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kleinbl00  ·  2972 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What happens to a tiny town when Walmart disappears?

This is an interesting point because I can think of four different books off the top of my head that make erudite, well-researched points that all disagree with each other.

Bill McKibben agrees with you. The proliferation of online social networks and the decline in the standard of living the world over will lead to isolated small town networks that perform the majority of their socialization via virtual space, while their physical presence is likely to be curtailed and insular.

Stephen Pinker disagrees with you. He points out that the network effects of innovation within cities exactly matches the ATP transfer efficiency of biological organisms (or some such - I can't remember precisely how he worked that one out) and that it takes a large grouping of people in order to find that small grouping that inspires you. Social movements, after all, always come out of the coffee houses of metropolises.

Shannon Hayes agrees with you. Happiness is best found through self-sufficiency and generating your own resources and happiness independent of money or finance and that really, salary is a terrible marker for success when happiness matters so much more.

Sherry Turkle disagrees with you. Virtual companionship is no substitute for actual companionship and happiness comes from the people you can reach out and physically touch, not the people you can skype.

We were noticing something interesting yesterday while dealing with HostGator (again) and the fact that there's a giant airgap of knowledge between "I have a Wordpress website" and "I can harden my website against Slovenian portscanners" and that airgap is largely bridged by people who are overeducated and overqualified. Nobody got a CS degree in order to keep their girlfriend's brother's cousin's website online, but there's a lot of that. And maybe if you live in West Virginia and maintain clients across eight time zones, you can make it work.

A camera operator I love working with lives in Fayetteville, WV. She tried LA for about a season and bailed. She built her own house out in the woods and it's well-insulated enough that she doesn't need heat. She makes it look super-attractive.

I think all four of those smart people are right and wrong, in different ways for different reasons at different times. It's gonna be interesting to see.