Hacker News Reader

Comment by tifik | Hacker News Reader

The world is incredibely connected by roads. So much so that places that disconnect two large networks have their own names. E.g the 'Darian Gap'.

Although the term 'road' is pretty loose. Figuring out the graph of places connected by paved roads might be quite interesting.

View on HN

I sometimes think about how much roads influence our thinking and mental models. They represent abstract structure and organization that we have embedded into the physical world. If someone asked you to draw a map of your hometown, you would probably lean heavily on your knowledge of the road network.

It's interesting to think of the graph of "connected" cities/places inside each of us. If I'm in San Francisco, I know how to get to New York City without any assistance. But there are also roads within blocks of my house that I have no knowledge or understanding of.

It’s pretty incredible to think about. If you live in the US, there are unbroken stretches of asphalt between you and any major city on the continent. All you need is a vehicle (or two legs)

> or two legs

Depends on your appetite for risk in many places. The roads are typically unbroken but the sidewalks often are not.

Even more amazing to me is the unbroken network of copper, fiber, and other data links that let us instantly send information between virtually any two points on the gobe with nothing more than a couple of computers and some electricity.

I feel it's a little different these days with our data. Everything is packetized and we require / have devices along the path so it's no longer literally a single wire from my PC to anywhere else, might hop into different physical mediums along the way even.

If we go back a little to the old POTS and even old alarm systems then I would say that's more true.

Is that more or less impressive than the equally integrated set of footpaths that once existed? Almost every past footpath has been obliterated by roads and railways. I once knew someone tasked with rediscovering an indigenous trail, with an eye to restoring it. She found the location: right down the median of a divided highway. It turns out that indigenous people didnt like steep hills any more than cars fo.

I read in a book about the area i live in that the highways that surround the city all follow native american walking paths. Kinda a bummer

There are some exceptions, at least depending on your definition of major city. Juneau, Alaska and its surrounding area aren't connected to the rest of the continental road network, so the only access from outside is by sea or air.

Alaska crossed my mind as an exception, but I figured the point still resonated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com