Comments on: Transmobility: The City as a Networked Resource

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 10:13:19 +0000

Steve I reckon your points are sound and illuminating…

I’d say that surplus vehicles are pulled over and made to wait all the time. Ever been at a red light?

And there are some macro-manipulators: London employs people to watch intersection on closed-circuit TV and manually change the lights. It can’t be long before they are replaced by something much cheaper and infintely more effective.

And my iphone can tell me where the traffic is so I choose alternate routes.

This information metaphor is intriguing. I’m going to go and read those links…

By: Brent

Brent — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 05:46:37 +0000

Looks like you may have to do a little trademark infringement enforcement:

http://www.ecovelo.info/2010/06/17/cloud-commuting/

By: Peter Smith

Peter Smith — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 23:17:37 +0000

So if you turn down a street and you find out that it’s really not that interesting, you really haven’t made that great [an] investment in time

this is true when you are not stuck on a one-way street, or a street with a raised median.

Zipcar founder, Robin Chase, often talks about the networking of cars and car infrastructure.

And the Natural Capitalism folks contributed to the idea that we’ll be buying/renting services more than products in the future.

By: AG

AG — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:06:24 +0000

You’re being a little over-literal, Steve. ; . )

By: SteveL

SteveL — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:03:32 +0000

Computing networks are very different from city streets. A key one: you can drop network packets to deal with congestion, something that isn’t legal in most of the world. You can’t pull over surplus vehicles and make them wait a bit, except on freeway on-ramps. The other difference is that real-world vehicles are sentient but non-rational entities (people) who make decisions for their own good (run lights etc) or due to mistaken beliefs (choose to drive), whereas “dumb” packets go where they are told.

What computer networks do really well is propagate congestion (look up Border Gateway Protocol) and other routing information, so the routers make the decisions as to where packets go. The higher level of management tools tend to sample a subset of packets and use that -including their origin and destination data- to understand where things really are coming from and going to. Out there in the city, we don’t have that info.

By: Brent

Brent — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:19:39 +0000

Bicycles are wonderful. But the glory of cycling is not the bicycle. The glory of cycling is the infrastructure on which the bicycle can be used.

By: AG

AG — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:27:27 +0000

Hey Tom -

Glad you dug the piece! I thought you might be interested to know that I actually explored issues around transmobility at a fair degree of length here, here and here.

Do bear in mind that I’m coming at these questions from a not-particularly-grounded place — which is to say that I’m aware that my “contribution” might be little better than noise. I do, however, think there are the nubs of some good ideas in there.

FWIW, as well, my thoughts about Bill Mitchell can be found here.