As I say in the video, I do work to keep focused on the problems, such as how to care for ourselves amidst some kinds of plenty, yet with scarcity too. Abundance doesn't mean an endless, affordable supply of everything. It means relative abundance, compared to benchmarks.
Computers equipped with GUIs (graphic interfaces) are relatively abundant, as they were non-existent not so long ago. Now every smartphone is such a device. We might call them smartphones but they're computers, with telecommunications, GPS and all the rest of it. These were not a feature of my teen to young adult years. Nowadays, iOS and Android among the most run operating systems.
I've been thinking of a type of city, perhaps based on a military base conversion, keeping the runway and warehouses, that specializes in routing humans but also helping them get sorted. The assumption is that disasters remain inevitable and helping humans flee deleterious circumstances will be an ongoing need.
Until now, we've seen a lot of emphasis on tent cities, refugee camps, that get stuck in a narrative where no one really gets resettled. What were conceived of as temporary facilities become semi-permanent. The cities I'm imagining, based around port facilities, air and/or sea, or even road and railways, form a network of high turnover centers, more like universities.
Universities function as pipelines with respect to their students, with another class of administors, lab technicians, janitors and so on, who may have a career that extends well beyond that of a typical student. And then of course we have faculty. How do these tiers map to a network for handling refugees and what qualifications does one need to go through intake?
As soon as the infrastructure is in place to work on resettlement, the risk is around getting swamped. Many families would like to escape their current circumstances. Any institution which encourages immigration and emigration, even perhaps all inside a nation's lines, may have disruptive effects at the community level, as now more people have more of a choice as to whether to stay put or not.
