John Edgar (former VP Strategy at DigitalOcean) and his team are working on and writing about this extensively >> medium.com/city-as-a-service/
Just being helpful: http://medium.com/city-as-a-service/
Are Cities Too Complicated?
21–30 of 71 posts
Re: Are Cities Too Complicated?
#22Betteridge's law is fumbling here: yes, perhaps they are. Big, old cities are full of ancient infrastructure that slips through the cracks. People depend on it, and nobody knows exactly where its networks are routed; then when it breaks, it's a big disaster.
On the other hand, perhaps the answer is that they're just complicated enough. If the big, old cities didn't provide a unique economic advantage through their increased interconnectivity then no one would stick around to tolerate that ancient infrastructure.
Huh, path dependance. By virtue of existence and being big enough, they are worth sticking to.
Re: Are Cities Too Complicated?
#23Cities have a dark side. I think that most people who grew up in a small town and later moved to a big city have gone through a period of disillusionment.
Re: Are Cities Too Complicated?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If each one requires knowledge of the entire system The general problem is the growing number of dependencies. James Burke in "Connections" warned that civilization is an interconnected web of technology traps [1]. We survive as long as everything works (or "mostly" works), but there is a risk of cascade failure. More recently, Dan Geer warned[2] about the same type of problem: In the last couple of years, I've fou…
I don't think it matters too much that most institutions no longer accept paper since paper is just the external interface. You get no more reliability if they did when all critical processes rely on technology. In other words, you aren't walking your check to the IRS, the postal service couldn't deliver it, your bank couldn't cash it even if they did, and WTF would the IRS do with a billion checks?
The point isn't really that paper is better. It's that we had systems that worked for a long time and we removed them. We shouldn't need to walk lots of checks to the IRS, that's the point of modern tech.
However, the IRS maintaining the capability of using old, simpler methods should be retained because it serves as a backup for (hopefully rare) situations where the primary infrastructure fails.
Re: Are Cities Too Complicated?
#25Cities have a dark side. I think that most people who grew up in a small town and later moved to a big city have gone through a period of disillusionment.
I don't want to seem mean, but you're like a caricature of a country person. People are living things which grow to suit their environment, everyone thinks their way is the best way and that their hometown is the coolest. When you say things like "city people care more about money" and "city people are mean" you sound like a bumpkin.
Re: Are Cities Too Complicated?
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If each one requires knowledge of the entire system The general problem is the growing number of dependencies. James Burke in "Connections" warned that civilization is an interconnected web of technology traps [1]. We survive as long as everything works (or "mostly" works), but there is a risk of cascade failure. More recently, Dan Geer warned[2] about the same type of problem: In the last couple of years, I've fou…
It might have been reasonable to maintain backup paper workflows years ago when those paper workflows already existed and institutions were just starting to offer digital alternatives. But new institutions and workflows have arisen that never had paper alternatives in the first place. And it's unreasonable to expect institutions to build and test paper alternatives just as a backup. No one's going to pay for that, re…
I agree that new institutions that never had pre-internet systems are a harder problem.
> it's unreasonable to expect institutions to build and test paper alternatives just as a backup.
Some type of backup is necessary for anything critically important. From my previous [2]:
In sum, as a matter of policy everything that is officially
categorized as a critical infrastructure must conclusively
show how it can operate in the absence of the Internet.
Re: Are Cities Too Complicated?
#27Another word for complexity is diversity. Resilience comes from that complexity. Very much like biology.
NYC (where I live) is wildly inefficient, except at delivering benefits that millions of people consider worthwhile.
Re: Are Cities Too Complicated?
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If each one requires knowledge of the entire system The general problem is the growing number of dependencies. James Burke in "Connections" warned that civilization is an interconnected web of technology traps [1]. We survive as long as everything works (or "mostly" works), but there is a risk of cascade failure. More recently, Dan Geer warned[2] about the same type of problem: In the last couple of years, I've fou…
But a paper system which uses mail also has huge dependencies. You rely on a transportation and post office infrastructure that can also have problems. In fact, the internet was funded by DARPA to deal with disruption of the conventional communication network.
> also has huge dependencies
True, but they are different dependencies. One of the goals is to eliminate the risk of common-mode failure[1]. One failure that makes the internet inoperable also takes out everything that depended on it, which shouldn't be "everything".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cause_and_special_cause...
Re: Are Cities Too Complicated?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it matters too much that most institutions no longer accept paper since paper is just the external interface. You get no more reliability if they did when all critical processes rely on technology. In other words, you aren't walking your check to the IRS, the postal service couldn't deliver it, your bank couldn't cash it even if they did, and WTF would the IRS do with a billion checks?
The point isn't really that paper is better . It's that we had systems that worked for a long time and we removed them. We shouldn't need to walk lots of checks to the IRS, that's the point of modern tech. However, the IRS maintaining the capability of using old, simpler methods should be retained because it serves as a backup for (hopefully rare) situations where the primary infrastructure fails.
> The point isn't really that paper is better. It's that we had systems that worked for a long time and we removed them.
Because we have better ones, that are less expensive, in many (but not all, due to excessive design rigidity in some cases) cases cheaper to adapt to change, and provide more value. That benefit is significantly limited if you bear the cost of maintaining (across requirement changes) the old processes (or analogs to them reliant on similar infrastructure) as well as the new processes, especially if you have to maintain the infrastructure (including the human infrastructure -- e.g., for the IRS, of people trained to process tax returns by hand) they rely on.
> However, the IRS maintaining the capability of using old, simpler methods should be retained because it serves as a backup for (hopefully rare) situations where the primary infrastructure fails.
Certainly, functions that are short-term critical need some fallback. Functions that aren't, it may be more efficient to devote resources to restoring the primary infrastructure rather than burning them executing inefficient backup processes in the absence of primary infrastructure.
Re: Are Cities Too Complicated?
#30Cities have a dark side. I think that most people who grew up in a small town and later moved to a big city have gone through a period of disillusionment.
I don't want to seem mean, but you're like a caricature of a country person. People are living things which grow to suit their environment, everyone thinks their way is the best way and that their hometown is the coolest. When you say things like "city people care more about money" and "city people are mean" you sound like a bumpkin.
Maybe he's a caricature, but he's 100% right.
I grew up going to school in the burbs, all summer in a small home-town - and have lived in several major cities.
'City people' are definitely more about the money.
Small towns are communities. Everyone knows everyone - often for multiple generations. Families have ties - not just people. You can't 'not care about' someone you've known for 40 years, even if you don't know them that well.
In cities, people are exposed to a lot more people, they have tons of 'associates' but very few friends. People come and go - and they get individualist.
I find city people, having been exposed to 'more kinds of people' tend to be more 'tolerant' in the modern sense of that word, but have absolutely no idea what community means and are far more judgemental, ideological, selective in everything. City people walk and talk with a kind of 'facade' - they are trying to project an image - almost all of them. In a small town - this would seem ridiculous.
Also in small towns - when people speak to you - they are speaking to you then are 'present'. In the city, people are usually polite - but conversations (and relationships) 'transactional'.
My brother (small town) threw a big bar-b-q for his friends birthday, and invited a bunch of people. Some really odd red-necky types showed up - and don't mean negative - just poor. They were welcome. Old guys in wheelchairs. Young partiers. It was an unbelievably mixed crowd. I don't think my brother would have preferred they came - but there is no way on earth anyone would say anything - after all 'it's joe from the corner store' - and 'Mary, Sean from across the streets Aunt'. When you go to social gatherings in urban areas - they tend to be hyper-specific in terms of social groupings.
Even the near-homeless/poor people in small towns 'know someone' and most people 'know them' by name. Down the street from where I live (urban) - there are a couple of completely 'nameless' homeless people.
Also - small town people tend to have a lot of gatherings where it's mostly family. In the city, often less so. When you hang around mostly your family and extended friends, it's a completely different world from 'people your age in your clique' etc..
The craziest thing about this - is 'city people' often have absolutely no idea what a community actually is. They make all sorts of crazy assertions, but have no clue.
You call this guy a 'bumpkin' because - no offence - you might not know what he is talking about - also - your comment might be a kind of bigotry.
In the suburb where I grew up - I don't know anyone. They've all moved. I have some contact - but the people, stores, restaurants, neighbourhood - totally unrecognizable. My 'hometown' - I still know some people, epc. through family. It's incredibly boring, and would be nary impossible to live there (it would be nice if it were a commute from a city), but if I don't go back often enough, I go crazy.
To someone from a small town, living in a city often feels like 'living in a corporation' - and to some extent they are correct.