Smallter Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper, by the Manhattan Institute’s Robert Bryce, argues that human innovation will save the planet from climate change and other projected catastrophes. As the title suggests, most of that innovation has to do with making things smaller, faster, etc., but Bryce especially focuses on power density, that is, the amount of energy produced by a machine per kilogram weight of that machine. Thus, steam engines are more powerful than horses; internal combustion engines more powerful than steam; and jet engines more powerful than internal combustion.
Bryce’s formula, with modifications, applies to transportation and other issues as well. For transportation, the key factors are faster, cheaper, safer, and more convenient (convenienter?). From the beginning of the nineteenth century, every major technological innovation in transportation revolutionized society by improving most or all of these factors. The next major innovation–self-driving cars–will definitely improve all four.
Many people dream of new forms of transport–light rail; personal rapid transit; monorails; high-speed rail; mag-lev; etc.–improve, at most, one of these factors, usually speed. Yet they are more expensive, less convenient, and in many cases (such as light rail) more dangerous than existing transport.
The United States has more than 4 million miles of public roads, and nearly all of these roads are open to almost anything with rubber tires, from bicycles to heavy trucks. With our infrastructure already in place (if in need of some maintenance), any transportation innovations had better be able to use that infrastructure or they will be far too expensive to meet the “cheaper” criterion. The rest of the world has another 36 million miles of roads, so any other country that tries to develop an alternative form of transport that can’t use roadway infrastructure will find themselves left out of the world economy.
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This is why the Antiplanner is so gung-ho for self-driving cars; not because of their gee-whiz factor but because they offer the promise of true personal-rapid transit without the need for new infrastructure.
Bryce’s smaller denser factors don’t apply to housing and other land-use issues. Given modern communications and transportation, the advantages of density are declining just as rapidly in the 21st century as they did in the 20th. Density offers minimal energy savings, but accepting Bryce’s argument that we will have access to plenty of energy in the future, we don’t even need to argue about that.
Nor will houses need to be smaller. It may be true that not everyone needs to live in a 5,000-square-foot home, but nor are there any real advantages to living in a 500-square-foot (or smaller) home. We can save more energy by better insulating homes than by making them smaller or building multifamily rather than single-family.
The factor that remains is cheaper. Right now, the major barrier to cheap housing is government regulation. But in places with little regulation, the next major barrier is financial: developers need better ways to finance the infrastructure needed for housing. After breaking down those barriers, there may be technological innovations that can make new home construction (or existing home remodeling) less expensive, probably by making them more energy efficient or using lighter-weight materials.
In any case, the only real flaw in this book is the capitalization of every use of the words Smaller, Faster, etc., even when it is inappropriate to do so. Aside from this, Bryce’s book is worth reading.
Stopped reading at “denser”. This book is the usual social engineering from a planner who wants to stack and pack us in rabbit hutches located above artisan brew pubs.
“The next major innovation–self-driving cars–will definitely improve all four.”
Given that the self-driving cars will try to mimic human behaviour, in every way, I doubt that it will improve anything much. Mobility impaired people will be helped, but traffic congestion will get worse. Many technologies have been promoted as fixing the numerous problems with cars, but none have matched the advanced billing. The current incremental improvements in driver assistance is a more practical route to improvement.
At the same time there are many possible and important improvements to buses and bicycles, but these have been tossed aside in the stampede towards the Utopia of self-driving cars.
“Given that the self-driving cars will try to mimic human behaviour, in every way”
This is the stupidest assertion about autonomous cars that I’ve read. Why make up such garbage? Just to have something to say?
Why would autonomous cars “try to mimic” behavior “in every way”? Why mimic aggressive driving, driving while intoxicated, texting while driving, putting on makeup while driving, etc?
The continued unsupported assertions are simply nonsense. Rubbish. Poppycock.
Nice! I’ve been waiting for an excuse to sit back and do nothing. We don’t need any collective (or individual for that matter) responsibility. Technology will solve it all. Sweet!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_determinism
Of course it’s going to be hard to innovate in the current anti-knowledge, anti-education, anti-intellectual, anti-science atmosphere being pushed by the religious zealot wak-a-doodles that have usurped the American political system. Maybe China will figure it all out?
Think how much life has changed in the last thirty years. People used to worry about books in the school library that nobody checked out — now kids carry phones that access more pictures and ideas than the largest library ever contained. Life in poor African countries has been transformed by cell phones a million times more than foreign aid has ever accomplished.
You know what these transformations have in common? Planners didn’t see them coming and government had next to nothing to do with it other than get out of the way. This is what the NY Times saw coming thirty years ago:
For the most part, the portable computer is a dream machine for the few.
The limitations come from what people actually do with computers, as opposed to what the marketers expect them to do. On the whole, people don’t want to lug a computer with them to the beach or on a train to while away hours they would rather spend reading the sports or business section of the newspaper. Somehow, the microcomputer industry has assumed that everyone would love to have a keyboard grafted on as an extension of their fingers. It just is not so.
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/08/business/the-executive-computer.html
“You know what these transformations have in common? Planners didn’t see them coming and government had next to nothing to do with it other than get out of the way. This is what the NY Times saw coming thirty years ago:”
Bwaaahahahahah! That was a good one. The fact that you equate the NY Times with planners and the government is telling in itself, but when it comes to the internet and mobile technology you might want to get your facts straight. Planners and government absolutely were involved (or “got in the way”) in the development and implementation of these technologies (see: ARPANET, NPL, Merit Network, X.25 and public data networks, UUCP and Usenet, etc. Even the merging of these networks that resulted in the Internet was done by researchers at the Stanford Research Institute. Government $$$ and planners everywhere).
1. Funny how liberals always want to give the government and Al Gore the credit for the internet. Why don’t you credit the Defense Department and the military industrial complex? Why not Edison, Einstein and Newton?
2. ARAPNET was but a tiny step in the modern digital world, and if it were left to government and planners the computer would only exist on Universities with government oversight and regulation. If government can’t put together a workable website in six years, imagine how long it would take to implement an international network of cell towers and high speed cables?
“Of course it’s going to be hard to innovate in the current anti-knowledge, anti-education, anti-intellectual, anti-science atmosphere being pushed by the religious zealot wak-a-doodles that have usurped the American political system.”
The major amount of “anti-education, anti-intellectual, anti-science atmosphere” comes from the left and the progressives who want to control everybody and everything. The groups below generally work in lockstep with the controlling planners.
anti-education = the teaching union/establishment that blocks innovations in schools and who will do anything to prevent poor minority children from escaping their control
anti-intellectual = the refusal to have open discussions with fair attempts for resolution; you saw how the left/Progressives acted when they controlled the entire US government; and how they still act where they control the regulatory agencies; anything that promotes their agenda is allowed
at-science = global warming progressives who refuse to debate the science or even allow any other scientific opinions to be introduced; name-calling and threats is their only response
There are some religious zealots who fit this description but their power and influence is nil compared to the left/progressive establishment.
How convenient. If you ignore human-caused global warming, too, then there’s basically nothing left to worry about. Jetpacks for everyone!
@ Frank:
“The continued unsupported assertions are simply nonsense. Rubbish. Poppycock”
It’s a shame, then, that Google has said that their cars will be designed to mimic existing car drivers, to the extent of speeding, and being a bit pushy, so as ensure that their cars can make good progress, and avoid being a rolling road block.
I see that the usual suspects are babbling on here. Picking at minor grammatical errors or finding minor faults in arguments. I guess when there’s nothing substantive to critics’ attacks and it’s all just envy-based hatred and puerile attacks, you are in a really good position.
Sandy,
A couple of things. First, I don’t give the public sector “credit” for the internet. But I certainly reject the assertion that government and planners “had next to nothing to do with it other than get out of the way.” I would agree that private sector innovators can and should take the most credit for internet and mobile innovations. My point is that in the innovative process they relied heavily on government for both systems expertise and most importantly, for money. Government got in the way. A lot. Sometimes to the detriment of innovations but often to the benefit.
bennet — Thanks for not escalating, and I will try to de-escalate my rhetoric too. I think once you strip away the flippant comments, we are pretty much in agreement.
My main point is that the internet and cell phones have radically changed almost everybody’s life on a daily and hourly basis, yet it was not foreseen to happen, Nobody saw “text messaging” and “Facebook” as becoming a major part of teenagers lives, and even lately nobody saw “Facebook” as becoming a major part of grandparents’ lives. Who predicted “fantasy sports” would change the sports world? Science fiction never saw computers as being social drivers — they were always viewed as forcing logic and empowering government over the masses.
I don’t trust any predictions about the future anymore based upon straight line reasoning or argument about what must happen. Gas is $2.00 a gallon right now and you can’t find an environmentalist who predicted that. Video stores became ubiquitous very quickly and now are almost entirely gone.
I include in that cynicism skepticism about what the Antiplanner says about the future of driverless cars. HIs logic is good, but I just don’t believe that future can be logically deduced. But I do buy his argument that cars and trucks should be expected to be more efficient and have a smaller CO2 impact in the future even though I don’t know exactly how that will happen.
“It’s a shame, then, that Google has said that their cars will be designed to mimic existing car drivers, to the extent of speeding, and being a bit pushy, so as ensure that their cars can make good progress, and avoid being a rolling road block.”
You’ve conflated behavior with decision making. (You also didn’t link to an article to support your assertion; in fact, you NEVER post links to support your fabricated claims.)
Articles on the subject, including this one and this one, explain that Google is (or was as the article is several years old) working on a way for the car to “mimic the decisions made by a human driver.” Decisions. Not behavior.
Had you used the accurate verbiage and provided a link, I would have thanked you for the information and then stated that it will be interesting to see if the other autonomous vehicle developers (there are many) go the same route as Google. And by focusing solely on Google, you are cherry picking. And by making judgements about future autonomous cars at a very early in the technology’s development, you are making a hasty generalization.
So your original claim is pure poppycock. So is this one: “traffic congestion will get worse”. Rubbish.
You are clearly here to hate on autonomous cars and label them a “dead end” even if that means making stuff up.
“There are some religious zealots who fit this description but their power and influence is nil compared to the left/progressive establishment.”
John,
You play culture warrior ping pong like a pro. I understand your perspective and in some cases agree with it. Certainly the liberal/progressive establishment has created onerous bureaucracies that create harm and devise hypocritical solutions to the problems they caused. I also recognize that my conservative opponents on this blog don’t typically fall into the “conservative establishment” box (though I’m feeling you might actually be in that box. I don’t know). The examples you bring up have their counterpart on the right. Does the liberal/progressive establishment want to allow “anything that promotes their agenda”? Sure. Does the conservative establishment want to disallow anything that contradicts their agenda? Yup. Today the conservative litmus test carried out by not looking at the content and quality of an idea but rather how it fits into the conservative narrative. Even if an idea has many redeeming qualities, if it is deemed not conservative enough it is deemed bad. Again, this is the GOP/Fox litmus test and not necessarily the stance of the conservatives I debate here. But if you think somehow the liberal political establishment has substantively higher influence than the conservative political establishment, you’re nuts. Self-deprocatingly nuts.
The Antiplanner wrote:
This is why the Antiplanner is so gung-ho for self-driving cars; not because of their gee-whiz factor but because they offer the promise of true personal-rapid transit without the need for new infrastructure.
And (speaking in general terms), this is why buses are usually better than things that run on steel rails. But you knew that.
Bryce’s smaller denser factors don’t apply to housing and other land-use issues. Given modern communications and transportation, the advantages of density are declining just as rapidly in the 21st century as they did in the 20th. Density offers minimal energy savings, but accepting Bryce’s argument that we will have access to plenty of energy in the future, we don’t even need to argue about that.
One concern I have is universal and nationwide availability of high-speed Internet. There is no technical reason why this cannot be available to any place that is wired for electric power, yet lower-density and rural areas of the U.S. are frequently lacking such network access.
Sandy Teal wrote:
ARAPNET was but a tiny step in the modern digital world, and if it were left to government and planners the computer would only exist on Universities with government oversight and regulation. If government can’t put together a workable website in six years, imagine how long it would take to implement an international network of cell towers and high speed cables?
Agreed. But please see my comment to Randal above. I do not think that government should be in the business of providing network access, but many parts of the United States do not have reliable broadband network access.
Nor do I accept the idea that broadband should only be available in areas approved by planners (yes, I have heard that comment made, though I do not recall who said it).
“but many parts of the United States do not have reliable broadband network access.”
True, there are many geographic regions that don’t have broadband, but the vast majority of the population does. According to this year-old data, 94% of the US population has broadband download speeds greater than 3mbps over wireline, and that number jumps to 98.6% for wireless. I fail to see why the government should be involved in providing broadband to the 1.4% of Americans who choose to live in extremely remote places.
I fail to see why the government should be involved in providing broadband to the 1.4% of Americans who choose to live in extremely remote places.
When people say that parts of the US do not have reliable broadband access, they fail to recognize (perhaps innocently), that unlike Korea or Europe, there are very remote areas of this country where providing such access is cost-prohibitive, and the demand is likely not even there. People who are living in these areas probably don’t miss broadband, anyway, and there is always satellite internet available, as well as several different long-range radio technologies capable of beaming internet 10-15 miles from a transceiver tower to the customer’s antenna setup (my parents use such a system after using satellite internet for years).
@CP
Who are planners? Government regulators? Historically they’ve required telecommunications companies to offer service in low density areas if they want permission to offer service in high profit high density areas.
Fifty years ago the richest person on the West Coast couldn’t spend a million dollars to read the NY Times minutes after it was sent to type, listen to fan podcasts of last night’s TV show, watch any of 10 billion hours of YouTube or obtain up-to-date statistics of their favorite sports team. Today the poorest kid in the country can do it instantly on their free Obama phone.
That difference in every day life is not measured by planners’ usual tabulations of income, race, sexual stuff, religion, educations, etc. I don’t mind if the government wants to provide “broadband” to some people in the USA, but realize that people in Africa who never earned $25 a day have more information available on their cell phone and can contact distant people easier and better than the King of England could get 50 years ago.
I don’t mind if the government wants to provide ““broadband” to some people in the USA”
Why are you putting broadband in quotes?
Why don’t you mind passing for they people’s internet?
Of you don’t mind, cut out the middleman and Lady for mine. Only $60 payable to Comcast, that evil corporatist entity.
Auto correct. Paying… If…Pay…
Please bring back editing feature!
Frank – because what rich people paid big money for 20 years ago, like a T-1 line, is now considered needing government subsidy for the poor. If people survived for 99.999999% of human history without, why is it considered a human right to have government pay for it today?
Thirty years from now the kids will wonder why people watched TV or had radios in their cars, or maybe why anybody actually drove a car. That doesn’t make it a human right for poor people to have the government pay for their “basic human right” that only the most rich had 30 years before.
”
Stopped reading at “denser”. This book is the usual social engineering from a planner who wants to stack and pack us in rabbit hutches located above artisan brew pubs.
”
~gilfoil
I’m not sure what book you were reading but that isn’t an accurate description of any of Robert Bryce’s books, let alone this one.