Slashdot Mirror
Fictional Town "Eureka" To Become Real?
Zarath writes "The fictional town of Eureka (from the TV series by the same name) is going to potentially become a real life town as the University of Queensland, in Australia, plans to build a multibillion-dollar 'brain city' dedicated to science and research. The city, hoping to hold at least 10,000 people, is looking to attract 4,500 of the brightest scientists from around the world to live and work there. The city is planned to be built west of the city of Brisbane, in Queensland. While not funded by the Department of Defense (like the [city of the] TV series), the potential for such a community is very interesting and exciting."
...keep all of our best and brightest in one location. What could possibly go wrong?
One of the most interesting decisions in Soviet science was the establishment of Akademgorodok, an enclave outside Novosibirsk dedicated entirely to scientists (see e.g. Josephson's New Atlantis Revisited published by Princeton University Press). I don't understand why that wasn't more popular in Western countries. Maybe sciences move ahead when you give scientists peace, a sense of respect and dignity, and ability to manage their own work. Of course, generous funding is essential, lest it all go down the tubes.
Towns and cities are located and populated naturally. Towns are near a river or a port or an important crossroads. Or they grew up from nothing over the course of many decades. The people that live there settled there for natural reasons, usually related to jobs and opportunity.
Towns can be created artificially. Almost every attempt to do it is a failure though. Success usually takes HUGE amounts of money and some other factor to draw people to the location. This one claims to have the money, but they probably don't have enough. And it seems to lack any other incentive to draw folks there.
Actually, they've found a very high rate of autism coming from the children in silicon valley. :(
Can all fish swim?
An amusing meme, but far from the truth. From a history of Los Alamos Lab :
One resident recalled that "the Hill dwellers were amateur everything: hikers, riders, photographers, ethnographers, mineralogists, musicians, and artists-craftsmen in all assorted fields. Saturday nights they partied and square danced. Sundays they fished or exploited their hobbies."
The parties were frequent and well attended. Resident Jean Bacher recalled that "Saturday nights, the mesa rocked... fenced in as we were, our social life was a pipeline through which we let off steam."
Some of the most brilliant minds of the last century seemed perfectly capable of having fun together and blowing off steam. Maybe this time there will be more LAN parties than square dances, but people will figure out how to get together.
Who said the US government's role was limited to the Internet? None of those companies would have gotten anywhere without some of the advances at Bell Labs, which was kept going by government contracts.
Your choice of terminology suggests that you're a libertarian nutjob. I wish you success in your return to the real world.
A.) You were promulgating a bit of disinformation that gets stronger every time it gets repeated in a public place.
/. is still one of the biggest fora on the web and I reserve the right to cut down the damage that you'll do rather than limiting myself to only what *you* consider accountable behavior.
B.) You were creating an implied equivalancy between two "equally ridiculous", "equally false" public statements. Which isn't so nice when one of those statements not only isn't equivalently false but was, in fact, used as a key part of a still ongoing and successful campaign to establish and maintain the larger and equally false supposed equivalency between the level of lying and overall fraud between Democrats and Republicans.
After years as a policy guy trying to change behavior through reason I came to the sad conclusion that behavior is, in fact, largely determined not by fact but by perception and that many of the most destructive false perceptions are those spread mostly under the cover of "I'm just joking", which is no different from the frat boy who hits one of the "nerds" in the face, knocking him down, and then claims that the nerd has no legitimate grounds to be angry, let alone fight back. After all, "I was just messing with you".
Sorry, I have no opinion of nor much interest in your intent; I post in response to expected consequences.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.