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What

Here is my vision of the future, limited to the U.S. (so not on a global scale). It is not apocalyptic like Cormac McCarthy's latest book. (Neither will it win a Pulitzer.) Instead, these are things I hope to see within my lifetime in the United States:


Cool gadgets



  • Cell phones with the voice quality of an old-school landline.
  • Laptops with flash memory instead of the outdated and fragile hard drive. /6.2008 two-years later update: they started making solid-state hard-drives. yay!/ Just like the iPod Nano. Then battery life should be much longer (since it takes a lot of energy to spin the disk in the hard drive, and flash memory doesn't have any moving parts), the laptop should be quieter and should stay cooler (since you shouldn't need a fan to cool off the hard drive), and they'd be less fragile (the hard drive is like a vinyl record player with a read-write head that lowers onto a magnetic disk -- not a technology made to be portable).
  • Laptops that weight an ounce, with battery life that lasts the life of a laptop.
  • Computer monitors that don't glow and are more like paper (that display stuff by reflecting light instead of emitting it). This would be easier on the eyes I think. I still prefer to read a book off a printed page, and it's not just because I like holding it.
  • My favorite ergonomic keyboard.
  • My favorite office chair.
  • My current laptop of choice, as of summer 2006: Lenovo x60s with an 8-cell battery. (Quick review. Pros: lightweight, long battery life with the 8-cell battery, harddrive with active protection, comfortable keyboard, fan vent is on the side instead of the bottom of the laptop, sturdy construction, accidental damage protection is available. Cons: Fn and Ctrl keys should be swapped, fingerprint reader is finicky, wish the pointing device was more sensitive, the optical drive dock is cumbersome to attach and especially detach, no built-in webcam, not available with MacOS out of the box. Net: pros minus cons: Positive. For me personally, the pros strongly outweigh the cons; so far no regrets in getting it.)

Space

  • Green cities: and I don't mean "environmentally-friendly"; I mean literally green, as in "more vegetation." In particular, New York is the city I have in mind. (Yes, Central Park is pretty green, but what about Corona, Queens?)
  • More public space: I want more space, but going for a bigger house in the suburbs doesn't sound appealing to me. suburban subdivisions may help property accountability, but everyone ends up trapped in their own house with shopping malls and Starbuck's providing the only shared public space. (There is the public library too, but there you can't talk...) Public space is what I am into. Both rural and urban areas have public space to offer. The suburban not so much. One form of public space is state & national parks, preservation areas, and big places that require floating skills (rivers, lakes, and ah, the ocean). Public squares, parks and streets, with courtyards, cafes and public libraries is another.
  • Better workspace. Open-floors and better cubicles, e.g. with more natural light and better colors.

Infrastructure



Improved infrastructure because (a) a lot of it is too old (Great Depression public works or post-WWII old) and (b) our population is growing. See American Society of Civil Engineers for their latest assessment (as of 2005).


TRANSPORTATION

  • New highways or widening of existing ones might help a little, but it won't solve all our problems. In fact, it might make things worse because it might encourage even more people to commute by car (or at least not discourage them), and encourage people to commute even farther than they do now.
  • Dynamic rerouting of traffic with better information and financial incentives: GPS with live traffic information to give you the optimal route to avoid traffic (think of this as self-directing distributed traffic management), along with variable toll pricing and city areas with congestion pricing. (See London and Singapore for successful examples of congestion pricing; variable toll pricing of reserved highway lanes is, I think, currently done somewhere in California).
  • Electric streetcars and high-speed inter-city trains.
  • Greater availability of locally-grown produce to alleviate highways from cross-country truck shipments.

ELECTRIC GRID

  • To prevent blackouts (like the ones that have been happening in recent years).
  • New breaker cables, dynamic load rerouting, and other upgrades to the existing grid, perhaps adjustable local limiting of energy use for emergencies (so during power failures you don't have to beg businesses to limit their eletric use) or variable electricity pricing once you use more than a certain amount (similar to variable toll pricing).
  • Distributed energy production: e.g. grid-tied solar panels on residential rooftops
  • More efficient appliances to ease the load

WATER

  • Good modern levees in places like New Orleans (which was the main cause of the Hurricane Katrina disaster there). Holland is a good example to follow.
  • Using natural water filters in aquaculture (I wonder if using mollusks for this is a problem for those allergic to shellfish; I would guess not, but I don't know).
  • Haven't heard anything about this, but wonder how our piping is doing, with everything being so old.

INTERNET

  • More fiber-optic cable? I am not saying that's the only way to go, but it sure is pretty cool.
  • Can't tell if we are doing well here. More broadband high-speed internet lines? Why are we 11 spots behind South Korea? (I am assuming "Korea" refers to South Korea.) This ranking of course doesn't differentiate between residential and medical, public, or commercial use, which are the things that make broadband so important. Neither does it take into account how many people actually use the internet since I think one family = one subscriber on their methodology. But considering total population, this data still makes South Korea look technologically much more advanced than the U.S.

STREETS

  • More streets for pedestrians; (I hope the word "street" doesn't become a synonym for "place for cars." You can walk to get places you know, not just on the treadmill or to walk your dog.)
  • More bike paths and bike lanes
  • For more on this, see my walkability page and the Bldg Blog

Resource efficiency



  • Solar panels on every rooftop in Tucson, or at least on my rooftop, along with water heated by the sun (instead of gas). Instead of distributed computing, it's distributed energy production (or harvesting in the case of solar). By the way, did you know you can "adopt a green watt" in Tucson? Costs as little as two extra dollars on your electric bill, although I'm a bit conflicted about: on the one hand, it's for a good cause, but on the other hand, it's a big monopoly asking for donations! Nor do I know what to make of citizenre (aka powur); solar panel rentals sound cool, but on the other hand I don't want to sign a contract with a startup that hasn't even secured an investor to build the manufacturing plant to make a product that they haven't quite finished designing... I mean you can't be an energy provider if you don't have anything to provide yet. (Nice website though.) I guess time will tell.
  • Cars that don't need fossil fuels and don't emit foul odors. Btw, if you charge an electric car by using electricity generated by a power plant from fossil fuels, you are still polluting the environment, no?(Of course if the power plant had solar-generated power, that'd be different.) And yes, I am pretty excited that that there are finally hybrid cars (with really good gas mileage and low emissions) on the market and that there is demand for them.
  • Cheaper solar panels: I'd buy a solar panel to put on my roof, but 10k is a bit outside my price range. Although if I didn't live on a student budget, I'd probably invest in it.
  • The regular light bulb replaced by something more efficient in every household (e.g. NVision lightbulbs that use 3/4 less energy, which you can get at Home Depot). Australia did this by making regular light bulbs illegal; not very free market like, but effective.
  • Waterless-flush toilets and urinals: the UA rec center installed waterless urinals in their locker rooms, but I betcha these units cost a ton to buy. (See here on how to turn your toilet into a "low flush" toilet.)
  • Air conditioners and evaporative coolers? There's got to be better technology... Air conditioners use a ton of electricity and evaporative coolers (aka swamp coolers) waste water. Well, if you've never lived in Arizona, you've probably never heard of an evaporative cooler.
  • For eco news, see www.treehugger.com

Food and restaurants



  • Wish there was locally-grown produce at the local grocery store / supermarket. Why do we ship things we could grow locally all the way across country?! You get strawberries that aren't ripe (do most Americans even know what ripe strawberries taste and smell like?) and you waste a lot of fuel shipping it. I am not saying don't ship any food, but surely there are more things that could be grown locally that we currently ship.
  • Wish I could get my latte at the local coffee shop with organic milk (skim, 2%, whole, whatever). Wish there was a better selection of organic dairy products in stores too.
  • Wish I could get fair trade coffee in more coffee shops with milk from humanely-raised cows (or goats or what have you). (No, I'm not comparing people with cows here.)
  • Wish Chipotle (a McDonalds-owned chain of all places!) by the U of A campus wasn't the only eat-out place I could get free-range pork. (Peter Singer's book really grossed me out about factory farming, which is where 97% of all American pork comes from for example; I crunched the numbers myself for this off the latest stats available on USDA's website; the latest stats they had up last time I checked were for 1997. But to be honest, I don't know if "free-range" guarantees that the pigs weren't factory-farmed.) This is actually a good way to create a market niche: in addition to "organic" labels (which is a profitable business from what I gather), also have "humanely-raised" and "locally-grown" labels. (Locally grown is good for the environment because then you don't have to ship something by truck across country and so burn all that fuel; it's better for traffic too.)
  • Wish I could get half a portion for half the price at restaurants with no table service (e.g. half a chipotle burrito for almost half the price?). If I eat the whole thing, I get sooo sleepy. But it's taken me some self-training to learn to cut my portions in half and only eat half of it there (take the other half to go to eat later or give it to someone who can't afford it). I would then go to restaurants twice as often. (This might be a good way for a new restaurant to invade the market: after all, eating smaller meals more often -- e.g. every four hours -- is the new American way; can increase your metabolism and stabilizing your blood sugar. Besides, don't most places stay open and empty during times other than lunch and dinner anyway?)

Transportation

  • Less car-dependence, at least in my life for me: wouldn't it be nice to be able to bike, walk, ski, or motorcycle to work? (Or even take a streetcar there and leave your car at home?) I like having a car for weekend getaways, but not for daily commutes... Mostly, I never want to commute in traffic again. But also, while driving is fun, it's also a bit anti-social and a not very physically demanding. Nor can you read the newspaper while you drive (while you can certainly listen to a podcast while walking or taking a streetcar). These issues of physical and mental health even a solar-powered electric car can't resolve. Biking and walking is a good way to get places, but for that you need to build bicycle and pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods. In cities and suburbs, you also need to build houses differently: who wants to walk on a street that has a bunch of garage doors facing the sidewalk? (that's a rhetorical question, I hope;)
  • Electric streetcars: to replace stinky buses or cars as a mode of public transportation in densely-populated areas, as Portland (Oregon) did. To be honest, I am not a fan of the metro or the subway because I like to daylight and having the option to look out the window at things when I ride trains. (So it's too bad that the Amtrak passes by some ugly industrial parts of cities, although if you take it from New York North to Albany, you'll travel right along the Hudson, which is really nice.)
  • Electric high-speed inter-city trains: to connect San Diego with L.A. with San Francisco with all the nearby airports. Then nobody would have to waste hours in traffic... Not only would this make us look like Japan, but it would also alleviate traffic in California and decrease travel time when compared to driving or even flying for train journeys of less than three hours (which at 185 miles an hour, going nonstop, means up to 555 miles, so easily from Boston to Washington D.C. or from San Diego to San Francisco, or even from Maine to D.C. or from D.C. to Savannah!) It might also be a good idea on the East Coast (MetroNorth trains and LIRR trains are a bit slow, no?). And if high-speed trains ran across country instead of those slow Amtrak trains, I might even opt to take the train instead of flying. (I personally really like taking trains, but dread commercial airplane travel.)

Education



  • Less college debt: eight ways to pay for college. (The average college student in the U.S owes over 20k after graduation.) There is also the college tuition fund, which I thought was interesting (although I can't decide if it's a good idea). The U.S. college system has the following salient problems: (1) college is too expensive, which saddles many college graduates with debt, (2) many think they need to go to a four-year college to get a decent job, which is false (e.g. you could study for two years and become a radiology/x-ray technician), (3) many think that after college they'll be able to get a good job (whereas you might be getting paid less than an x-ray technician who paid community-college tuition and studied for only two years). Don't get me wrong: I think college is a great place to make friends, meet lots of new people, have a great social life, maybe even luck out and meet your future partner (you probably won't ever meet this many potential partners again), learn interesting intellectual things (not so much hands on things), possibly become educated (in the liberal arts sense of that word) or maybe even get a profession (e.g. study computer science to get a job as a computer programmer, which is usually not the case with other majors), or get good training for graduate school (assuming you go to graduate school to study the same thing you focus on as an undergrad). But if you don't want to go to college and dread taking all those classes to learn things in which you are not interested, I think you could probably be doing better things with your career and your life. For example, check out professions, not majors, think about how you'd like to make a living, and then see how you could get there (e.g. if your community college has offerings in what you want to do).
  • The U.S. K-12 public school system has the following salient problems: (1) many public schools have a shortage of teachers overall, as well as underqualified teachers, often across racial and socio-economic lines, (2) disadvantaged socio-economic classes (and so many blacks and hispanics) get a subpar education when compared with their middle-class white neighbors (at least in urban areas; I haven't researched this and so don't know what happens in rural areas), (3) schools are still racially segregated, although of course not to the extent they were prior to 1954. Below are my thoughts about these problems...
  • Not sure how to fix this, but... why are American public schools (K through 12) funded through real estate taxes by school district? Can't we think of a better system? Consider the following organizational principle: "it is okay if poor children get subpar education." If asked, I hope most Americans would say that's not a fair principle of justice. It might also not be a good idea in consequentialist terms. In any case, it doesn't seem like a good founding principle (let alone a side-effect) around which to structure the education system. But yet, funding public schools through real estate taxes implies a commitment to this (unfair/imprudent) principle. I am not saying you shouldn't be able to send your kid to a good private school if you can afford it. Instead, I am merely saying that the way our public school system is organized doesn't really make it public: instead, it's really more like a private association that funds a school. And I suppose that's one way to go. But if we are truly committed to public education and equal opportunity, then seems like local school funding through real estate taxes is not the way to go. Also, what's with public schools in Washington D.C. that don't even have real walls separating classrooms?! (This is from a very reliable source.) Or, in a similar vein, schools that hold classes in "temporary classrooms" (which is an euphemism for "trailer").
  • In 1954, the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of schools. And yet zoning laws along with highways and other urban structures (thanks to Urban Renewal of the 50's and 60's) still keep many schools essentially segregated. I haven't done much research on this, but my guess is that statistical data would back up my personal experience here. From the age of 13 (when my mother and I immigrated to the U.S. from Russia) till the age of 18 (when I went away to college), I live in Corona, Queens. The neighborhood was not a white middle-class neighborhood. Most of its residents were (and I suspect still are) black and hispanic. The school for which I was zoned had no windows, poor resources, poor teachers, and poor course offerings. The public schools with windows, much better resources, better teachers, and much better course offerings was on the side of the Long Island Expressway. To attend the schools on the other side of the expressway (which for me was first junior high school and then high school) my mom had to lie to the schools about where I lived and come up with proof to back up the lie. And this was (and is still the case) in New York City. Talk about inequality of opportunity for children. Since I never attended the same schools as my neighbors, the educational advantage I received alone is enough to explain why I went to college while many of my neighbors didn't. There must be a better (i.e. less unjust) way to structure the K-12 education system... Any ideas?
  • Having teachers in public schools who (a) are good at teaching and (b) know their subject area (e.g. having a college or a graduate degree in math might be good evidence of being familiar enough with the subject area to teach it a high school level for example). I wonder what percentage of high school math teachers in the United States have a graduate degree in math, or even a college degree with a major in pure or applied mathematics. Moreover, to be honest, I am rather skeptical that a degree in education would make one a good math teacher (or an English teacher) at the high school level (although things might be different with children), just as I don't think studying music theory would help make you a better pianist. Granted you are not studying to be a mathematician, but instead a math teacher, but still, I find something odd about it (at the high school level). Of course if you are in graduate school studying math + how to teach math, then that might be different. In short, you can't teach something if you don't know it well yourself. And what you need is a pool of people who are knowledgeable and passionate about the subject area, and have the pool be big enough so that there is some competition for jobs for schools to be able to choose those who become good at teaching (because they (i) know their subject area well, (ii) have a talent for teaching, and (iii) develop that talent). But to increase the pool -- the supply of teachers -- it's necessary to increase teaching salaries in K-12 public education. How to make that happen I don't know.
  • In short, I suspect that a big part of the problem is that teachers are underpaid. I think this not because I think they deserve more, but simply because of economics. Remember supply and demand curves from Economics 101? In a competitive market, supply of teaching labor will meet the demand for teachers if you pay a high enough salary (which acts as an incentive to attract teachers, or young people to become teachers). Right now, in many districts, there is a shortage not only of good teachers, but of teachers in general. If supply met demand, why would there be a need for emergency credentials, Teach-For-America and other similar incentives? And in more rural and small-town places, I've even heard of it being standard practice to have sports coaches serve as the main supply of teachers! (In case it's not obvious what's wrong with this: coaching a football team and teaching English Lit or Math are two different types of skills and talents; e.g. if we don't think that just because someone is a good English teacher, she will be a good coach, why expect that a good coach will make a good English teacher?) I've even heard of schools inviting cops (without a degree in teaching or a degree in the needed subject area) to teach students -- teach subjects unrelated to law-enforcement that is. Having summers off is obviously an incentive to become a teacher, but obviously it is not a strong-enough incentive to get the quality and quantity of labor many school districts need. This seems to me to be a question of money.
  • There is a puzzle for my "teaching salaries too low" theory: I admit that I don't know enough about K-12 education, but I wonder if private schools are on average better than public schools... (this could be measured by average SAT scores, colleges to which admitted, or even the less scientific method of hearsay). If on average private schools turn out to be better than public schools (which I suspect they would), then I wonder what the difference is. After all, I don't think private schools pay teachers much either. Of course private schools might have better prepared students (because they come from wealthier families and because their parents are better educated), so the resulting difference might not be entirely because of the quality of teaching per se. But it is entirely possible that private school teachers, on average, are also better than public school teachers. I could be wrong about this, but I don't think private schools usually require the "usual" education credentials: state certification or a degree in teaching. But I doubt that private schools hire coaches to teach math classes either. And as far as market incentives go to attrack the better teachers, it is possible that academically better prepared students and fewer administrative and beuarocratic obstacles are an attraction for those truly passionate about teaching... There must be studies on all this out there...

Random things that puzzle me



  • Why do some people in Tucson have green lawns? Not only is it expensive to water (I had a non-native tree that died because I didn't water it!), but it's also wasteful (didn't Tucson mostly deplete its own natural water reserves and is now pumping water from the Colorado river uphill?!). Nor does it make sense; I mean, we are in the Southwest with its own beautiful vegetation that can naturally grow in the desert; just go on a hike in Tucson in the spring and you'll see. And what's with the palm tree?! Plant a mequite tree instead! If you have to water it more than once a year, it probably shouldn't be growing here. I suspect the reason for green lawns is nostalgia, although I am not sure; (nostalgia for where they grew up -- California, East Coast?). There is a whole neighborhood like that in Tucson and I admit that I found it comforting to go to their Christmas Festival of Lights. I suspect people also don't think about the externalities (an economics term that here simply means that your buying the water makes someone else worse off). Maybe many people just think that if they earned the money, they are entitled to exchange it for whatever they can buy with it -- in this case water. But if your purchase is going to make others worse (e.g. people downstream in Mexico, someone living in Tucson in twenty years, or even you living in Tucson in twenty years), then you are not quite paying true market value for water; instead, you are paying a discounted water rate -- a symbolic fee even, which is supposed to act as an incentive for you to be frugal with your water usage, (which is why your water bill is proportionate to how much water you use). To be fair, the largest water users in Arizona today are probably farming and mining. But I still don't get the green lawns. Natural desert vegetation can be so pretty...