From: jdr@starflight.Corp.Sun.COM (Jon Roland)
Newsgroups: alt.society.futures,talk.environment,sci.environment
Subject: Re: Cars, Cities and Choices
Followup-To: talk.environment
Date: 15 Aug 1992 04:31:18 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Distribution: world
Reply-To: jdr@starflight.Corp.Sun.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: starflight.corp.sun.com

In article 3769@nntpd2.cxo.dec.com, doucette@hannah.enet.dec.com () writes:
>The human aspect of the equation should tell you that people won't give up.
>They won't take the "rules of logic" for a debate down a path that they don't
>agree with.  If the outcome is unacceptable, then backup, change the rules of
>logic which resulted in the outcome, and try again.  Sooner or later you will
>find an outcome which is both possible and acceptable.  Until that occurs,
>do what you can with what you have and wait for technology to advance and 
>redefine your assumptions.
>
>Predicting the next millenium without knowing the conceptual and technical
>leaps which will occur is an exercise in futility.  What we need to do is solve
>*today's* problem with *today's* technology, DON'T SOLVE IT WITH TOMORROW'S 
>TECHNOLOGY.  Even with this discussion in alt.society.futures, we have to be
>very careful on how assumptions of technological advancements limit our choices
>instead of increasing them.  Saying that `"x" is the only solution` to the 
>issue limits debates and reduces alternatives before any commitment is 
>*required.*

A study of history shows many examples of people avoiding solutions that might
have worked in hope of alternatives developing that were more palatable, with
catastrophic consequences.

The naive faith that some acceptable alternative will always turn up is a
variety of magical thinking, and grounded in the recent history in this part
of the world -- an experience that is an historic aberration. It is really
magical thinking to believe that the "rules of logic" can be shaped to our
will and preferences.

The universe is not organized for our comfort or convenience. Sometimes all
the alternatives are bad.

Today's problems become tomorrow's very soon, and tomorrow's technology doesn't
happen by itself, but by people calling for it to be developed, as I am doing
here. This is the conceptual leap the situation calls for, although it may
take some people a long time to appreciate that. There are always a few who
don't catch on.

Moreover, I would contend that much of the unacceptability of my starship city
proposals is only the result of unfamiliarity with the ideas. They start to
look a lot better the longer one examines how they would work and could be
achieved. Most of the unpalatability arises not from the cities as they would
work after they become established, but from the cruel choices we face in
making the transition to them, because we are running about 2000 years late
in moving toward them. In the natural course, we would have begun the industrial
revolution in ancient Greece, built the first starship cities within a couple
of hundred years thereafter, and now be well on our way to planting such cities
inside the planets around and between the stars.

Starship cities are simply the next logical step in technological evolution.
Like many such steps, they are driven in large part by the situations created
by the previous steps in technology. As engineering projects, they require no
breakthroughs. We could design some within a couple of years and have the
first ones running within a decade or two.

Moving to starship cities is, in the final analysis, no different from replacing
gas lamps with electric street lights, or carriages with motor cars, or the
practice of dumping garbage in the streets with sewer and garbage collection
systems. There will always be someone to say something to the effect "If we
were meant to travel more than 20 miles an hour, we would have been born with
wheels". There was a time when people thought bathing was unhealthy, and 
bleeding was good for you.

I suspect that future generations will view our attachment to scattered, open
habitation systems as quaint and unenlightened, and wonder how anyone could
possibly want to live in anything but their own arcopolis, which is much nicer
than the other ones, although a couple of the others do have some interesting and
colorful neighborhoods ...

---

jdr@starflight.corp.sun.com, starflt@uunet.uu.net
Jon Roland
Starflight Corporation, 1755 E Bayshore Rd #9A,
Redwood City, CA 94063-4142, 415/361-8141

Newsgroups: alt.society.futures,sci.philosophy.meta