it it's pretty absurd everyone owns a car to use it for maybe an hour a day,
But there really isn't much alternative when for most people that hour is at the same times.
My car would get a lot more use if it could drive itself home after my husband is at work, or even if I could just sit in the car and do something else (other than driving) while dropping my husband off. But I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing... I would drive more and walk less.
A lot of those would be employed making and maintaining the systems that ensure people only get the correct pizza out of the car (perhaps pizza delivery robots).
as they get frustrated at being caught behind cars driving the speed limit.
But if everyone has self-driving cars a lot of that frustration will be eliminated. The frustration comes from the fact that you can't do anything in that situation but look at the back of the car in front of you. If we could safely talk on our phones, watch a movie on our phones, knit, etc. etc. commute time would become luxury time and we'd be a lot less frustrated that it had to be extended.
I wonder how we ever managed to survive before electric light...
We had horses that could smell and hear things like deer that were about to run into the road, and we paid more attention to our surroundings - which we were able to do because the horse and buggy were going about 5 mph rather than 60.
I don't know about the Netherlands, but I know that here people have a difficult enough time avoiding hitting animals during a clear, sunny DAY. I've seen many people fail.
If you love your job, there's nothing wrong with that. You're getting leisure and work within the same hour, maybe even at the same time. I currently do this actually, and it's great.
Of course, if you don't like your job and find that this makes you feel that you can never get away from it, you could just schedule yourself some work times and keep your leisure activities separate. (Or you could get a job you love, I suppose.) No one would be FORCED to bike to the park to work.
I do suppose though that schools would have to be changed first, and give kids more freedom so that they can learn to self-regulate concentration, time-management etc. rather than relying on the association that being in this place = it's time to work. There are already a few schools and homeschooling methods that do this...
I never water my lawn, and never wash my car at home. But my household uses quite a bit more water in the summer, because we have 6 people taking more showers (more outside activities and hotter temperatures = more getting dirty and sweating) and get thirsty more often! And I'm actually a lot more likely to wash my car in the winter, to get the salt off...
I got rid of cable tv years ago. I can't give comcast any less money - DSL (which would be too slow to fit my family's needs) isn't even an option without a re-wire of my house. Got any other ideas?
Some businesses need a certain staff level in order to operate. So, maybe close down when staff level are too low because too many people are off sitting in the park. But how are customers supposed to know when the business is open, if people come and go as they please?
Well, what kind of businesses are we talking about? Usually, the people sitting at desks all day are not the same people that are dealing with customers daily. A store, for example, needs a certain amount of cashiers there to operate - OR, a certain number of active self-checkout lanes (replacing hourly jobs with computers). It does not need the guy that programs the self-checkout lanes in an office from 9-5. He can debug the latest self-checkout update at the park.
On the occasions that such people do need to meet with customers, they schedule a meeting. Just the same as is done now. This may mean the person works outside of their "normal" working hours for that one day, but it's not every day.
What about consulting with co-workers? If you work the morning, and they work the evening....
You can live in different time zones so that it's morning where you are and evening where they are, and you consult via online video chat. Or, you'd consult once a week in the afternoon.
What about dealing with other companies? It might be nice to work second-shift, but if you need to call another company, and they are only open 9-5, you're out of luck.
Well the idea would be that there are no "shifts." If you need to call another company, then that day, you work for a little while when it's 9 - 5 where they are. You may need to sit for the duration of the call, but since you don't have to do it every day, it's fine.
And quite honestly I have found the 9 - 5 thing nothing but a pain when you need to call other companies. The other company wants you to call at 1, after lunch for them - but it's 4 for you, so you'd better be able to fit that conversation into an hour. And if you're dealing with a company in Hawaii or in another country, you're working outside of 9 - 5 anyway. The 9 - 5 thing is a holdover from when business was mostly done locally. Now that it's done worldwide, 9 - 5 doesn't work so well anymore.
Kids ENTERING nursery school may not have been exposed to building blocks at home. Not because parents are getting them an ipad INSTEAD but because just not every household has blocks. I didn't have building blocks at home when I was a toddler. I didn't have an ipad either, as the ipad was released more than 20 years after I entered school.
You can't expect a kid to be able to use something the first time they encounter it. But of course they can use a tablet if they have already figured out how to use it or something similar. Could you use a bandsaw the first time you entered a hardware store or shop class? Was your lack of ability to do that based on the fact that you used a computer?
And of course once kids know there is something fun they could be doing it's hard to keep them sitting down doing something boring instead. It's like letting someone have sex for the first time and then saying "Now you have to sit here and listen to church sermons all day instead of having sex. Sex is still out there, but you can't do it." and then being surprised when the person would rather be having sex than sitting there listening to church sermons.
Nursery school and kindergarden use to mean playing for most of the day. Even elementary school students use to get a few hours a day to play. Now we force toddlers to sit inside all day, force kindergarteners to sit still all day in school and then do homework at home. We replace recess with cramming for standardized tests. The problem is not technology, it is lack of letting kids run around and be kids for a few hours every day. Even adults that are forced to work constantly get irritability and lack of control - why are we expecting kids to be any different? Why are we expecting kids to instinctively know how to play with things just because we already learned to play with them? This just in: kids are humans.
Having been homeless before, I saw that there are multiple types of homeless people;
There are the type that are thought of when you think of "homeless people" - the panhandlers, the bagladies, the "hobos." Either they choose to live this way, or their mental or addiction problems are so severe that they can not get out of it.
Then there are the ones you would never know are homeless. They are clean, and averagely or well dressed. They are either trying to get out of homelessness, or they truly prefer to not pay bills and a mortgage and such... or they have an addiction which forces them to spend their bill money on drugs, but it's under control just enough that they keep themselves looking good and able to do their job.
I would not presume which type of homeless person someone is just by looking at them.
Whatever type they are, though, they have to deal with people. Pretty much constantly. It's essential to survival; finding where you can eat and sleep each day, ensuring another homeless person isn't going to stab you, etc. You have to be friendly with other homeless people, the cops, and people at businesses around you.
Though yes they are free from paying most bills, and (some are) free from the rat race, and there IS some joy in that... the grass is always greener and all that. Having lived both ways I will say I certainly would not have wanted to be searching for a shelter with an open bed in the -40 degree weather we had this winter. And I much prefer stressing about bills to stressing about if I'm going to eat today.
The people that are homeless because they just prefer to not pay bills are definitely the minority. It's much more comfortable to get/build a house and live off-grid, where you'd have the added bonus of not needing to deal with people if you choose. If you want the freedom of being a vagabond, it's much more comfortable to get an RV than to be homeless. I would say that the majority of people that refuse to go back to the normals, do so because they prefer doing drugs to being normal. And there's nothing wrong with that imo (as long as they aren't stealing, robbing etc. to get those drugs); I'm not going to judge nor try to stop them from choosing that, so why judge me for looking at my phone instead of them?
(Anyway, the ones that truly want/need help aren't going to ask ME for it if I'd just look away from my phone. They need long-term help, not the short term help of me giving them a few bucks. So there isn't much I can do for them, except maybe use my phone to google some resources for them. They probably know where the nearest library is and can google it themselves, anyway.)
Yep. The problem is the "work day" not the desks. It doesn't matter if you spend those hours sitting, standing, or switching between sitting and standing because you're going to be sitting or standing at the same desk, in a similar position (or in two positions) all day every day. .
I think we need to let go of the idea that jobs must be done from 9 - 5. Let people telecommute and get their work done whenever is best for them. A person can go biking, then sit in a park and do work one day; take a walk to starbucks and work from there the next; then spend the day playing with their kids and do their work at night, sitting in their bed. I don't understand why, despite the fact that technology makes this possible (and the fact that most hourly jobs can now be replaced with computers and/or machines, or are outsourced) we switched to treating salaried jobs the same as hourly jobs, where you get paid because you are there at your designated time rather than because you get your work done.
Being in the same room is not the same as being sociable. Sociable is "willing to talk and engage in activities with other people; friendly." You can certainly get laid without ever talking to someone in person. Texting and facebook messaging make it so much easier than it was in my day...
The norm is formula made from cow's milk. The cows are eating GMO too. Things are passed via cow's breastmilk just the same as it is passed via human's breastmilk. Therefore I would expect no difference between formula-fed and human-breastmilk-fed babies. I added that bit about soy formula just to point out that there are pretty much no babies in the US that are not getting GMO in some form.
And I'd note that being good at math is not a prerequisite for being good with electronics.
I'm not that great at math, and in person I'm probably one of the most awkward, unsociable people in the world. But I'm great with electronics and I managed to pass on my genes.
I was using giving a speech as an analogy. Society is moving away from face-to-face conversation. I probably have face-to-face conversations with people other than my husband and kids 1 day out of the week. I could choose to not have a husband and kids. I could chose to do all my shopping online, not do some of the activities I choose to do, and live a life where I could - happily - never talk to people and feel those feelings.
In a society where there is no talking to people, how you feel when talking to people is irrelevant.
Mothers and cows (that give milk used to make formula) are both eating GM foods. I'm pretty sure soy formula is made using GMO soy as well. So if GMO food is causing autism I expect there would be little difference between formula fed and breastfed babies.
He does. Before he moves out he uses a computer his parents bought for him, to buy the phone. Or the parents give him the phone. He then pays for the food and rent via a work-from-home job that requires little/no human interaction. Maybe programming apps to help people like himself. Maybe he needs some help marketing them, maybe his parents or a sibling or someone he's never met does that part.
Sure, he can't live on his own if he's just thrown out into the world right after he's born. But NO ONE CAN. EVERYONE has to be helped out and handed things by their parents and/or society to start out. But once the correct tools are given, they can live on their own. For some people, the right tools are as simple public schooling and directions to the employment office. Some people also need a wheelchair. Some people need different tools entirely.
What 3 year old do you know that played a video game alone in their room?
Myself, for one. But I was already going to school at 3. Though yes, I was considered weird because it wasn't common for kids to play video games alone in their rooms then. We had little common ground; I didn't give a crap about what they liked, and they had no idea about the stuff I liked. However, once the people around me started gaming too (video games began to become part of mainstream culture, no longer just for the nerds when I was in middle school) it increased my social interaction - for once, I liked some of the same things they did. Now, my kids play a lot of video games, but they can (and do) also go outside and find a random person and talk about those games.
But I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't been alone in my room playing video games, it would have been books instead, or dismantling clocks, or etc. It wasn't the being alone in my room playing video games that made me weird. There were nerds long before there were iPhones, home pcs, and TVs.
In a world where no one stands on stage to give speeches anymore, feeling that way while standing on stage becomes irrelevant, and the intelligence boost becomes worth it...
Actually now that I think about it, I don't think that it has ever been the case that beyond highschool a person needs to be sociable and un-awkward to pass on their genes. The internet and the increase of geek/nerd conventions and gatherings has just made it a whole lot easier. Perhaps the increase in Autism is linked to the increase in the ease of unsociable, awkward people spreading their genes.
Slashdot Mirror
it it's pretty absurd everyone owns a car to use it for maybe an hour a day,
But there really isn't much alternative when for most people that hour is at the same times.
My car would get a lot more use if it could drive itself home after my husband is at work, or even if I could just sit in the car and do something else (other than driving) while dropping my husband off. But I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing... I would drive more and walk less.
A lot of those would be employed making and maintaining the systems that ensure people only get the correct pizza out of the car (perhaps pizza delivery robots).
as they get frustrated at being caught behind cars driving the speed limit.
But if everyone has self-driving cars a lot of that frustration will be eliminated. The frustration comes from the fact that you can't do anything in that situation but look at the back of the car in front of you. If we could safely talk on our phones, watch a movie on our phones, knit, etc. etc. commute time would become luxury time and we'd be a lot less frustrated that it had to be extended.
So put the criminals in prison and force them to do jobs that are productive to society (while in prison).
Marketing can turn shit into iShit
Also, an animal is more likely to see YOU and not run in front of the car.
I wonder how we ever managed to survive before electric light...
We had horses that could smell and hear things like deer that were about to run into the road, and we paid more attention to our surroundings - which we were able to do because the horse and buggy were going about 5 mph rather than 60.
I don't know about the Netherlands, but I know that here people have a difficult enough time avoiding hitting animals during a clear, sunny DAY. I've seen many people fail.
If you love your job, there's nothing wrong with that. You're getting leisure and work within the same hour, maybe even at the same time. I currently do this actually, and it's great.
Of course, if you don't like your job and find that this makes you feel that you can never get away from it, you could just schedule yourself some work times and keep your leisure activities separate. (Or you could get a job you love, I suppose.) No one would be FORCED to bike to the park to work.
I do suppose though that schools would have to be changed first, and give kids more freedom so that they can learn to self-regulate concentration, time-management etc. rather than relying on the association that being in this place = it's time to work. There are already a few schools and homeschooling methods that do this...
I never water my lawn, and never wash my car at home. But my household uses quite a bit more water in the summer, because we have 6 people taking more showers (more outside activities and hotter temperatures = more getting dirty and sweating) and get thirsty more often! And I'm actually a lot more likely to wash my car in the winter, to get the salt off...
I got rid of cable tv years ago. I can't give comcast any less money - DSL (which would be too slow to fit my family's needs) isn't even an option without a re-wire of my house. Got any other ideas?
Some businesses need a certain staff level in order to operate. So, maybe close down when staff level are too low because too many people are off sitting in the park. But how are customers supposed to know when the business is open, if people come and go as they please?
Well, what kind of businesses are we talking about? Usually, the people sitting at desks all day are not the same people that are dealing with customers daily. A store, for example, needs a certain amount of cashiers there to operate - OR, a certain number of active self-checkout lanes (replacing hourly jobs with computers). It does not need the guy that programs the self-checkout lanes in an office from 9-5. He can debug the latest self-checkout update at the park.
On the occasions that such people do need to meet with customers, they schedule a meeting. Just the same as is done now. This may mean the person works outside of their "normal" working hours for that one day, but it's not every day.
What about consulting with co-workers? If you work the morning, and they work the evening....
You can live in different time zones so that it's morning where you are and evening where they are, and you consult via online video chat. Or, you'd consult once a week in the afternoon.
What about dealing with other companies? It might be nice to work second-shift, but if you need to call another company, and they are only open 9-5, you're out of luck.
Well the idea would be that there are no "shifts." If you need to call another company, then that day, you work for a little while when it's 9 - 5 where they are. You may need to sit for the duration of the call, but since you don't have to do it every day, it's fine.
And quite honestly I have found the 9 - 5 thing nothing but a pain when you need to call other companies. The other company wants you to call at 1, after lunch for them - but it's 4 for you, so you'd better be able to fit that conversation into an hour. And if you're dealing with a company in Hawaii or in another country, you're working outside of 9 - 5 anyway. The 9 - 5 thing is a holdover from when business was mostly done locally. Now that it's done worldwide, 9 - 5 doesn't work so well anymore.
Kids ENTERING nursery school may not have been exposed to building blocks at home. Not because parents are getting them an ipad INSTEAD but because just not every household has blocks. I didn't have building blocks at home when I was a toddler. I didn't have an ipad either, as the ipad was released more than 20 years after I entered school.
You can't expect a kid to be able to use something the first time they encounter it. But of course they can use a tablet if they have already figured out how to use it or something similar. Could you use a bandsaw the first time you entered a hardware store or shop class? Was your lack of ability to do that based on the fact that you used a computer?
And of course once kids know there is something fun they could be doing it's hard to keep them sitting down doing something boring instead. It's like letting someone have sex for the first time and then saying "Now you have to sit here and listen to church sermons all day instead of having sex. Sex is still out there, but you can't do it." and then being surprised when the person would rather be having sex than sitting there listening to church sermons.
Nursery school and kindergarden use to mean playing for most of the day. Even elementary school students use to get a few hours a day to play. Now we force toddlers to sit inside all day, force kindergarteners to sit still all day in school and then do homework at home. We replace recess with cramming for standardized tests. The problem is not technology, it is lack of letting kids run around and be kids for a few hours every day. Even adults that are forced to work constantly get irritability and lack of control - why are we expecting kids to be any different? Why are we expecting kids to instinctively know how to play with things just because we already learned to play with them? This just in: kids are humans.
Having been homeless before, I saw that there are multiple types of homeless people;
There are the type that are thought of when you think of "homeless people" - the panhandlers, the bagladies, the "hobos." Either they choose to live this way, or their mental or addiction problems are so severe that they can not get out of it.
Then there are the ones you would never know are homeless. They are clean, and averagely or well dressed. They are either trying to get out of homelessness, or they truly prefer to not pay bills and a mortgage and such... or they have an addiction which forces them to spend their bill money on drugs, but it's under control just enough that they keep themselves looking good and able to do their job.
I would not presume which type of homeless person someone is just by looking at them.
Whatever type they are, though, they have to deal with people. Pretty much constantly. It's essential to survival; finding where you can eat and sleep each day, ensuring another homeless person isn't going to stab you, etc. You have to be friendly with other homeless people, the cops, and people at businesses around you.
Though yes they are free from paying most bills, and (some are) free from the rat race, and there IS some joy in that... the grass is always greener and all that. Having lived both ways I will say I certainly would not have wanted to be searching for a shelter with an open bed in the -40 degree weather we had this winter. And I much prefer stressing about bills to stressing about if I'm going to eat today.
The people that are homeless because they just prefer to not pay bills are definitely the minority. It's much more comfortable to get/build a house and live off-grid, where you'd have the added bonus of not needing to deal with people if you choose. If you want the freedom of being a vagabond, it's much more comfortable to get an RV than to be homeless. I would say that the majority of people that refuse to go back to the normals, do so because they prefer doing drugs to being normal. And there's nothing wrong with that imo (as long as they aren't stealing, robbing etc. to get those drugs); I'm not going to judge nor try to stop them from choosing that, so why judge me for looking at my phone instead of them?
(Anyway, the ones that truly want/need help aren't going to ask ME for it if I'd just look away from my phone. They need long-term help, not the short term help of me giving them a few bucks. So there isn't much I can do for them, except maybe use my phone to google some resources for them. They probably know where the nearest library is and can google it themselves, anyway.)
Yep. The problem is the "work day" not the desks. It doesn't matter if you spend those hours sitting, standing, or switching between sitting and standing because you're going to be sitting or standing at the same desk, in a similar position (or in two positions) all day every day. .
I think we need to let go of the idea that jobs must be done from 9 - 5. Let people telecommute and get their work done whenever is best for them. A person can go biking, then sit in a park and do work one day; take a walk to starbucks and work from there the next; then spend the day playing with their kids and do their work at night, sitting in their bed. I don't understand why, despite the fact that technology makes this possible (and the fact that most hourly jobs can now be replaced with computers and/or machines, or are outsourced) we switched to treating salaried jobs the same as hourly jobs, where you get paid because you are there at your designated time rather than because you get your work done.
Everyone over 40 to ensure they are capable of using the cameras
It could have all been different with one strategically placed "h"...
Being in the same room is not the same as being sociable. Sociable is "willing to talk and engage in activities with other people; friendly." You can certainly get laid without ever talking to someone in person. Texting and facebook messaging make it so much easier than it was in my day...
The norm is formula made from cow's milk. The cows are eating GMO too. Things are passed via cow's breastmilk just the same as it is passed via human's breastmilk. Therefore I would expect no difference between formula-fed and human-breastmilk-fed babies. I added that bit about soy formula just to point out that there are pretty much no babies in the US that are not getting GMO in some form.
And I'd note that being good at math is not a prerequisite for being good with electronics.
I'm not that great at math, and in person I'm probably one of the most awkward, unsociable people in the world. But I'm great with electronics and I managed to pass on my genes.
I was using giving a speech as an analogy. Society is moving away from face-to-face conversation. I probably have face-to-face conversations with people other than my husband and kids 1 day out of the week. I could choose to not have a husband and kids. I could chose to do all my shopping online, not do some of the activities I choose to do, and live a life where I could - happily - never talk to people and feel those feelings.
In a society where there is no talking to people, how you feel when talking to people is irrelevant.
Mothers and cows (that give milk used to make formula) are both eating GM foods. I'm pretty sure soy formula is made using GMO soy as well. So if GMO food is causing autism I expect there would be little difference between formula fed and breastfed babies.
Who buys the phone and installs the app?
He does. Before he moves out he uses a computer his parents bought for him, to buy the phone. Or the parents give him the phone. He then pays for the food and rent via a work-from-home job that requires little/no human interaction. Maybe programming apps to help people like himself. Maybe he needs some help marketing them, maybe his parents or a sibling or someone he's never met does that part.
Sure, he can't live on his own if he's just thrown out into the world right after he's born. But NO ONE CAN. EVERYONE has to be helped out and handed things by their parents and/or society to start out. But once the correct tools are given, they can live on their own. For some people, the right tools are as simple public schooling and directions to the employment office. Some people also need a wheelchair. Some people need different tools entirely.
What 3 year old do you know that played a video game alone in their room?
Myself, for one. But I was already going to school at 3. Though yes, I was considered weird because it wasn't common for kids to play video games alone in their rooms then. We had little common ground; I didn't give a crap about what they liked, and they had no idea about the stuff I liked. However, once the people around me started gaming too (video games began to become part of mainstream culture, no longer just for the nerds when I was in middle school) it increased my social interaction - for once, I liked some of the same things they did. Now, my kids play a lot of video games, but they can (and do) also go outside and find a random person and talk about those games.
But I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't been alone in my room playing video games, it would have been books instead, or dismantling clocks, or etc. It wasn't the being alone in my room playing video games that made me weird. There were nerds long before there were iPhones, home pcs, and TVs.
In a world where no one stands on stage to give speeches anymore, feeling that way while standing on stage becomes irrelevant, and the intelligence boost becomes worth it...
Actually now that I think about it, I don't think that it has ever been the case that beyond highschool a person needs to be sociable and un-awkward to pass on their genes. The internet and the increase of geek/nerd conventions and gatherings has just made it a whole lot easier. Perhaps the increase in Autism is linked to the increase in the ease of unsociable, awkward people spreading their genes.