What’s in a House?

That’s all.

(Plato, could you ellaborate, here or in your weblog, about Netherlands “meeting hall” concept? I went lost somewhere your discourse path)

I don’t think very many babies are born in airplanes. Although perhaps it would be more fair to count conceptions.

“Industrial designs” are still held in context of copyright or trade marks, yet I think the advancement of anything becoming “quite common” has it’s reproductive value eventually found in the cheapest production wise somewhere. Hate to be undercut in original design?

I have seen these computerized lathes before, just not with microprocessing abilites. Very interesting.

The ‘meeting hall” is a interesting version of native design? The Netherlands seems to have more then just Gerard t’ Hooft to consider in their contributions to societies.:)

Ah, yes I see. I once dreamed of a molecular feeder. Using your idea then, we could manufacture?:)

Also, it is not exactly that the workshops have dissapeared, it is that they concentrated and moved out the city. A modern solution could be to install university AND secondary school in the same areas that factories and workshops, so al least students would interact natutally with real producers during rest time at the pub. For instance, I would expect that the Open/Free Software movement should easily extend into programmable manufacturing machines. Free Wheels anf gears, downloadable from internet.

This is what happens with technolgoical advancements.

Trying to keep pace, and seeing in new ways with modern controls, the hands on, takes us away from the intuitive developement that came from doing things the “ole way”:)

While the nostalgia is strong in the heart of our memories, resistance to such changes takes us away from the reality of change?

While these things might now sit in the archives, we need the “older folk” to remind us sometimes of the way it used to be, to realize, that there are always natural processes to be considered even while we are dismayed with such advances.:)

The real problems with cars are beyond death toll; it is about the whole economics around them, which we need to keep fueling (indeed) in order to keep an stable civilisation. Think not only about petrol & gas, but also the car market, the factories, the repair workshops etc… what percentage of a countrie economy comes directly from car transportation? A lot of countries even get a significant tax income straight from fuel taxes.

My second problem (well, to me the first one) against cars and planes and mystic technology in general is that people is not encouraged to understand the physics and mechanics of the devices they are using daily. This was part of the motivation for my railbike project I mentioned recently. But generically I abominate of these car companies whose ads speak of technology and whose engines are black boxes for specialised personal only. They even use propietary or undisclosed computer interfaces. For our security, sure. Ignorance=security, a classical equation.

When I was younger workshops were in the center of the cities. We kids wandered around doors into the local coffee roaster, got to peer into chemist backoffice, keep looking the sparks from the soldering tool or ckecking how a gear wheel was fitted into its place in a printing mechanism. No wonder why now we need to sell science as if we were, er, car resellers.

A third problem about cars is that they can emphatise individualism and competition. But well, that is another history. Or another rant, which I let for other contributors.

anon

Perhaps not, but you might say “This trip would take 36 hours so I skip it”. The amount of time we spend traveling remains more or less constant in all cultures. People who walk may travel a shorter distance than those who fly, but on average they don’t spend more time doing it. This isn’t really that strange, who would take a vacation in Bermuda if it took a month just to get there? If people didn’t have cars you would have denser population so that people had to travel a shorter distance to work. Invent a faster way of traveling and people will travel further. Thus the per hour figure of risk is just as relevant as the per km one.

That depends: is this machine going in your house, or your office? If it’s the later you absolutely should buy it.

Yes, it’s the kids who are at risk of being raised by incompetent mothers.

not the people who get mugged or whose homes get burglarized

Nobody said that those people weren’t ALSO at risk (of something else). *cough cough straw man cough*

Oh God, that has got to be the *ultimate* PC quote. So it’s the *kids* who are at-risk, not the people who get mugged or whose homes get burglarized? That’s a classic, it really is.

Meanwhile, if aborting these pieces of garbage in proto-human shape is what is reducing crime rates, then I think we have finally found a way of selling abortion rights to the Right. In fact, I hope that the Bush administration will start offering incentives for abortion to…ummm…”at-risk” pregnant women ASAP. “Abortion Rights NOW! — it’s a matter of Law and Order!” Trouble is, though, that we will get liberals opposing abortion rights on the grounds that it discriminates against the “at-risk”……