The Challenge of Providing Future Infrastructure in an Environment of Limited Resources, New Technologies, and Changing Social Paradigms Proceedings of a Colloquium, March 24, 1995 (1995) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
The Probable Future and Its Impacts on Infrastructure
The Probable Future and Its Impacts on Infrastructure
Pages 45-66
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 45... ...
World one is the advanced nations, today about ~ billion people, over the next generation there will be grown of about 30 percent. World three, about ~ billion people today, probably growing to twice that number over the next generation.
|
From page 46... ...
The issues in world three are not how to use modern science and technology in modern social institutions, to build an unequivocally better, more efficient, effective, and fulfilling world. The issues in world three are framed around survival.
|
From page 47... ...
For the last 15 years or so in metropolitan America the central business district is being complemented by other decentral~zed-business districts: which have all the functions of the traditional central business district except government and recreation. For example, in the Washington metropolitan area there is Columbia, Reston, Tysons Corner, and Rosslyn.
|
From page 48... ...
Midtwentieth century, We centerpiece was the rec room. What will be the centerpiece of life in the emerging twentieth-first century is the electronic home work/study center: a place where he and she do a portion of their work, where the children reach out to the resources of the world, where the whole family seeks entertainment, recreation, social contacts.
|
From page 49... ...
Then the third capability will be to respond, to modify its behavior to fit what those first sensor systems tell it, to announce the need for an adjustment. Now picture all of this, everything from smart walls to smart furniture, everything from smart sewers to smart decor.
|
From page 50... ...
The other application was a semiskilled craft-welding. Still the single largest use of robots is in welding practical displacement of human labor.
|
From page 51... ...
A Japanese science policy analyst named Fumio Kadama has come up with the interesting concept Hat many of the advantages that science and technology will bring us in the future will not necessarily come from new inventions, but will come from combining already existing capabilities in new ways. This third paradigm is an interesting example of this, in which we will have truly dynamic structures.
|
From page 52... ...
The solid waste issue is now important because it is pinching the purse of municipal government, and that in turn is pinching the purse of the homeowner. Solid waste management will be big stuff for the indefinite future.
|
From page 53... ...
Responsive public polling could lead to radical changes in the generation, use, and production of energy, the opening up of new energy source. If greenhouse warming is convincingly confirmed and becomes part of the public ~inking, it would not at all be surprising to see two energetic enemies skipping down the street hand in hand, revival of nuclear power on the one hand, and the tremendous celebration of photovoltaics on the other.
|
From page 54... ...
But the emerging big consumers of energy will be China, India, Indonesia, and the other newly industrializing countries. The policy issue we will face is how can we reduce their fossil fuel consumption if we are profligate?
|
From page 55... ...
I think the answer is still no. The evolution of the intelligent interaction will not be primarily from an intelligent highway interacting with an intelligent vehicle, but rather it will be off-the-road interaction with the intelligent vehicle: broadcasting not by municipal or state or country systems, but perhaps by other systems, to interact with the vehicle, to announce information, to give data, to tell about recreational sites, to talk about damage, disaster, breakdowns or give alternative route information.
|
From page 56... ...
The injection periods were not in any way regular. Wonder of wonders, in an absolutely stable environment no identifiable quakes in probably 10,000 years they activated earthquakes under the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.
|
From page 57... ...
During the last quarter-century, or even the last 40 years, job creation has come out of highly distributed income and the willingness of ordinary people to spend that on what were previously household or domestic nonservices. When we look ahead, if GNP or gross domestic product per capita growth is in the 2-2.5 percent range, we can anticipate that that same phenomenon will continue.
|
From page 58... ...
ANSWER: There is no question that over the next clecade there will be widespread availability of "knowbots," knowledge robots, the kind of electronic software packages which will do your searching out for you. And when you couple the availability of those knowbots to such things as flat screen just talk to the screen, it talks back to you there is a dramatic change in the way we will interact wig information technology.
|
From page 59... ...
Both of them are rapidly becoming dependent on information technology. All their functionality, all their effectiveness, all their efficiency, will look strikingly like what they look like today, simply because those are the images that we like.
|
From page 60... ...
But later they will evolve into new external as well as internal designs. QUESTION: Because ~ imagine when the first skyscrapers started happening in Chicago, people liked European-style stores that were on the ground level.
|
From page 61... ...
Partly as an extension of that, partly independent of that, would you comment on what might be done with revitalizing inner cities in the United States in particular. These are areas where large numbers of people live.
|
From page 62... ...
Now just picture what the means. That holds the potential of virtually every white collar job becoming employment in a white collar sweat shop.
|
From page 63... ...
For that T need to take you to task on one point. r ~0 not believe that we will privatize national monopolies which provide infrastructure and welfare, as in the case of state universities, because these reflect social values and they are not things that we would easily give up to individual private organizations.
|
From page 64... ...
That is, privatized systems take the job at the center of New York as a very good example at the moment also become political job banks, all the things you described. So ~ think again ~ come back to my kind of least-cost mantra, value-driven mantra.
|
From page 65... ...
Coates, is the President of Coates & Jarratt, Inc., a Washington, DC-based research organization devoted to studying the future. The firms clients have included 45 of the Fortune 100 companies, numerous smaller firms, trade, professional, and public interest groups, and all levels of government, He was formerly Assistant to the Director, and Head of Exploratory Research at the office of Technology Assessment, and a Program Manager at the National Science Foundation.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.