The Future • Hacker News Board

Re: The Future

#41

Post by coldtea » Sun, Oct 04, 2015, 4:22 PM UTC

chipsy wrote: post #19

This is a "spiky version of the present" future - all the prominent things seen by one individual, extrapolated linearly. As such it has a discontinuous shape. The main element I would critique is in the culture. Culture in 2015 will feel old and dated by 2030 - our memes, our artisan craft breweries and hip indie games. Something else will overtake them. Culture has the soft power to change people's perception of re…

>tomorrow could mean the kid across the street with a new toy

Or you know, more destruction and loss of life for unfortunate countries, constant policing for developed countries, a huge blow to the people's ability to protest and do demonstrations, etc...

Re: The Future

#42

Post by coldtea » Sun, Oct 04, 2015, 4:26 PM UTC

guard-of-terra wrote: post #5

guard-of-terra wrote: post #4

"A good segment (30%) of the world barely works" - and behaves exactly like disgrunted arabs in poor muslim countries? I.e. radicalize, want to blow up the world, ready to take arms for $150/month? Another role model for those people is 1st world ghettos. We're not doing it better than that yet. "The cost of subsistence has been driven down significantly", that's nice if you actually have some independent source of i…

Anyway, that's not "future". That's more of "now". Can we please have some real future sometime? With, I don't know, space travel, teleportation, telepathy, nanoassembly, digital democracy, aliens?

And unicorns spreading magic dust...

Re: The Future

#43

Post by kps » Sun, Oct 04, 2015, 4:40 PM UTC

hugh4 wrote: post #9

petra wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty close. Benedict evans did a more accurate calculation , and got ,for electric self driving cars, 14-19 cents/mile: https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/636684338352951297 One thing he forgot - what about shared transport - say sharing with 3 people could offer ride time relatively close to a car. That gets us to 4.5 cents/mile. That comes about to $50 a month/american-person(avg 13.5K miles/year) ,…

Sharing rides with strangers is precisely the kind of thing that I'd hope to avoid by replacing public transport with self-driving cars. But anyway, yes, it does appear that the economics of the self-driving taxi beat the economics of the bus or the train, especially given that buses and trains generally operate at a large loss and still charge people, on average, a higher fare than what they'd pay for a self-driving…

When all cars are self-driving, small single-person cars are a realistic option.

Re: The Future

#44

Post by JoeAltmaier » Sun, Oct 04, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

flohofwoe wrote: post #32

ginko wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world was very very different 100 years ago.

On first glance yes, but I would argue that living in a city in 1910 or 1920 was not that much different than living in a city today, look at photos or read newspapers from that time. I'm convinced that you can take a time traveler from the 1910's and he would get around in a modern western city within a week. All the basic things like electricity, sanitation, public transport, commerce, entertainment, fast communica…

Yet there are measurable changes in health, lifestyle and behavior. Obesity; neighborliness; attention span; entitlement. Where once only the ruling class could afford to be snooty and entitled, now most everybody can do it.

Even access to the outdoors - a century ago everyone lived in nature, to a degree unthinkable today. Sure, some tiny fraction still take their GoPro out and record it for the rest of us. But while parks, camps, outdoor programs have growing participation they have not kept up with simple population growth. Which means outdoor activity has dropped precipitously per capita.

I blame computers and games, for the pandemic of couch-potato twitch gamer culture. Not seen since the rise and fall of the opium dens.