Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If You Build It, They Will Come

benlandautaylor.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 228 posts

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#151

Post by aweb »

pclowes wrote: post #98
greekrich92 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subway should be free, and continuous fare hikes when you're already double paying with your eyes because of all the advertising they shove in front of you is more incentive to turnstile jump. Overpaid do-nothing senior adminstrators and lawmakers who are in the pocket of privatization are the problem, not that 17 year old.

Enforcing fares massively decreases vandalism, and antisocial behavior on public transportation. If you don’t have public transportation that I feel safe having a 10-year-old ride on unaccompanied by an adult then you do not have public transportation. You have a very expensive drug addict shelter on wheels/rails.

That's an interesting point and I agree it makes some kind of sense, but is there a source for it?

I live in Montpellier France and all transit has become free 2 years ago. I didn't notice any change in people's behavior at all. Transit is also free in Talinn IIRC and I wonder if they saw something there?

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#152

Post by qazwsxedchac »

dublinben wrote: post #125
greekrich92 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subway should be free, and continuous fare hikes when you're already double paying with your eyes because of all the advertising they shove in front of you is more incentive to turnstile jump. Overpaid do-nothing senior adminstrators and lawmakers who are in the pocket of privatization are the problem, not that 17 year old.

Public transit should be worth the (inexpensive) cost of a ticket. The money used to make fares free should instead be spent on improving the quality of service. Better service attracts more riders, bringing in more ticket revenue, enabling further service improvements, and so on. It produces a positive flywheel effect that benefits current passengers, new passengers, and even drivers! Free transit is a downward cycl…

Counterexample: Public transport throughout Luxembourg (the entire country, not just the capital city) is free. As in beer. Clean, safe, and reliable, too.

The positive "flywheel effect" where transport connectivity enables network effects does exist, but it does not follow that free public transport leads to negative effects.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#153

Post by bluecheese452 »

PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #97
biscuits1 wrote: post #53

". . . but our social scripts telling people to produce social fabric . . ." The author of the article may benefit from reading "Bowling Alone" by Robert Putnam. Although it's now in a class of books on American history, it explores this topic in depth. afaik, a society needs to face a potential collective crisis to "produce its own fabric." Of course, the Internet (or technology), by its nature, is actually collatin…

"a society needs to face a potential collective crisis to "produce its own fabric."" Good point - the linked article, and the article it itself links to, essentially, but without realizing it, indicates the American experience of WWII. The entire country suddenly and powerfully altered to support total war. Every fit man under 40, pretty much, shipped off to be in the military (you can see hints of this in late-war f…

What is interesting is that WW1 had a lot of the same elements yet did not produce the same community coming together. My theory is that a crisis is a necessary but not sufficient element. WW1 was ugly but was not existential. But WW2 scared the upper classes enough that they were willing to share part of the wealth for a while.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#154

Post by wiether »

aweb wrote: post #151
pclowes wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enforcing fares massively decreases vandalism, and antisocial behavior on public transportation. If you don’t have public transportation that I feel safe having a 10-year-old ride on unaccompanied by an adult then you do not have public transportation. You have a very expensive drug addict shelter on wheels/rails.

That's an interesting point and I agree it makes some kind of sense, but is there a source for it? I live in Montpellier France and all transit has become free 2 years ago. I didn't notice any change in people's behavior at all. Transit is also free in Talinn IIRC and I wonder if they saw something there?

Then they'll shift the goalpost: it's not free, someone is paying for it, which is every taxpayer.

Then you'll ask for receipts of what they pay to use the roads and they'll be out.

Regarding free transit, I think part of the reason it can fail is the socioeconomic situation. In places that rewards the rich and abandon the less fortunate, it's deemed to fail.

But also, I think that when people have to pay to use transit, they'll be less willing to act as a warden, so if they see someone doing something negative, they'll keep out, thinking that it's the responsibility of whoever is taking their money. Meanwhile, when we see public transit as a common good, we are more willing to act to keep it great.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#155

Post by embedding-shape »

win311fwg wrote: post #108
embedding-shape wrote: post #16

> Lots of people have a sort of consumer attitude towards their communities, where they take everything for granted. I saw things this way when I was young. A social scene is an automatic feature of the world that appears on its own, like a wild blueberry bush. It starts sprouting parties and dinners and conferences and reading groups as naturally as the bush sprouts berries. I feel like this generally applies a lot…

> without harming others. That's the problem. It isn't always clear to all people exactly what causes harm to others. For example, it is generally agreed upon that exposing your "nether region" is harmful to others even though all you are really doing is giving something for others to look at. Maybe some of the other weird things they see could be equally harmful? If your weird behaviour is commonly weird then you mi…

> For example, it is generally agreed upon that exposing your "nether region" is harmful to others even though all you are really doing is giving something for others to look at.

Indeed, probably in your country it's very much "generally agreed upon" that nude people are harmful to others, while where I live, you'll find it hard to go to the beach without seeing at least one naked body, and no people are being harmed in this environment :) I'm sure there are prudes here too, but it's more "generally agreed upon" that nude people aren't a harm to others, here at least.

I guess I should have specifically said "without physically harming others" as that's much easier to draw a line with.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#156

Post by dkga »

Those interested in this discussion might enjoy familiarising themselves with the concept of social capital, and in particular, with Robert Putnam’s work to understand and to promote it.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#157

Post by DonHopkins »

DonHopkins wrote: post #148
jancsika wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in 1984 George Lewis apparently did a stint at IRCAM, culminating in an electro-acoustic performance with three Apple IIe's connected by MIDI to three DX7s. I'd bet his conversations with the IRCAM directors were similarly limited!

Speaking of IRCAM, does anybody know Joseph "jojo" Francis -- francis@ircam.fr? Scenes don't sprout like blueberry bushes -- or baobab trees with their roots in the sky. Someone does the legwork -- or the scene quietly dies while everyone assumes it was a natural feature of the landscape. Maintenance is fragile and underappreciated until it stops; you do it for the love of the game even when reciprocity is uneven; th…

Tim Pozar and Brewster Kahle CHM Interview by Marc Weber October 29 1996

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2h2LHRFbNA

Brewster said:

But also the early stuff has got people's dreams. The early people that sort of say -- you know, the early people on the web, like you, doing your dinosaur exhibit. You've got this ability to be able to do something new and different. But at some point, people will just say, "oh, well, you know, you can't do that", and they'll just sort of focus in on all it can do. But in the beginning, you have just amazing things. So I always kept the early logs of WAIS. I thought those would be the most valuable things. Is one of the questions, that people ask of the net. And so I kept all of those logs.

Oh, you have those? Oh yeah. What do people look for? What are people dreaming that the technology can finally answer? And right now already, the web has sort of stagnated, people's idea of it has really focused down to the stuff the technicians have given. But it's the early dreams that we should trying to live up to. So I'm trying to keep some of that alive.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#158

Post by danaris »

xg15 wrote: post #81
Exoristos wrote: post #39

America used to be awash with grassroots social institutions. I know an elderly gent who belonged to the Lions _and_ two similar organizations. When my mother was young, there were dances and dinners multiple nights a week. Which, for me, raises the question why weren't these things passed down? Why weren't the young a kind of apprentices to the old? That seems like the natural progression. But we see this generation…

It's trite, but I think a part of it is "because the internet happened" - and I don't mean just today's enshittification era but also the "good old times" everyone seems to remember fondly here. At some point, the internet was full of that kind of community spirit that you described, but of course this meant that people were more likely to direct their energy to online community building than to real-life stuff. And…

As someone who was growing up during the period where the Internet became mainstream...

This was happening before then. The Lions, Rotary, etc clubs in my area made very little effort to reach out and invite younger members. Aside from the Rotary exchange program, I couldn't have named a single event they were putting on that was genuinely aimed at people under the age of 50.

And the few times that they did try to talk to some of us young people about the club, the very, very strong impression I got of the pitch was "you can pay significant monthly dues to come to meetings with old people and occasionally go do volunteer activities out in the community." I already did some volunteering without having to pay for the privilege, and I didn't see the draw of going to meetings with old people.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#159

Post by mettamage »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #74
embedding-shape wrote: post #16

> Lots of people have a sort of consumer attitude towards their communities, where they take everything for granted. I saw things this way when I was young. A social scene is an automatic feature of the world that appears on its own, like a wild blueberry bush. It starts sprouting parties and dinners and conferences and reading groups as naturally as the bush sprouts berries. I feel like this generally applies a lot…

Part of growing up for me was realizing how little others care, and how little I care about what others think. It’s liberating. Be weird in public!

whoopseedoopsie-whoopsieflaisie I'm a deer and I run crazy!

whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop!

I also foam a lot, then drink from a rainbow and feel better again.

(normally I don't let this part of my inner monologue come out, especially not on HN, but you gave me permission, ha)

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#160

Post by [deleted] »

DonHopkins wrote: post #148
jancsika wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in 1984 George Lewis apparently did a stint at IRCAM, culminating in an electro-acoustic performance with three Apple IIe's connected by MIDI to three DX7s. I'd bet his conversations with the IRCAM directors were similarly limited!

Speaking of IRCAM, does anybody know Joseph "jojo" Francis -- francis@ircam.fr? Scenes don't sprout like blueberry bushes -- or baobab trees with their roots in the sky. Someone does the legwork -- or the scene quietly dies while everyone assumes it was a natural feature of the landscape. Maintenance is fragile and underappreciated until it stops; you do it for the love of the game even when reciprocity is uneven; th…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN