I really do not understand "The Line" living in NYC, one of the more dense cities in the world, every day I appreciate the way we've solved the problems created by having so many people in one place.
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If it's not a moving train how do you keep people from using the space to the left and right of the line?
The pressure to develop will be immense. I don't even think the desert and an authoritarian government could stop it.
It will be surrounded by shanty towns. Also it will need to be since they have not thought about where all of the poor people who will do all the work to keep it clean and pretty will live.
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It's critical that "solutions" to problems like housing, transportation, urban ecology, etc have been tested not just in a computer simulation but by people who have lived with all of these ideas in real cities and who know what really happens.
Designing a city like a giant appliance is madness. This was the insight of Jane Jacobs: catastrophic development always risks catastrophic failure.
To make futuristic densities the city must evolve in conversation with human activity. 2/
@futurebird What make a city infastructure feel alive to me is that it is an amalgam of different choices layered over hundreds of years. Thousands of tiny choices: how thick to make a window frame, how tall above street level is the main floor. Buildings built by individuals then repurposed, styles changing over time. Untold layers built up over decades.
A single mind, or even a team of minds, is not able to replicate decades of choices, to capture that humanity. Sterility reigns because it's easier to use standardized forms. Function becomes less important than ease of decision making.
Planned cimmunities like this is always about control. One mind making the choices, either to earn money off the venture or control people. Everything else is window dressing, a sales job.
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"The Line" is a car-free utopia and somehow everyone who ought to love that... hates it.
@futurebird It's just another very stupid idea pitched to or originating from a ruthless autocrat that'll eventually end up buried in sand dunes.. By the time Muhammad bin Salman meets his maker, the Saudi desert will be dotted with super-size artifacts fit to close a dozen Planet of the Apes sequels.
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@futurebird It's just another very stupid idea pitched to or originating from a ruthless autocrat that'll eventually end up buried in sand dunes.. By the time Muhammad bin Salman meets his maker, the Saudi desert will be dotted with super-size artifacts fit to close a dozen Planet of the Apes sequels.
I guess I just ... I don't know. There are may mediocre or even slightly good ideas lying around... why not do one of those?
Just.
Why.
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If it's not a moving train how do you keep people from using the space to the left and right of the line?
The pressure to develop will be immense. I don't even think the desert and an authoritarian government could stop it.
It will be surrounded by shanty towns. Also it will need to be since they have not thought about where all of the poor people who will do all the work to keep it clean and pretty will live.
@futurebird @afeinman @cstross Well, fuck, you're right. Here was I, a rube, thinking "why tf would you try to build it in a desert, and not in a place where humans can actually, you know, survive"?
But you're absolutely right. The reason to go to a literal desert is that you get to have a Judge Dredd style Cursed Earth right outside your walls.
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@futurebird @afeinman @cstross Well, fuck, you're right. Here was I, a rube, thinking "why tf would you try to build it in a desert, and not in a place where humans can actually, you know, survive"?
But you're absolutely right. The reason to go to a literal desert is that you get to have a Judge Dredd style Cursed Earth right outside your walls.
@henryk @futurebird @afeinman @cstross you’ve… read the history of this folly, right? Executing the indigenous tribal leaders who refused to give up the land? It’s bonesaws all the way down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia#:~:text=Concerns%20about%20policy%20and%20human%20rights
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@henryk @futurebird @afeinman @cstross you’ve… read the history of this folly, right? Executing the indigenous tribal leaders who refused to give up the land? It’s bonesaws all the way down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia#:~:text=Concerns%20about%20policy%20and%20human%20rights
@jered @henryk @futurebird @afeinman @cstross If you're the House of Saud and the inescapability of decarbonization looms, you desperately want the entire population somewhere contained, constrained, and controlled.
You especially want this to be a place that doesn't seem unpleasant to a superficial observer and where you can control all the comms access.
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@jered @henryk @futurebird @afeinman @cstross If you're the House of Saud and the inescapability of decarbonization looms, you desperately want the entire population somewhere contained, constrained, and controlled.
You especially want this to be a place that doesn't seem unpleasant to a superficial observer and where you can control all the comms access.
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@isaackuo @cstross @Flux @jered @henryk @futurebird @afeinman I would hope no one sets out to just launch a generation ship; there'd be a long period of wandering about in the Oort for relatively specific reasons before anyone thought to try switching Oorts, as it were.
It's the social failures brought on by the awareness that the switch is in progress that might be the interesting way to go with generation ship failure modes.
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@isaackuo @cstross @Flux @jered @henryk @futurebird @afeinman I would hope no one sets out to just launch a generation ship; there'd be a long period of wandering about in the Oort for relatively specific reasons before anyone thought to try switching Oorts, as it were.
It's the social failures brought on by the awareness that the switch is in progress that might be the interesting way to go with generation ship failure modes.
@graydon @isaackuo @Flux @jered @henryk @futurebird @afeinman Oort cloud is too big; safer to start out on a Hohman transfer to Saturn to shake down over a couple of decades (with known volatiles and water at the destination), then visit the Kuiper belt (surface exploration of Pluto/Charon and maybe Sedna, Makemake, and siblings?)
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@graydon @isaackuo @Flux @jered @henryk @futurebird @afeinman Oort cloud is too big; safer to start out on a Hohman transfer to Saturn to shake down over a couple of decades (with known volatiles and water at the destination), then visit the Kuiper belt (surface exploration of Pluto/Charon and maybe Sedna, Makemake, and siblings?)
@cstross @graydon @Flux @jered @henryk @futurebird @afeinman If we're talking what actually makes sense ... instead of a generation "ship" we could start with generation "stations" in Earth orbit, and then Earth co-orbit.
Raw resources for building them can be brought from elsewhere, taking advantage of the Oberth effect (on both ends). After some dozens or hundreds of generations we could send some to elsewhere why not.
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@cstross @graydon @Flux @jered @henryk @futurebird @afeinman If we're talking what actually makes sense ... instead of a generation "ship" we could start with generation "stations" in Earth orbit, and then Earth co-orbit.
Raw resources for building them can be brought from elsewhere, taking advantage of the Oberth effect (on both ends). After some dozens or hundreds of generations we could send some to elsewhere why not.
@isaackuo @cstross @graydon @Flux @jered @henryk @futurebird @afeinman
If someone lived in a society that had existed in this giant spaceship for generations, why would they want to go live on a planet?
Also, who was it who wrote the novel in which people on a generation starship developed a sort of religion, that says the idea of planets is completely fake? There is just the ship and space
