
Will the high-tech cities of the future be utterly lonely? - ytNumbers
http://theweek.com/articles/689527/hightech-cities-future-utterly-lonely
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VLM
The article seems like three disconnected stories. I'll try to do a better job
of combining the stories:

When the automation eliminated the blue collar jobs, my friends, if I had
them, would laugh because we are white collar.

When the automation eliminated the rural jobs, my friends, if I had them,
would laugh because we were superior urbanites.

When the automation eliminates my white collar urbanite job, there is no one
left to laugh at me, because urbanites are lonely and have no friends.

But on the bright side we'll spend the income we don't have, from the jobs
that don't exist anymore, on fitbits to make us happy, instead of spending the
money on other people. The progressive stack was to eliminate the family, no
more babies, then eliminate the pets, no more fur babies, finally eliminate
the jobs to eliminate the human-like machines such as fitbits. The last step
will be eliminating the remaining people.

Devices becoming more human like, is good, because humans won't be able to
afford living in the expensive cities without any jobs and no personal
relationships. In the old days people worked and retired to a pension and were
given a pocketwatch they don't need at a retirement party. In the new days
people will be downsized as population only increases and the number of jobs
only decreases, teased by being shown a fitbit they can't afford and don't
need, and left to die under the freeway overpasses unemployed.

Although historical experience indicates the outcome will look a lot like
Mogadishu shaken with the French Revolution and a sprinking of Detroit, we
would like to think instead that our biggest problem will be solving
loneliness, because lonely people are unproductive. People have to be
productive, British Stiff Upper Lip and all that, even though we no longer
have any jobs for them to be productive in. If they were not lonely they would
not notice they are unemployed.

I like to think I did a better more serious and thoughtful job than the
article. Its a little funny because the topic is of course ridiculous but I
still think I made numerous serious points.

~~~
e40
Your comment reminds me of Black Mirror ep _Fifteen Million Merits_.

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hfsktr
"By 2050, more than 66 percent of the world's population will be living in so-
called "smart cities." These are metropolitan areas where everything will be
digitally connected. ... we'll have smart hospitals, farms, and highways, and
it's likely they'll all talk to one another. Connected devices will monitor
everything from air quality to energy usage and traffic congestion."

While that might lead to efficiency that makes me feel it's more of a dystopia
than a place I'd want to live.

To me says: there will be someone monitoring you to make sure you are a good
little cog and don't disturb the status quo.

~~~
andy_ppp
Yes, what are poor people really _for_ when we have full automation...

~~~
paulryanrogers
IIRC, this is explored in Soylent Green: furniture and food

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neom
I doubt it. I spend my days looking at this "smart city" trend, it seems that
in the future modern services will allow cities and city planners to focus on
more things like community spaces and social infrastructure. As it stands
today I'd hazard over 85% of the productivity within a city at the government
layer is spend managing and dealing with existing infrastructure. Very bullish
on cities. Highly recommend reading Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest
Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier by Edward
Glaeser

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kristofferR
I think the claim made in the article, that minor social interactions like
receiving a "Thank You" from the cashier instead of using a self-checkout
booth, prevents loneliness is really dubious. In fact, the article also
mentions shallow conversations as creating loneliness, so it contradicts
itself there. I don't get what the article is trying to say.

Loneliness is a communication, information and anxiety problem. The first two,
communication and information, are problems technology can easily help solve.
Helping people getting over their anxieties is way harder of course, but
technology used properly can help there too.

People/governments just needs to take the issue seriously and start doing
stuff to solve it.

~~~
VLM
"Loneliness is a communication, information and anxiety problem. The first
two, communication and information, are problems technology can easily help
solve. Helping people getting over their anxieties is way harder of course,
but technology used properly can help there too."

I find it utterly fascinating that this summer is the 50 yr anniversary of the
"Summer of Love" where the problems of loneliness of young boomers was solved
by contraceptives, weed, and music, and now that generation is in total
control culturally and politically, the solution to the problem half a century
later is obviously a really nice new fitbit.

(edited to add, and both solutions were the most "California" solutions
imaginable in that era)

~~~
Arizhel
The boomers are only partly in total control now; the Xers also have a lot of
control.

Regardless, the hippies who went to the Summer of Love are a tiny minority of
the Boomers. Most boomers were rather conservative. The hippies either died
out or faded into obscurity, while their mainstream peers are the ones who
have taken control of society and given us a giant mess.

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shriphani
I can assure you that the loneliness is because of the clown city planners who
think humans enjoy living in boxes.

People will organically cluster to optimize proximity to others + get personal
space when they need it.

Hopefully we will reject the clown-car of urban design and return to our
organic roots.

It is costing people their livelihoods, their soul, their spirit.

All because someone who dresses like a penguin has a broken model of the
world.

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tzs
Off Topic: that site is doing something I've seen on a lot of sites: not
correctly taking into account that menu banner overlay on the top when the
user hits space to scroll a page.

On Firefox it works correctly. The page scrolls up just enough to make what
had been the bottom visible line become the top visible line.

On Chrome and Safari it scrolls a few lines too far. If I go in to the
inspector and delete that menu overlay it is then clear that it scrolled the
amount that would have been correct had the menu overlay not been there.

As I said I see this quite a bit around the web. I'm curious why. Is there a
bug in calculating the size of the visible region in Webkit browsers in the
presence of overlays? Are the sites using some non-standard CSS that is only
supported in Firefox? Is this one of those things that you just have to have
separate code for different browsers and these sites didn't realize that and
only tested with Firefox so didn't realize they weren't done yet?

~~~
return0
I see that all the time too. It's extremely frustrating , but i think the
solution is that browsers should implement some sort of visual indication of
where the bottom of the screen moves.

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jrs95
Wait..cities aren't _already_ utterly lonely?

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marsrover
Lately I don't seem to have time to feel lonely. Can't say that I don't miss
it sometimes. I feel like being lonely every now and then is good for you.
Being lonely all the time, that's a different story.

~~~
Kenji
Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created
the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the
word solitude to express the glory of being alone. - Paul Tillich

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wallflower
I am reminded of the videogame in Spike Jonze's "Her" in which the main
protagonist after coming home from his day job ghostwriting hikes through
landscapes with his AI buddy.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr7aI0RqtXc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr7aI0RqtXc)

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dbg31415
No, we'll still have Tinder... for our avatar-on-avatar VR sexcapades.

* Demolition Man sex scene - YouTube || [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k80UQWWUIYs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k80UQWWUIYs)

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xg15
> _But in a future where robots sound and objects look increasingly sentient,
> we might be less inclined to seek out behaviors to abate our loneliness.
> Indeed, one recent study titled "Products as pals" found that exposure to or
> interaction with anthropomorphic products — which have characteristics of
> being alive — partially satisfy our social needs, which means the human-like
> robots of tomorrow could kill our dwindling urge to be around other humans._

So basically Chobits was right all along.

[https://youtu.be/aB50gL4rpiM](https://youtu.be/aB50gL4rpiM)

~~~
norea-armozel
As someone who's fairly reclusive outside of work I'm frightened by this
prospect. I'd rather be anxious and have to deal with people from time to time
than be so utterly alone that I'm forced to treat my cereal box as a surrogate
for a friend. That just sounds horrible on so many levels.

~~~
okasaki
I'm always amused by people expressing alarm from future things that they
won't be there to experience. Like a Victorian ranting about Tinder. Who cares
what you think? You'll be dead, and the people alive then certainly won't
share your reservations.

~~~
gkilmain
I'll be 75 in 2050.

~~~
always_good
Your Tinder profile: This isn't even my final form.

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gokusaaaan
man, can't wait for tech to come out that chops out the need to socially
connect, depression caused by the lack same is absolutely annoying

~~~
Noos
"Do you have serious loneliness and depression? I have an app for that!
Friendsy, in which a cute little virtual kitten gives you points to spend at
Amazon if you perform social interactions! remember, 1000 points is $5 off
your next order. That's only 25 Hellos, or four Meetup meetings a month!"

~~~
rak00n
That's still a better idea than juicera.

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crimsonalucard
The key to making societies not lonely is communal dining areas for every 100
or so people.

~~~
Animats
It worked for Britain in WWII.[1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Restaurant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Restaurant)

~~~
crimsonalucard
Anthropologically, humans are primarily tribal creatures who form strong bonds
with small groups. One consistent thing across most cultures is that although
everyone goes hunting and farming during the day, at night they gather around
the fire or table and share. It works because this is the way we have evolved
to live.

