get a cut. You should definitely get a cut for your personal contribution to Big Data. We as people are more indispensable to the Internet than computers and routers. The Internet is dead without us.

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Eric Schmidt On AI

Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen on Technology in 2016

The next generation of artificial intelligence (AI) promises to have an impact as big as the mobile revolution or the Internet revolution before that. ...... It can detect patterns that humans can neither see nor anticipate. English speakers can make phone or video calls to speakers of Hindi or Chinese. But the next leap will be Inventive AI—machines trained on a given data set that can tackle a wider range of problems. As society grapples with the increasing volume and complexity of information, more-flexible AI will play a key role in helping us. Eventually it will be possible to give a computer unstructured data—say, spreadsheets used to manage business records—and receive quality advice on improving operations. All it will take is a training data set that is large enough, computers that are big enough and algorithms that are adaptable enough. ..... AI does not have the complex emotions that guide human decisionmaking, so it could avoid most if not all of these inherent biases. .....

Under our control, it can take the drudgery out of work and free up many more hours for creative pursuits. And applied collaboratively, AI could help bring about solutions to the world’s most complex problems.