This is from The Economist (March 13, 2004, Leaders: The vision thing) ... "Visionaries get things wrong because they concentrate too much on the technology, and fail to take into account the way it is shaped by social forces as it spreads."
The article goes on to mention that often the most successful innovations, e.g. the internet, succeed because their inventors ...
"made no assumptions at all about the ways in which it might be used, and so placed very few constraints on its development."
There's a great presentation on how we should be thinking about future energy supply in urban and transport planning called "Ten Principles of Post Oil-Peak Planning" (this link downloads a pdf file of the presentation). It's by Tim Moerman from the Greater Moncton Planning District Commission (Canada). I saw it on Planetizen, an extremely useful website for planners.
One of the things I appreciated about Moerman's presentation is that while the conclusions are very serious, the presentation is well reasoned and not a tirade. The main message is that an oil shortage is coming (we'll either gradually run out of oil or there will be a sudden disruption caused by, for example, war), there are not many good alternatives for oil, and that we should be planning for our future lack of oil right now.
It's really a fine presentation.
I like to exercise in the morning before going to work. But here in Switzerland the health club we belong to does not open until 8 am. In San Francisco they all seemed to open at 5:30 - if they were not open 24-hours. But it is nice, I share the gym with people over 65! The best part is that the gym has musak - often rap or hip-hop - and I am sure the retirees would die if they knew what the words meant.
One of the funny things about living in Switzerland is that people speak a very strong dialect of German, actually, several very strong dialects of German. Almost every valley seems to have its own particular version. The German we learn in school is High German, and so sometimes people here mistake me for being from Germany - which makes my German friends really laugh ... they say I speak with a Swiss accent!
Walking by a store in Zurich today I noticed that you can buy a doormat designed to look like a Swiss flag. It made me think, I wonder if some self-righteous politician would sponsor a Constitutional Amendment that made it a crime to do the same with the US flag? Of course Bush and Co. have created a situation where we are, in fact, the doormat for the world.
It seems to me that one of the biggest problems we have as people is our inability to change and that helping people change is a key role for government. Some examples: totally portable retirement plans, totally portable health plans (the real advantage of National health care is not that it's national, but that it's portable), and unemployment insurance that helps people change to new jobs rather than sticking with the old ones (for example helping farmers shift from growing coffee to more lucrative professions - and not just farming!). Instead many government programs make it harder to change - exactly the wrong response. See Tim Harford's "The Undercover Economist" (great book!) for more about the economics of fair trade coffee and this week's issue of The Economist for their thoughts on "Why ethical shopping harms the world."
My wife was amazed to learn that I went to dancing school for five years when I was growing up in Buffalo New York. We were required to wear white gloves so as "Not to soil the young ladies' party dresses." In some ways it was torture, but maybe that helped prepare us for real life as much as the manners instruction that was part of every class. Also, Mrs. Driscoll hired a great combo to play the music, dressed in tuxedos ... all the great jazz tunes like "Take the A Train" and "Satin Doll" are etched somewhere in my unconscious. I was reminded of dancing school when I heard the Wang Chung song Dance Hall Days recently.
