Is Tech Bringing Us Closer Together Instead of Allowing Us to Sprawl?

A columnist for Wired has an interesting look at how telecommunications are actually making it more interesting to reside in populated areas instead of allowing the complete disregard for distance. "Technology makes it more fun and more profitable to live and work close to the people who matter most to your life and work. Harvard economist Ed Glaeser, an expert on city economies, argues that communications technology and face-to-face interactions are complements like salt and pepper, rather than substitutes like butter and margarine. Paradoxically, your cell phone, email, and Facebook networks are making it more attractive to meet people in the flesh."

Comments

Digital Signature

[Amorymeltzer]

It's something that's been changing for a while now. In a world where typing your name and writing your email address can legally constitute a signature, it would seem that we can remain disconnected easier. If anything, while it may make things like a handshake more rare, it makes it much more valuable. Imagine if you received a handwritten letter in the mail - it could be a death threat and you'd still be blown away by the care and thoughtfulness the author put into it.

Technology is ALL about bringing us closer. Most no one's invented or created anything that brings us further away from each other. How close we used to be to people at 5mi can now be replicated at 10mi, making the people 5mi away that much closer. Humans crave contact - nothing will ever replace hanging out and joking around with some friends - and things like email, Facebook, IM, and SMS make it easier. It's the old argument of making the world smaller.

How I cope

[EmbeddedJanitor]

I live rurally. Without tech, I could not work internationally and live at home.
I have wireless broadband which is expensive, but I get 2Mbps which is fine so long as I don't try stream video etc. In other words it is fine for almost all work stuff.
I don't have cell reception, but if you're at home then landline typically works or I could VoIP.
I probably get more power outages than cityfolks, but I have UPSs to give me a clean shutdown.

Re:Neighborhoods

[AuMatar]

There already are. There's the Portugese Ghetto (Orkut), the Korean ghetto (Starcraft forums), the American Ghetto (Myspace), etc.

Outsourcing killed the telecommuters

[heroine]

In the sense that almost every job which can be done remotely is done from India, there is great interest in jobs that involve face time. If those were most of the remaining jobs in recession 1.0, they'll be the only jobs left in recession 2.0.

Re:Absolutely

[NIckGorton]

I think the article and you are both right. Smaller places that are close to the 'Superstar Cities' in TFA are the ideal. I live in Davis, CA, which has the small town feel (though its actually a small city.) It is 70 miles from the closest 'Superstar City', San Francisco - which I visit just enough for it to be pleasant (several times a month.)

So I get the high speed access, university atmosphere, and small town feel while still having access to SFO. Now if it weren't for all the drunk college kids it would be perfect.

Re:Absolutely

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a community (shops, cafes, pubs, parks) probably within 10 minutes walk of everywhere in inner London and probably much of the rest

Any part of any American community more than 100 years old is still like this, whether it's a small town, a large town, or a city.

But anything built up in the last 50 years is mostly sprawl -- everything is a 15 minute drive from everything else, and the shops, cafes, pubs, and parks all have *enormous* parking lots (yes, even the pubs). The parking lots are seriously so huge that often you to go from one shop to the shop right next door, you have no choice but to get in your car and drive.

There are still some very small towns as described by the grandparent poster, with a few hundred or perhaps at most a few thousand people, and with shops and cafes and pubs and parks within walking distance, and which are not part of the sprawl. But they're dying out, either because they're eventually absorbed into the sprawl of the nearest bigger city, or because they're not very nice places to live.

Re:There are some worthwhile cities

[ushering05401]

While living in the southwestern U.S. tech did nothing to physically connect me with anyone because it was too damn hard to overcome the vast distances of the region on a regular basis.

After leaving NYC in '01 I moved to New England. Up here the story is exactly the opposite. Every county up here is its own little microcosm and networking through tech has put me in touch with all sorts of people who are easily accesible.

I am fairly certain that it is not merely the geographical isolation of southwest vs northeast, but perhaps the psychological difference of growing up in these disparate environments that alters the way tech networking impacts your life.

BTW, online networking in NYC was only a fraction as effective as actually going out. You can meet any type of person in the course of a given night with only moderate social skills/social engineering abilities.

Not if you're a ham radio operator

[LM741N]

Parts of the hobby are dying out because people no longer have any space to put up antennas. And if they try something indoors, they find it flooded with computer hash. I'll take a country farm any day.