I tend to believe there are two modes of thinking when it comes to designing a positive future
- resource optimisation: characterized by scarcity mindset and just-in-time kind of stuff: fragile kind of thinking
- resource flooding, Taylorian thinking: generating a giant surplus in some key parameter so that one doesn't have to worry about optimisation
Payload restrictions were also no obstacle. In 1958 and 1959, a crew cut was part of the uniform, both among the Air Force officers from Albuquerque and among the engineers and technicians at General Atomic. "I wanted to just be an ordinary member of the crew," says Ted. "I had a lot of fun making tallies of payload, and one thing I always saw to it that was on there, in scorn for the cost of payload weight, was an old-fashioned two-ton barber's chair."
The most pressing kind of resource flooding we need at the moment is energy production per capita: give us more cheap energy and we will build up the tech tree at a given energy level: multi-level modern cities in the Walt Disney's EPCOT spirit, faster modes of transport like flying cars, etc.
One can only dream now, so that one day these can come true.
