knowbuddy wrote:

Hmm. I'd love to RTFA, but registration ... notsomuch ... BugMeNot ... notsomuch. I could be completely misinterpreting the article based on the snippet, but ...

I don't know what you're talking about. I can follow the link and read the full text just fine without any apparent registration. (Is anyone else having that problem?)

As for misinterpreting the snippet, it's likely; Brand really goes full circle (Ha!) in this article, from painting a picture of disaster, then on to a tutorial in demographics and population dynamics, and finally to explaining why everything is actually going to be just fine.

Speaking as someone who grew up in the typical middle-America sub-urban environment ...

Brand is not talking about America.

... only someone who rarely makes it out of the city could think that we are that connected.

He's not talking about AIM on your mobile phone.

... a pleasantly futurist feel to it ...

Well, that's Brand, alright. GBN definitely keeps on the sunny side. Which is why I meant to link in the recent Technology Review article about Soviet bioweapons.

There are some scary backwater places that have little to no link to the outside world ... They don't know you nor do they want to connect with you.

But many of them do envy the people who are vastly richer than they are, and who spend thousands on trifles while they struggle to find bread and milk for children.

We have a long, long, long way to go before true metroplexes come about. What we have now is just sprawl all tarted up to look like structure.

I presume you're still talking about the US. I don't think anyone could consider the Kenyan slums "tarted up." (Have you seen The Constant Gardener?)

RE: City Planet, by Stewart Brand