[FRIAM] the Commons and Convenience

[Steven A Smith]

> Steve writes:
>
> <   It is also hard to give up "convenience", once habituated toit.   I can
>     barely imagine tying up a hardwired phone line to get 300 or 1200bps
>     internet service today... I think I'd probably do without somehow.  I
>     once walked, ran, rode my bike miles and miles to get where I needed to
>     go (school, work, etc.) but now that I have been conditioned to jumping
>     in a heated/AC car and driving 60-80 mph with a good quality sound
>     system and dozens of radio stations, hundreds of CDs ripped to the hard
>     drive and Bluetooth audio to allow me to chat with family and friends or
>     do some business or listen to a podcast, I'd have a hard time even going
>     back to driving 55 or having to leave my windows down to keep from
>     feeling a little hot on a warm day, much less live with my own singing
>     or a small handful of scratchy AM stations.  >
>
> There's no need to fall back to a 300 baud.   Even a small community of ~ 20k people can build a fiber optic network -- an example is my dad's town.   There's no need to drive 55 mph or even drive.   High speed rail in China and Japan exceed 200 mph.   This is the shortsightedness and lack of imagination in individualism:  To deny or not even notice that many people have the same exact needs you do.

I'm not suggesting we need to fall back to any of those things, just
reminding myself that my expectations tend to grow monotonically but
conveniences do not, they are often herky-jerky.    Technology for the
most part is a "ratchet",  barring an apocalypse, we don't generally
lose or forget what we have learned technologically, but we DO seem to
forget (and have a hard time relearning) the social/cultural things we
apparently once knew.