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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."
Fictional Town "Eureka" to Becomes Real?
They forgot to link to the image for this story.
My work here is dung.
but we call ours Los Alamos...
A town entirely full of science geeks ?
Well, at least they shouldn't expect a very high birth rate...
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I thought nerds preferred the cold dark of their parents basements or garages, to any kind of socialization? This will be an awkward experiment in itself. I'll bet you that only pseudo-nerds get in and they spend all the grant money on Warcraft gold, and sheep pr0n.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Sounds like funs!
...keep all of our best and brightest in one location. What could possibly go wrong?
the research triangle park
Because it is fairly isolated. If it gets blown up, space-time torn, or radiated, there is less chance of contamination to other continents.
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.
So... you want intelligent people to move to Australia?
This, being the same Australia that's introducing filtering and censorship to its entire Internet?
Yeah, good luck with that... Oh, and enjoy your forthcoming Dark Age.
I haven't seen the show, so forgive me if the writers have handled my objections in some clever fashion in one of the episodes, but..
I don't see the upside to this, it's easier now than ever before for people to collaborate remotely, negating much of the need for being in the same physical location.
I do see a downside to this, putting all our intellectual eggs in one basket makes a pretty attractive target for terrorists, whether they be Islamic, Luddite, or some other group in the future that isn't particularly keen on progress or reason as a means of dealing with reality.
The city is planned to be built west of the city of Brisbane, in Queensland.
Instead of building it west of Brisbane, they should build it east of Brisbane, where they can be free from outside influence.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Sounds a bit like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademgorodok except actually open and international. (also not in Siberia)
It's not a typo in the headline, it was submitted by "Tokey" from Metalocalypse.
I thought nerds preferred the cold dark of their parents basements or garages, to any kind of socialization?
Not entirely true. Geeks love to be around geeks, and only get awkward in the general population. We nerds are highly gregarious whenever we're in friendly company.
As an example go check out a gaming convention.
BTW, I think this town sounds like a lot of fun. I'm probably not bright/geeky enough to be invited to live there, but it would be cool to visit. I'm betting it would be worth it just for all the little inside jokes you'd see around. I'll bet the graffiti alone would be worth it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
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.
...and let scientist do research in any field they want without goverment intervention. What could go wrong?
you'll get a town full of people who have a desperate and ego-driven need to be seen as smart
kind of like joining mensa. anyone who needs that sort of attention and reinforcement is not exactly niels bohr
the smart guys in any room are always low key and in the back, not attention whores
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Funny, I thought that phrase was better used for romantic advances...
Wait, wasn't this a castle, and not a city? I don't recall those muppets as being exceptionally brilliant. Most scientists don't have magical worldviews, either.
Two of the smartest people I have ever met married and began cranking out kids. They now have one of the biggest collection of marginal morons you have ever seen. Nice kids, yes. Well behaved kids, yes. But they don't have the sense God gave a herd of cows. All I can figure is that the parents IQ waves were 180 degrees out of phase. Either that, or they are putting on one helluva show when company is around.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Why is it that years into this concept we still have people with such a fixation on the geographic side of things?
Los Alamos made sense in the day where even simple telephones were unreliable and getting large amounts of documentation from team to team would take hours if not days and there would be no real accounting for the integrity of them once they got there. But today this kind of thing is sadly out of touch with technology. Not to mention that there is a presumption that a great number of high end scientists will get along under one roof. This is doubtful, at best.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Not a bad design, even if it is thirty years old. Distributed systems. Fault tolerant. Designed to be able to disperse and have the citizens stay connected through encrypted channels. Amazing social dynamics. I would certainly consider moving there if it existed.
That John Brunner was a pretty sharp guy.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Seems to me that the *really* smart thing to do would be to recruit more kinds of smart people than just scientists. Out here in Portland some of the smartest people I know doing some of the most innovative work are working at cafes and creating new vegan food that actually tastes good, doing funky little magazines, and otherwise finding ways to make all sorts of work intellectually challenging and fun.
I've been in some of the most famous concentrations of smart people in the world and I see no reasons to believe that a "city of smart people" would also need to have some sizable population of dimwits. If anything, if living expenses were cheap, healthcare provided, and "low status" jobs were normally flextime and twenty hours a week or less, plenty of smart folks would flock there for a chance to live in a way that they could pay their bills and still be able to pursue their other projects. Not only could you fill all of your janitor jobs with smart people who would respect the job and be able to talk to the other people there, you would have to bloody near barricade the walls to keep too many people for applying.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Those "unrealistic" utopian colonies got a lot more done than people give them credit for. Specifically, the movement you link to created, among other things, the Amana corporation, founed by the residents of, you guessed, the Amana colonies. Who also, by the way, made kickass furniture and sold it in mass quantities. You know, like the Quakers? Maybe you've heard of them or of a few of the many products they invented and commercialized. Or, instead, maybe you're more a "free love" kinda elitist. In which case drop by your local Target or Nordstrom's and buy some Oneida flatware, a product of the Oneida communities.
I could go on and on. I've researched this a bit and given the primitive tech they were working with and the chowderheaded "social sciences" they had to do their best to unlearn, some of those colonies did quite well. And with the hundred plus years that have now been put into analysis and of creating more efficient setups like the hundred-plus ecovillages, most of which are thriving, we're far better positioned to try again.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
The first tenant at the famed Stanford Research Park was Varian, and the government was at the time Varian's only customer. Many of the other spin-offs were organized around government-funded research labs, many also at/near Stanford, the most famous of which was probably Engelbart's lab (which invented the mouse).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
Benzene, Toluene, basically most of the stuff that's in gasoline, and MMT ... these are all more likely sources than vaccinations. People just get regular exposure to these chemicals, it's part of our car culture ...
Just look at that MMT molecule - it looks fucking badass! Hehe, wow - look at this, an easy Google search and the EPA hands this right to me:
"One recent California study reported that a modest increase in the incidence of autism was associated with the highest 25% of manganese air concentrations (65)." Source
(MMT has a manganese atom in the middle of it)
Oh yeah - It's probably also worth blaming whatever chemical clouds are making it over the Pacific.
Vaccines?? Come on ... let's look at the obvious sources of carcinogens and mutagens. I just think it's far more likely to be the fuel for industrial progress ... no matter how bad it is, we'll still end up using it in large amounts daily, and spreading the chemical love all around the world.
Stuff like this just adds more backing to my argument.
But yeah, vaccine soup does kind of worry me, just doesn't seem that likely to me. I honestly hope you're right, and it's the vaccines, because that's something we can get some control over ... where as this gasoline issue; we pretty much need a working, feasible nuclear fusion reactor now to solve that problem. (which could introduce a whole other set of issues...)
Corporation can often be the worst researchers, everyone knows treating the symptoms is far more profitable than curing the disease. There are many areas of research where the results end up in the the public domain for the greater good. Examples are treating vermin species by introducing predators to reduce their numbers, this takes a considerable amount of research to be done successfully, generates absolutely no profit but can save billions.
Consider the rate of research that was achieved by government during two world wars, far faster than during any other periods, consider the internet the device you are using for to put out wrong headed comments or even the space race.
There seems to be this real crazy attitude that somehow citizens are not part of the government, or truly weird stuff like, you can't trust the government because it just just run by corporations for the benefit of corporations but you can quite illogically trust those corrupt corporations who are using their greed driven values to corrupt government.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen