2 Comments

From a Strong Towns email.

It is the embedded quote that I think is relevant. There is no ‘designer’ outside the evolved collective consciousness of our species (sic). That ‘collective’ isn’t.

From “Strong Towns” email.

https://ortto.app/-/m/view-online?k=C3N0cm9uZ3Rvd25zAGD1xHS1tbukR0QAYGTpCQUOWEzivMjH7i0ChGEW17Ak9F5w88Lr7A

Asia: My colleague Edward Erfurt shared this article with the team, and I audibly yelped when I got this bingo moment:

In order to make transportation safer, Ederer says, engineers and policymakers can’t expect much progress from individuals changing their behavior. Instead, the transportation system should be altered to reduce the overall risk people face when using it.

“We don’t ask everyone to filter their water at their home,” Ederer says. “We build it into the system.

It’s so rare to see this conclusion outside of the Strong Towns orbit. It’s one we hammer at every relevant opportunity and the thesis of every Crash Analysis Studio, including the one that happened earlier today. Modifying design, rather than targeting individual behavior through visual campaigns, is infinitely more effective.

Expand full comment

AI has the potential for destroying mankind as we know it. The first danger will be the drumming down of our youth, who find it easier to have an AI program do their homework for them. Taken to an extreme the students will no longer have to learn their subjects, but just let AI do it for them. Son we end up with a generation that doesn’t know how to think, or create. New ideas become non-existent. No more breakthrough inventions to solve the world’s problems.

The second danger will be, as heard on 60 Minutes, that the AI programs will ‘learn” from the internet, including all the conspiracy theories. These will get passed back to the AI users as ‘fact’ with no discrimination to the damage that they can do. An example would be if the AI bot would start promoting the idea that the 2020 elections were stolen... it isn’t a big leap to see our fragile democracy destroyed.

Just say no to rampant use of AI... and leave it in the hands of researchers that are working to improve our lives.

Frank Mayhew

Expand full comment