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Location Selected For $1 Billion Ghost Town
Hugh Pickens writes "Although a fully operation city with no people sounds like the setup for a dystopian sci-fi novel, the Boston Globe reports that the Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation will develop a $1 billion scientific ghost town near Hobbs, New Mexico to help researchers test everything from intelligent traffic systems and next-generation wireless networks to automated washing machines and self-flushing toilets on existing infrastructure without interfering in everyday life. Bob Brumley, senior managing director of Pegasus Holdings, says the town will be modeled after the real city of Rock Hill, South Carolina, complete with highways, houses and commercial buildings, old and new. Unlike traditional cities, City Labs will start with its underground 'backbone' infrastructure that will allow the lab to monitor activity throughout the 17-mile site. Since nobody lives in the Center's buildings, computerized systems will mimic human behavior such as turning thermostats up and down, switching lights off and on, or flushing toilets. The Center's test facilities and supporting infrastructure may require as much as 20 square miles of open, unimproved land where the controlled environment will permit evaluation of the positive and negative impacts of smart grid applications and integration of renewable energies for residential, commercial and industrial sectors of the economy. 'It's an amusement park for the scientists,' adds Brumley."
When can I move in?
Yes, of course there's no way to test these without building a Billion-Dollar-Zero-People city...
Good, then it'll also be devoid of anyone guarding all the high tech stuff. Who wants to go get some?
this one should be interesting
Isn't it?
Seriously, Facebook costs the same as 100 fully-automated and instrumented cities.
Economy is doing fine, indeed...
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Wouldn't it be easier to just add sensors to Rock Hill, SC? Or better yet, play Sim City.
Who's paying for this? I mean, it's really cool... but at the same time I don't think I could justify dropping $1 billion on something like this given our current deficit.
Yes, and there are people going with out food every day. Seems that $1B could be put to better use.
I don't think I could justify dropping $1 billion on something like this given our current deficit.
You misunderstand I guess, they're just going to build an automated toilet hooked up to a money printing press and see how much money they can flush down the toilet per minute.
Seriously though, there has to be a more cost-effective method to do an experiment like this.
An empty automated city would be even better than an abandoned amusement park for a Scooby-Doo mystery.
People are losing their houses due to the housing bubble and they are going to build an entire town where no one is allowed to live and have computers simulate human activity?
I ... I don't even know how to express my feelings for just how wrong this is on so many levels.
Seriously, Facebook costs the same as 100 fully-automated and instrumented cities.
While that's interesting, what are we supposed to get from that? Could be an indication that the "city" above is overpriced.
I know it's not as controlled, but letting actual people live in this town would have a few benefits.
1. Some people would get a place to live.
2. If you want simulation data for humans, why not just use humans?
Seriously, let people live there for free or nearly free and the deal is they have to let scientists into their homes whenever for testing and upgrades. They also give up privacy for all of their anonimized actions and give up certain privacy for identifiable information, like photos. Bonus round, let them run the businesses too. Seriously, in the days of the WPA there were all sorts of co op planned communities that went up all at once, like Greenbelt, MD. Many of them are still thriving.
Much of Detroit consists of vacant buildings these days, with at least some sort of roads still in place.
In a way, the government is already "employing" (i.e., wasting welfare dollars on) most of the people still living there. Turning lights on or off and flushing toilets for research purposes would at least indirectly allow them to provide something of value to society, rather than merely being the drain they currently represent.
Why don't they just lease downtown Detroit?
Could be an indication that the "city" above is overpriced.
My eyes are rolling at 7200rpm.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
or are they testing something else where the presence of witnesses would interfere/hamper the test?
I sat down to write a new sig tonight and all I did was make the chair warm.
How long until they realize that there's all this relatively unguarded real estate?
"What reason is there not to have actual people living in it?"
Duh, so they can nuke it in case of a robot uprising.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Funny- i wonder if they will also install automated sludge sites and automated landfills in a neighboring community.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Hill,_South_Carolina#Controversy
What I gathered is that they are actually testing possible smart electrical grid designs, and how such devices fit into the picture. When viewed from that perspective one can at least see the reasoning behind the project. Whether it's necessary or a good idea can be debated, but it's not quite as brain dead as 'build a city to test a washing machine'.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Some one is living is the past if self-flushing toilets are so new they need to be tested like that.
I wonder how many letters the MPIAA will be sending there.
I must admit that my eyes rolled at a slower RPM when I read your post. Still my point is valid. Virtual services can be extremely valuable in themselves. Merely having a high price tag doesn't tell us anything.
Is that a monorail around the city?
At a time when millions of homes are foreclosed funding is available for this project, as it seems.
Talk about an imbalance in distribution of wealth in a system.
To get this fixed would probably worth spending some energy.
This has got to be the citizens tax money being wasted to build a ghost city. No way private money would develop such a thing.
Wrong
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If they used real people then the scientists couldn't test out their pet theories about how much energy could be saved if people changed their behaviors. You can program robots to behave differently, you can't make 50% of a real population live on night schedules to balance the grid load.
The valuation isn't for the technology. The valuation is for the number of regular users.
Google+ is better technology, but by itself is worth a tiny fraction of what Facebook is.
Why not just lease one of China's ghost cities? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339536/Ghost-towns-China-Satellite-images-cities-lying-completely-deserted.html
Exactly!
And look what happened to Myspace (that was the last Facebook).
This valuation is for something less stable than the price of tulips.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Now has a place to vacation at.
How about hand this over to the Department of Defense? Let them pay for it. At the end of a year, test an EMP to show people in the U.S. how vulnerable our lives really are. Show everyone how we rely on computers way too much. I think the money would be well spent in this case.
The point of all of this is to test all of these things on existing infrastructure. But, if you have to go out and build the infrastructure, then it really isn't existing infrastructure is it?
First we have these already! Second if they are still in development shouldn't the ones in store bathrooms have warning stickers on them?
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
"What reason is there not to have actual people living in it?"
Duh, so they can nuke it in case of a robot uprising.
Or more likely so nobody is around to see what they are really doing there. They've built cities in the past for secret research. The Manhattan Project comes to mind.
You could test various algorithms for traffic control, "platooning" and high(er) speed avoidance.
Have you seen the computer simulation for robotic cars that are under computerized traffic control (I don't know if it's centralized or swarm intelligence). Pretty amazing, frightening yet undoubtedly efficient. It would be really something to see in real life, the intermeshing of high speed vehicles, inches from each other, on separate trajectories! (I remember watching a video of Italian motorcycle cops performing such amazing feats of driving, however they were very choreographed and the drivers went only on very set patterns at constant speed).
Google+ is better technology, but by itself is worth a tiny fraction of what Facebook is.
Says who?
If Google+ actually was _GOOD_ people would use it.
I have had an account for quite some while, haven't checked it for months.
It's better such as Redhat 6 was better than Windows?
Dear stupid,
"Cost" is not the same as "price." If a person pays $310k for a Vertu Cobra, does that mean it costs $310k to make the phone?
xoxo, Anonymous
...to all the traditional slash-dotters I know?!? Do you people not do your research? If you paid attention to who it was and did a little, few minute research, you would find out that this is a global private company. They can do whatever the frak they want with their money. Before you start to go off on the "gov't," do some research to find out.
"If confusion is the first step to knowledge, I must be a genius." ~Larry Leissner
China has a ton of newly built ghost towns
No, but it costs that to BUY one. What investors supposedly do at IPO.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Government?
If Google+ actually was _GOOD_ people would use it.
No, because the utility of a social networking site is whether your friends/family/colleagues are on it. Us few people that tried it didn't last long, because few other people were there. It's a chicken and egg situation.
The technology only has to be good enough. And that's what Facebook is. Lots of things about it irritate people, but the size of personal networks there are enough to outweigh that.
The UI for Google+ is undoubtably better Facebook. But unless Facebook really screw up, they'll never reach the tipping point to become successful.
Seriously though, there has to be a more cost-effective method to do an experiment like this.
Yeah but this is the government (I suppose.)
If there's any money they will be spent.
(Here in my home town they like to redo the city squares for no obvious reason. I would say all three are pretty bad as is but one of them is truly catastrophic and one is just stupidly made and the last one unnecessary. ..)
They are already discussing redoing the catastrophic one again because the last design was so fucking retarded. I wonder if it's the same guys deciding what should be done. No good ideas but others money to spend
Catastropic one: ...) ..) and http://www.orebro.se/2488.html (picture two is the old one, with stairs to the left which people sat on, third is the new one with benches instead.)
The bad idea.
The result - (The skate area can't even be used because it's tilted
(Other two: http://www.orebro.se/4014.html (less cars, wide empty space and they have cut the trees a lot because they wanted to have less birds sitting in the highest ones so now they have birds in all of them instead and lots of branches growing straight up instead
... where are THEY getting their money from?
Just buy Detroit? Honest question...
one of those surplus cities the Chinese built that noone lives in ( or a condo community in Spain ) ? It would be cheaper.
Would be nice to have people move in who are willing to "Beta test" the city who are willing to live on the cutting edge at the risk that everything could fall to pieces at any time. Sounds like the place where most of Slashdot would want to live.
So they can do what they want with power/water, and not be sued by anyone for "mental distress". Because you know, that if they let people live there, and continue to play with the city, someone will become "hurt" or get pissed off and sue for something.
..........FULL STOP.
If Google+ actually was _GOOD_ people would use it.
No, because the utility of a social networking site is whether your friends/family/colleagues are on it.
FYI this is known as Metcalfe's Law: "the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system".
So they say, that they are going to spend $1bln to test automated toiled, or traffic lights without actual traffic? I am pretty sure one can create at least as good testing environment for any of this for the fraction of this money.
The whole story sounds bogus to me. It is more likely that it is a "Truman Show" set then, but still anyone is free to spend his spare $1bln the way one wants.
Exactly! And look what happened to Myspace (that was the last Facebook). This valuation is for something less stable than the price of tulips.
I think your logic is a bit strange, MySpace might be to Facebook what Altavista or Yahoo was to Google. Yes, the leadership changed rapidly for a while but then a victor emerged and continues to dominate the industry. Or MMORPGs and WoW for example. Yes, I know the dangers of anecdotal data but I see more and more people gravitating towards Facebook rather than away, they don't email they use Facebook messages. They don't use MSN, they use Facebook chat. They don't share photo albums on Flickr, they share them on Facebook. It's practically becoming another AOL, a little "Facebookverse" in itself. I mean it's not like social networking is going to go away, people will be somewhere. And right now I have a hard time seeing who'd snatch them away from Facebook after even Google has failed.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It's not a ghost town if it has never been occupied. This would be a sham city, like the sham Paris of World War I.
This looks like some kind of scam or hoax. There's a web site for the project, but it's all clip art. "Pegasus Global Holdings" is suspicious. The "Pegasus Global Holdings" behind this project is here. But there's also Pegasus-Global Holdings, with a dash. The one with a dash seems to be real. The one without the dash, the one behind this project, not so much.
Their "head office" is supposedly at 1875 "I" Street, NW, Suite 500 Washington, DC 20006. Many other companies have the same address, including a small law firm and a PR firm. It seems to be a mail drop of some kind. Their address in Reston, VA is a small furnished space currently for lease. Their "London office" is a is a "virtual office" package: "Executive Offices Group can provide a Virtual Office business address at any of our 34 highly sought after locations. "
"Pegasus Global Holdings" isn't listed in the SEC's EDGAR system, so they're not publicly held or doing anything big financially. They previously announced a "commercial spaceport" project; nothing came of that.
Our current deficit is a result of excessive military spending, insufficient taxes, and rampant tax expenditures and corporate welfare.
But hey, good idea, just because you owe money doesn't mean you cut all your expenses and starve your way to prosperity. Sometimes that doesn't pay off, like the guy who didn't replace his roof because he owed money.
Then it blew off, and since he didn't pay for insurance, he ended up losing his house.
It was actually to create a casino. With hookers. But somehow they forgot about the hookers and mangled the casino part badly.
Bradbury had this town written and burned before I was a Martian Wannabe.
But you just gotta have another sigarette
but then a victor emerged and continues to dominate the industry.
What victor? What industry? In something like social networks, the victor is whatever the current fad is, and companies constantly drop out of favor. Google (as a search engine) has an advantage of technology and infrastructure, and it's still far from being a permanent monopoly on search. Facebook has nothing but "momentum", and eventually will piss off the users so they will move on to something else.
There is a separate question, how come something as amorphous as marketing information gathering from random communications, became such a valuable product in the first place. It's likely overpriced now, and with increasing monopolization of all markets it can only lose value later.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Throwing money at something has diminishing returns. Anyway, if you keep throwing money at feeding the poor, soon you will have all of your eggs in one basket and the poor will keep reproducing to create more poor to feed. Eventually all of you money will be wasted and all you did was become an "enabler". Humanity as a whole would be no better off.
Anyway, if they can spend $1bil to test a "smart" city, which in turn saves $1tril with which say 10% goes to feeding the hungry, then you're better off.
It takes a special person to decide the real problem with design is too much user input. By all means, enjoy your city-of-things. But for the love, please don't bring any of it back to the real world until you run it by some humans.
The cost of the project goes to paying someone to install the toilet and manage the experiment. The money doesn't go down the toilet, it goes in their pockets. Then they spend it in the community, on food, housing, computer games, etc. That puts money in other people's pockets, who in turn spend it on other things, and so on. Even if the initial activity was in some sense useless, which this experiment isn't, the money goes on to pay for things that are useful. And all along the way, the government gets a slice of that increased economic activity in the form of taxes, which it can use to make payments on the debt.
Now, consider that the effective interest rate after inflation on US government debt is currently negative, meaning investors are paying the government to hold on to their money for a while. If investors thought that the US government was at risk of not being able to pay back its debts, like Greece, the interest rate would be sky high, but it isn't anywhere close. The problem right now is unemployment, not the debt. Employing construction workers and scientists to build grand experiments is as good a way as any to get people back to work.
Wish I had a billion dollars to piss away playing Sim City meets the Real World... what a colossal waste. They could automate it, let people move in, and get much better data, than they would have with "mimic" people. Then you'd have the advantages of real data, and help people who maybe have nowhere to live. Also, I don't see why you need to build a fake town to see if automatic toilets work. BTW... are there people who are so busy they don't have time to flush their toilets?
Really. This is clearly a smokescreen, no one would build such a city, spend that much money, without some, probably sinister ulterior motive. Remember that whole thing with the Titanic, where they were really recovering a nuclear sub or whatever, while pretending to be going after the Titanic? Like that.
Is it voluntary? Or did they taxpayer funded?
If it's government funded, one billion means they are spending the entire lifetime disposable income (i.e. everything but basic food and housing) of three thousand people, just to set it up. What benefits can this research have that will pay off more than that?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
In the ancient Chinese nation of Chu, during the reign of King Li, a man named Bian He discovered an incomparable piece of jade encased in a stone. When he presented the stone to King Li, the king did not believe it actually contained a piece of jade and ordered that Bian He have one of his legs cut off. When King Li died, and King Wu succeeded him, Bian He again presented the jade to the royal court; he was disbelieved a second time, and the King ordered his other leg cut off. When King Wu died, he was succeeded by King Wen; it was King Wen who finally believed Bian He and ordered that the stone be cut. Ultimately the stone was fashioned into a great jade disc, called the "jade disc of He" to honor its discoverer.
The jade was later stolen from Chu and sold to the state of Zhao. The King of Qin offered fifteen cities for the jade, giving rise to the Chinese idiom, "valued at multiple cities." Eventually the jade was surrendered to King Shi Huang of Qin, who became the first Emperor of China. Qin Shi Huang ordered the jade be cut down to create his imperial seal. The seal was lost about 1300 years later, but a thousand more years of imperial rule still followed.
The moral is that a) human beings with money make really stupid decisions b) even if you make a great discovery and serve loyally the king might still chop off your fucking legs.
The problem with google+ is it actually spews out more redundant crap than Facebook does. Facebook at least manages to hit the inner circle of my friends on a regular basis. Google+ on the other hand puts in posts from people I have no idea who is, informing me of crap I have no use for.
Oh dear. Users as a metric of profitability! I had not heard about that since the .com boom and bust.
Or MMORPGs and WoW for example.
WoW has been losing subscribers steadily for a while now.
I get the point you're making, but nothing lasts forever. If you really sit back and think about the internet as it was for us a decade ago it's mindblowing how far we've come. I mean, Myspace is a joke now, but 10 years ago they didn't even exist. How long has it been since Myspace has been relevant? 4 years? 5? From nothing to the juggernaut they became in the mid-00's to nothing again. Facebook is going to suffer the same fate, and I'm betting it's not going to be nearly as far off as we think. If you told someone in 2005 that Myspace was going to end up the shadow of it's formal self it is today, most people probably would have thought you were out of your mind, yet just 3 years later everyone and their sister was on that newfangled Facebook, their Myspace pages abandoned long before. For all we know, Facebook could be just as irrelevant in 2015.
It's funny, but as we keep hearing these stories about how large Facebook is becoming, in my own personal life, I know more and more people that are eschewing it completely because it's become just as cluttered up with bullshit and fake "friends" as their Myspace pages were before they just stopped logging in. It's funny, but rather than unfriending people, they just abandon their accounts completely. I actually know people that are on their 2nd or 3rd account, having abandoned the old ones so they could create new ones and friend the people they actually want to be social with without worrying about the hurt feelings of dozens of "friends". Or so I'm told, anyway...I abandoned my own Facebook account long ago.
I'm really curious as to how many unique, regular users (regular meaning people that log in at least every couple days) they actually have. Obviously nobody on the outside would ever know, but I wouldn't be surprised if 1/3 of their 'users' are inactive accounts that haven't been touched in ages...
Now, consider that the effective interest rate after inflation on US government debt is currently negative, meaning investors are paying the government to hold on to their money for a while.
Except that for the last couple of years the biggest purchaser of US government debt has been the Federal Reserve, which buys the government debt with money that didn't exist until they used it to buy the T-bills.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The UI of both is pretty bad.
Google+ UI is better.
That you can't choose which group you view messages from is a flaw.
Putting my same friend in various groups of mine and sending him messages through one of them doesn't help us communicate on a specific subject.
But then there's Google Groups of course.
Google+ UI is better ... Kinda like saying water is wet, of course anything is better than Facebook UI. I already sad that some other time and got moderated down. Must have been wrong ..
Maybe a private message system and actually "tuning in" and listening to your groups when you wanted would had helped.
But I guess that would had been to good.
And they have Gmail and Groups for that.
So twitter-picasa-spam-share it is ;D
They lie. This is a cover-up for the real life Truman Show. :)
I hear Russia has an empty city that could perform this task. Chernobyl I think its called....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Is there an opera in it? A hospital? I wouldn't call it fully OPERATING, otherwise.
This really sounds fishy. Is it a case of "if you build it they will come". Someone's "great" idea that All these scientists will rush to use once it's available?
Testing like this usually gets done in small countries with modern infrastructure. New Zealand has been used to test a lot of new tech, e.g. eftpos was commonplace and used everywhere while it was still uncommon overseas.
If this is a real project wouldn't it be better to take a small city and pretty much buy it and have it populated with real people.
I'm thinking a town like Eureka, with really modern tech and robots and shit.
Aren't students those people you get when real people are too expensive, or unwilling to cooperate?
And Eureka is in it's final season. Coincidence? I think not!
Aaaah yes. They spend 1 BILLION dollars to enable tests like "intelligent traffic systems" or "self-flushing toilets".
Certainly. Of course.
And it has absolute NOTHING to do with training combat of, say, military people in a city, defending the state against the citizens. Nothing about rising water or sinking fuel amounts or anything like that.
Nothing new hare, move along.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
need to stimulate the building industry?
Build more houses, but don't let anybody live there.
And do it in a state where the jobs will help with the election.
It seems like if we are going to do work projects,
They should be rated according to their their cost versus the lasting, positive good for everybody.
Highways, bridges, dams, and grid in useful places seem high on the list.
Wars that destory things and make enemies, not so much.
Welfare (and I'm beginning to think student loans and bailouts of X) seem pretty low.
CCC trail shelters, going to the moon in the 60's, and the super colider, seem in the middle.
This seems about in line with the bridge to nowhere, which is at least, not on the bottom of the list.
The sad thing is that they could soooo much better.
what does it tell us about economy when a service that can be replicated in about a year by any competent team of developers
And a few hundred million users switching over. Facebook wasn't valued at its current levels when it didn't have the customers.
with the immense problems the USA has with poverty and homelessness (problems the GOP in particular wishes to ignore), spending a billion dollars on a city no one will live in is a good idea? I think not. This project has waste, boondoggle and white elephant all over it. This makes the GSA scandal look like efficiency in comparison. I think we all, as a Democrat, have every right to make sure that government money is actually being spent properly such as to help the poor. And thats what Democrats are really all about, the GOP spends trillion dollars on wars and ghost towns and then attacks the truly beneficial things like Medicare and Social security, then after filling the govenrment with corruption, the GOP uses the corruption they created as an further attack on all of the positive things that government does such as to provide a life saving safety net for the poor.
They could test all these technologies and models in real world conditions and cheaper by offering to pay all the selected municipalities taxes received from property taxes so constituents could save that money. Most people would be more than happy to not pay property taxes. This also has the potential of leaving behind an infrastructure better than what the community currently has. A win-win-win scenario.
More info: Robert Brumley, the CEO, is a lawyer and ex-Marine, and held various political-lawyer type jobs in the Reagan Administration. He was CEO of TerreStar, a satellite company, from 2005 to 2008. (TerreStar went bust in 2010, but that may not have been his fault.) His company, Pegasus Global LLC, has one (1) employee, him, according to Dun and Bradstreet.
This skeptical Santa Fe, New Mexico newspaper article from last October is probably the best one on the subject.
Sounds like a front for the Umbrella Corporation to me. Be very concerned when they start discussing pharmaceuticals here...
Just another ignorant American.
I'm really curious as to how many unique, regular users (regular meaning people that log in at least every couple days) they actually have. Obviously nobody on the outside would ever know, but I wouldn't be surprised if 1/3 of their 'users' are inactive accounts that haven't been touched in ages...
Oh I'm thinking less than that, but the only two groups I'm hearing from are those on Facebook and those not on Facebook or anything else. That still doesn't sound like a bad position for them to be in...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
will it have nonexistent homeless people?
Instead of investing this into a city like Detroit to bring it back to full swing and full economic promise, where there are already plenty of skyscrapers and etc,etc....
I see this move as a waste of tax payer dollars that could be used to help the people not the government contractors trying to stuff their pockets full of government money!
It would be way cheaper to build Rock Ridge... and you get twice the comedy value for it!
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
So go break some windows to drum up the economic activity of your home town.
I think this could lead to valuable research, but to say that dumping a billion dollars into a do-nothing project is useful in and of itself is a fallacy.