But urban centers are where everyone IS. Its where connections happen and where people are mutually drawn, even if their address doesn't say they live there. The opportunities for a wider range of connections and possibilities are what breathe life into a city--what has allowed San Francisco to make the transition away from industry as gracefully as it has.
Manhattan is the nucleus of New York. San Francisco is the nucleus of the Bay Area. If you lose that center, you end up with the nonsense sprawl that is LA. No common place for people to meet and come together. No way to rationalize or prioritize transit and other public needs.
The solution doesn't have to be subsidized housing. Better public transit allows people to reside further away and still have access to the city's opportunities, and gives everyone more mobility. But if it is becomes impossible for new people and young people to access the city because of pricing or traffic, how can San Francisco continue to flourish? Places change, but ensuring they change in a positive direction takes hard work and intention.
I'm sure this is coming with Fiber. But for early stage products (technically Fiber only has three "customers" right now-KC, Austin and Provo), one of the best things you can do to encourage uptake is keep your pricing drop-dead simple.
I think they are just trying to balance that simplicity with keeping it fair by not allowing commercial servers. A couple businesses taking advantage of a system that wasn't built for them could wreck the speeds for everyone, and Fiber's reputation going forward.
Google is smart enough to write an equation that says what usage patterns are too much to be fair usage of their network for $70/month. Then they could (in theory) publish it as part of their Terms and Conditions rather than have a "non-commercial" clause. I wonder how that would work in practice...
And what about Iteration? The learning value that can come from doing things poorly?! Imagine if Microsoft had LEARNED something from what they did wrong in Windows 95? Or Windows ME! Imagine how amazing their software would be now. They couldn't have done it without having totally screwed up first. Of course they didn't do that in the end...so...
Haha! Agreed, but like lots of software things--I think that's mostly because the instructions are written by the programmers. I'm management at my company (don't code), but have never had trouble grasping the conceptual issues and intricacies of code, and that makes me really good at teaching it. You just have to contextualize it properly for their perspective. Writers, or anyone that's not a programmer, doesn't care what a git is or how it work technically. They want to know how it will fulfill their wants/needs, and they want big buttons labeled with those solutions. I could teach my grandma to use to the github client if there was a shortcut to it on her desktop.
"...for yourself.' would be a great subtitle to this article.
Of those who do survive 18 years of public education and still mentally check-in on a daily basis, many they aren't capable of creating something outside of what they are given. That's the most troubling aspect of what he (and PG) are discussing.
These people can understand and execute complex instructions, but can't come up with their own instruction manual that actually fits their situation. Lots of successful people could be 100x more successful if they would stop trying to figure our how to make 200-page management fads work in their situation. Instead, if they would look at that situation, and engage their own brain and gut instinct to come up with solutions, they would be so much more efficient and effective.
If "so-so said to do it," or "I read it in a book," is your TOP reason for doing something--to me that's a 99% accurate sign that's its not the most effective thing you could be doing right now. Engage your brain.
