No, actually most of what is in my house was created by me and has never been to a city and mostly those things were created from materials right here on our own land. I have few possessions.

It's a very different world than you are used to, clearly.

"Trying to find new jobs for billions of people is a good idea but obviously very hard because whatever the new jobs are, they will probably be so fundamentally different from anything that exists today that meaningful planning is almost impossible."

Return to the land. Farm. Raise up your own food and some extra. Harvest your own local fuel. Build your own house. All of these things are doable and it brings your cost of living to nearly nil. No need for 'jobs'. Be.

"Where there is human, there is light"

Not really. You won't find any light from us. I am careful to not waste light. What goes up to the sky is a waste. It's not being useful. We are also minimally noisy and not polluting.

Just because there are humans does not mean there will be light, noise or pollution.

The problem is choices. Urban areas have too many people choosing not to conserve and letting their noise, light and pollutants out into the environment. One might argue the problem is simply too many people in those places such that they don't care. They have other priorities.

Where we are is pretty deep blue on the map but I bet it is even bluer in reality as we are in a valley surrounded by mountains that lift the sound up over us providing an extra buffer. Loving it in the deep blue.

Interesting to note the map also looks like the city lights maps.

I've got this covered. We'll have population increases over the next century up to the point of a sustainable level at 50 Billion. This will allow one quarter of the earth's land area to be set aside as natural parks areas, move people out of the urban areas and back to the land, get almost everyone involved at least to some degree with producing at least 10% of their own food, improve health and education all while lowering consumption by 90%.

"It costs a lot of money to keep everything compatible."

What a short sited response you have. Consider:

1) there are hundreds of millions of older iOS devices and Macs.

2) older iOS offer an inexpensive way for new users to come into the fold and become customers.

3) Apple makes the vast majority of their money on software and content.

Ergo, by offering legacy support they greatly increase their market share and their income.

The same argument could have been made for PCs except they don't last.

Play the long game. It's for winners.

We desperately need legacy support.

1) All existing and past applications should be able to run on current platforms. This can be done economically and gracefully with enveloping. That would even allow modern OSs to run software from all previous OSs even those not in their lineages or hardware histories. There is no good excuse for Apple, Microsoft and others making the OS's not compatible with legacy software. Access to legacy software is key to our being able to access our data into the future.

2) OS makers should be building their OSs so that they run on older hardware. This can be done gracefully and economically with targeted compiling and fall back on features that older hardware is not able to support.

Companies are driving our data to extinction. Legacy support should be required. If it was required they would figure out how to do it gracefully because that means economically.

I prefer having a dumb home that passively does what it should do. That is what I designed and built. It is low cost, low maintenance, low taxes and passive. It just works. It keeps us sheltered from rain, warm in the winter and cool in the summer with a minimum of effort, cost and upkeep.

Smart Homes are a Dumb Idea that gadget makers have been trying to sell for a long time. The problem is do you really want to be upgrading and replacing your home's parts every five years or more frequently?

What will be worse is subscription homes. It's called renting.

No dice.

"growth in Google's primary business, search advertising, has flattened out at about 20 percent a year for the last few years."

Gee... Most businesses would be overjoyed to have an annual growth of 20% in their main business. Google is doing extraordinarily well. There is always some pundit who writes gloom and doom on the off chance they might be right and then can look back and say, "See! I said it!" totally ignoring all their own fails at prediction. Standard quackery with a broad baseline like fortune telling through the ages.

I designed one that was activated by a tank filling with fluid to a certain height. It then texted the delivery guy to come take the fluid. I can't give you my solution, it was very low level and simple based on local tech, and it wasn't a neat portable thing for your toddler to carry although it could be a panic button in the middle of the house. However, any competent hacker, er, I mean local technician, should be able to rig something together like this for you. A two year old can learn a lot and be quite responsive.

I give you negative points for you're knee-jerk negative reaction and lack of solution. I hear you're also a liberal.

But back to the point you tried to make. No, you're wrong. Those ecosystems were not raped for the materials. The materials are mined from mostly underground and in confined areas. This produces huge numbers of solar panels that then produce power that avoid the need for burning fossil fuels and other truly negative methods.

Rather than being a knee-jerk, NIMBY, liberal anti-everythingist start finding real solutions and understanding what is being presented.

By the way, your farts smell and you're a coward.

There is a old phrase about code being poetry. Java's the flowery kind rather than that Haiku.

Solar farms are very compatible with ecosystems and pasture based farming.

I've seen several now and am impressed.

In a desert situation the solar farm creates shade which conserves water by reducing evaporation and creating microclimates where life thrives. That's a good thing.

In non-desert situations livestock can be grazed around the panels. Especially smaller livestock like sheep, goats, pigs and chickens. Cattle are more of a problem from rubbing on the bases but with big strong bases this becomes a non-issue. The livestock do the mowing that otherwise would be done mechanically. Done as managed rotational grazing this results in the sequestering of about 1.4 tons of carbon a year per acre or more. That's good for the environment. It also produces food, meat, from solar, the sunshine and plant activity. The moving shade of the panels is also beneficial to the livestock while letting the forages, plants, grow between them.

Big win in either climate.

Diversity is not the problem. The problem is they're encouraging people to program despite ability, or perhaps we should say inability and disinclination.

I don't want a surgeon because she's black and female to operate on me. I want a surgeon to operate on me because she is skilled and experienced, because she has a high success rate, because she's the right surgeon for the job.

Picking programmers to fill diversity quotas is a nonsensical way of doing business. Pick the programmers who are excellent.

Political correctness needs to die.

I don't trust my data to anybody but myself. I maintain control. I keep all my data moving forward on multiple copies of my latest hardware.

Realize that when you put your data out in the cloud it is subject to both corruption and scrutinization. How do you know you are getting your data back? You don't.

Call me a control freak, please, but at least I have my data. In the cloud you are nothing but a wisp of smoke that dissipates with the whims of the server owners.