Rural Kansas is dying • Hacker News Board

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#71

Post by christophilus » Tue, May 01, 2018, 1:43 AM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #31

sologoub wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree that the promise of remote work hasn’t quite panned out, yet. However, the article is also noting something related: > Today, operators sitting at computers hundreds of miles from the farm can easily steer gigantic harvesters via satellite. Kansas’s agricultural landscape needs fewer and fewer human caretakers. In a way, they are realizing “telecommuting” for harvester operators and impacting local population.…

The alternative to virtual density is real density (à la big cities like Tokyo, New York). In my opinion remote technology has not been able to come close with the bandwidth increases of real proximity yet. The promise of VR, telepresence, is still unable to match the benefits of real presence.

Anecdotal counter point: I've worked remotely for years. I do plenty of brainstorming via Zoom and Slack. It works just fine for me. I never felt productive in the typical tech office space-- open-plan or cubicles. When I was an office worker and really needed to get stuff done, I'd go home. If I can help it, I'm never going back to an office.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#72

Post by lurquer » Tue, May 01, 2018, 1:43 AM UTC

Much of Kansas is comprised of the most uninteresting topography in the United States. But for wheat and corn, nobody would live there.

The author claims she grew up in Kansas. I doubt her job requires her to be in Los Angeles. So, why isn't she in Kansas?

As a Midwest resident, I'm annoyed by patronizing West and East Coasters who claim fly-over country is dying. Many folks in the Midwest stay here precisely because the thought of living amongst smug nitwits like the author is so revolting.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#73

Post by christophilus » Tue, May 01, 2018, 1:44 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #62

DanAndersen wrote: post #18

The failed promise of telecommuting is a tragedy of the tech world. I'm a Kansan born and raised in the KC area (suburban rather than rural), and I wish a work-from-home career was more feasible in my line of work. I'd like nothing more than to live in a small Midwestern town; the city-hives hold no real attraction to me. The Internet should have freed more of us to live where we want, but in the most connected point…

As a counterpoint, the D programming community could not exist without the internet and telecommuting. It's spread out all over the world, and we only meet once a year at Dconf. I remember "telecommuting" in the 1980s with a fax machine (international phone at a buck a minute was impractical) and mailing floppy disks (weeks of delays for international).

Yup. See many other OSS products. Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, is nearly 100% remote as an organization. Works like a charm.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#74

Post by DanAndersen » Tue, May 01, 2018, 1:46 AM UTC

lisper wrote: post #60

DanAndersen wrote: post #18

The failed promise of telecommuting is a tragedy of the tech world. I'm a Kansan born and raised in the KC area (suburban rather than rural), and I wish a work-from-home career was more feasible in my line of work. I'd like nothing more than to live in a small Midwestern town; the city-hives hold no real attraction to me. The Internet should have freed more of us to live where we want, but in the most connected point…

You should put some contact info in your profile.

Done!

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#75

Post by swampthinker » Tue, May 01, 2018, 1:58 AM UTC

chrissnell wrote: post #70

I'm writing this post from my home in Manhattan, Kansas, a mid-sized town in the Flint Hills. We had a gorgeous sunset tonight and I watched it from my back porch, staring across my lawn in the rolling ranch land behind me. I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US. Life is amazing out here. I have gigabit fiber internet, great third-wave coffee sho…

I think a big deciding factor is kids/age. I'm young and still prefer the city life, so 1 college just isn't going to cut it for me.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#76

Post by pasbesoin » Tue, May 01, 2018, 2:03 AM UTC

chrissnell wrote: post #70

I'm writing this post from my home in Manhattan, Kansas, a mid-sized town in the Flint Hills. We had a gorgeous sunset tonight and I watched it from my back porch, staring across my lawn in the rolling ranch land behind me. I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US. Life is amazing out here. I have gigabit fiber internet, great third-wave coffee sho…

Who's supplying the gigabit fiber connectivity, out there?

P.S. Answered my own question. Information may be out of date, but quite limited coverage residential plans from a couple of companies, and somewhat more but still limited coverage from a few companies business class offers.

Wish I had that many choices. ATT finally dropped a fiber line into our neighborhood, but it's not hooked up yet. Given what Comcast is doing to its cable Internet pricing, here, I'm a bit afraid to see the pricing ATT will offer us. By contrast, pricing out there looks significantly better.

Prior to this, our local copper trunk has been so old/deteriorated that DSL was marginal at best (they wouldn't sell it) and Uverse was a non-starter.

I might not want to be in Manhattan, KS, but I can think of some other towns -- maybe I need to look again.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#77

Post by sp332 » Tue, May 01, 2018, 2:04 AM UTC

Living somewhere rural isn't hell. It means you might get bored some of the time - and that's not the end of the world! It also means you get to do what you want, instead of depending on other people to entertain you every minute until you die. Having some empty time between events happening is fine. Living more independently can even be great sometimes. You don't want to live in Kansas, that's fine, I'm just worried that a lot of people in the comments here are acting like there's no reason anyone could want to live there.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#78

Post by jonhendry18 » Tue, May 01, 2018, 2:06 AM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #5

This is much less interesting than the rust belt decline or any other number of dying communities. Kansas used to need a lot more people to support farming and thus had enough people around for small towns to have a little life to them. Now they don't. It's a good thing that we can make so much food with fewer people, but it does mean even fewer people will live in rural agricultural communities. We love to romantici…

Maybe we need Lyft to run a rural helicopter transportation service. So that people can live in a town or small city and have a fast, easy commute to distant farm operations where they work.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#79

Post by Madmallard » Tue, May 01, 2018, 2:20 AM UTC

chrissnell wrote: post #70

I'm writing this post from my home in Manhattan, Kansas, a mid-sized town in the Flint Hills. We had a gorgeous sunset tonight and I watched it from my back porch, staring across my lawn in the rolling ranch land behind me. I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US. Life is amazing out here. I have gigabit fiber internet, great third-wave coffee sho…

how do you feel about tornados

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#80

Post by sverige » Tue, May 01, 2018, 2:25 AM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #7

ComputerGuru wrote: post #4

TThe only mention of corn in the entire article: While other northwest Kansas farmers were draining the Ogallala Aquifer to irrigate thirsty cornfields, Raile dry farmed. He likes to bet against the crowd. Kansas is wheat country, and corn is king. This article doesn’t even touch upon this 800lb gorilla, it doesn’t mention corn subsidies that keep corn prices high while he author goes on for paragraphs lamenting how…

Well it's not like you have awesome urban living around corn fields either. Huge fields and few people kind of get in the way of vibrant towns.

Small town living has its own charms, and having lived in big cities, medium-sized cities, and small towns, my preference is for places that are 50,000 people or smaller, with a city over 500,000 population no nearer than 90 minutes away.

Small towns were common 50 years ago in the rural Midwest. Farm sizes were much smaller on average then, and lots of people raised several children and made a decent living with 160 acres and some livestock. Now average farm size is somewhere north of 1000 acres, the kids move away for jobs more often than not, and the small towns are shrinking and dying. This is a loss for the country as a whole.