Comment by YossarianFrPrez | Hacker News Reader

Comment by YossarianFrPrez | Hacker News Reader

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YossarianFrPrez

I don't know about "big" in terms of a viral hit, but in terms of what will change in our day-to-day experience... Here are some wild guesses, mostly along the theme of a societal conversation about and re-thinking of "sustainability" on nearly all levels.

* Robotic carts that follow you around when shopping in dense, pedestrian oriented areas and/or stores. Might go hand in hand with the rapid normalization of e-bikes.

* An increase in eco-villages, apartment buildings with permacultured gardens growing their own food, etc.

* Some sort of push for groves of large trees in urban areas to provide shade, possibly in roundabouts, to reduce the heat-island effect.

* Somewhat decentralized water cisterns and filtration on a municipal level. Possibly including creating small holes in the bottom of drainage infrastructure to re-charge the groundwater.

* Constructing new clothes out of semi-recycled fabric cut out of items that would be thrown away?

* Short-hop electric plane taxi things.

* Energy generating windows ("transparent solar panels") and fabrics.

* The wide-spread use of plastic-alternatives: fully compostable packaging made out of mushrooms, etc.

The NSF SBIR funded projects page is a cool source for this sort of prediction.

Also:

* Much better voice interfaces. At some point in the next 10 years, it will be common to have primarily voice-controlled computer applications. There might be a huge role for this to play in hospitals.

> Some sort of push for groves of large trees in urban areas to provide shade, possibly in roundabouts, to reduce the heat-island effect.

It shocks me how slow municipalities are to adopt this. How many sidewalks and paths in hot sunny climates have zero shade. And it is so cheap!

Also, how about how many kids playgrounds, or school yards have zero shade?

Especially given that the time to plant the trees is now rather than when they are really going to be needed. There is likely a way to do it / provide shade with native plants too, that would require less up-keep...

> Much better voice interfaces. At some point in the next 10 years, it will be common to have primarily voice-controlled computer applications. There might be a huge role for this to play in hospitals.

Doctor: "Quickly! Give patient 100 milligrams of epinephrine!"

Computer: "Giving patient 400 milligrams of epinephrine. Say 'yes' to confirm"

Doctor: "No. 100."

Computer: "Patient received 400 milligrams"

I would take a bet on if the nurse is more accurate than the voice command in emergency situations especially if they are not both native speakers

Hahaha. I was thinking much more in terms of keeping track of records, decisions, and scribing.

I was just in the hospital and the nurses all wore a neat voice-activated paging system so they could call each other totally hands-free.

Computer: “unrecognised unit milligram, applying 400 ounces”.

> Robotic carts that follow you around when shopping in dense, pedestrian oriented areas and/or stores.

I'm now imagining these following you around like The Luggage follows Rincewind around.

And they are going to be as angry as luggage. This is how the rise of the machines begins.

I'm imagining a robotic cart trying to deal with a kerb.

>apartment buildings with permacultured gardens growing their own food

This has been tried (and proved wrong) countless times. The issue is that it needs a huge footprint, and space is something you don't have at large in apartment buildings.

Thought it was more to have a pleasant place to hang out and the odd fresh tomato, etc.. I hope nobody seriously thinks you can feed an apartment building from the roof.

Most estimates say if you want to do permaculture/homestead living and provide your own calories you need a good acre per person and a taste for sweet potatoes...

Good point. I would guess that if electric bikes and other mobility options come online, maybe there will be less need for parking lots to be as large as they are now?

Even if apartment buildings are too dense, I still think we will see an increase in eco-village type arrangements.

Yes, definitely. The farm will be close to the community again.

Subsistence farms are making a comeback?

I'm not familiar at all with this space. Is vertical farming a possible solution here?

It would be very expensive.

One person needs about 5 hectares of land to be self-sufficient (i.e. to cover all its food needs, including protein). If you can afford your own 432 Park Avenue (Cost: ~$1BUSD, Floor area: ~4ha) for that, then the answer is yes.

But also, with that same $1BUSD you could buy around 100,000 hectares of land in rural US, close to the size of Qatar; you can see how relatively inefficient vertical farming is in economic terms.

Disclaimer: I am also very skeptical of the whole concept of vertical farming, but...

That 5 hectares of land per person metric is totally inapplicable here. Sort of the entire point of vertical farming is to be (in theory) vastly more efficient per unit of land. If you believe the claims it's somewhere between a 10 and 50 times reduction in land usage for same output.

5 hectares is also on the very high end for estimates of that metric. It also drops hugely if you're not relying on animal products.

I don't think vertical farming in apartments is the future, but I think your calculations here are also way, way off.

> Research in the 1970s by John Jeavons and the Ecology Action Organization found that 4000 square feet (about 370 square metres) of growing space was enough land to sustain one person on a vegetarian diet for a year, with about another 4000 square feet (370 square meters) for access paths and storage – so that’s a plot around 80 feet x 100 feet (24m x 30m).

That’s about a fifth of an acre, and other caveats apply like climate and the amount of labor during the growing season. If vertical farming works, and can also reduce the labor required (I have no idea if that’s one of its goals), it starts to look more plausible as something that could take off. Still won’t fit on a rooftop though, and as Jayne would say, “I smell a lotta ‘if’ coming off that plan.”

https://www.growveg.com/guides/growing-enough-food-to-feed-a...

Agree with both comments.

Also, I'm sure that if humanity had put enough resources to this we would already have really efficient solutions around this. It tech that needs to (and hopefully will) be developed.

Was not aware these projects were trying to be self-sufficient! Yeah, that's pretty wild. I assumed from your comment they just wanted to have their own tomatoes or something.

Robotic carts following you around with your cargo are already here honestly. Go to a golf course these days.

Voice recognition is the technology of the future. And always will be.

Some/most of those things aren't a reality because they don't make sense economically.

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