Utopian = everything seems perfect at first, yet these is something is deepely wrong in the background.

The original book that provided the name was about how it couldn't happen without downsides. A perfect society requires perfect people and nobody is born that way, so it sucks to grow up in someone's vision of Utopia. "The Scarlet Letter" and some stuff about the Salem witch trials is about Utopian societies of the past and how much it sucks to not fit into the ideals of the Utopian society. Some of the Arabian city states fit the futuristic Utopia idea already in many ways, but be an outsider in a deal with a local there that goes bad or do something that defies their idea of order, or piss off somebody powerful and things get dark very quickly.

This presumes that people regularly leave the tower, or at least the upper floors of the tower

Yes. Most definitely. If you can't get everyone out in a relatively short time then you have utterly failed as an engineer or architect. It's an assumption considered as important as an aircraft being designed to be able to get off the ground.

Conflict makes for interesting stories - which is why stuff like "Ghost in the Shell" with a future full of amazing things dishes up stories of people using them to commit crimes.

Just look at the US solar efforts

Good point, develop the technology, refine it, then throw it all away because it challenges established industries, leaving China to pick it up as if gift wrapped for them and make money out of it.

Or the German government's solar disaster if you want to see an extreme fail

I haven't heard of that one, how about you show us where to look to see such a disaster?

Correct. An 'established' what? It needs to have a noun of some type appended

An established creative :)
Come on now - you live in a world where Donald Rumsfeld is considered an intellectual and you're complaining about a bit of poor communication?

So now he's more powerful than when he was Vice President of the USA?
Give it up loser.

Grrr.

Sure if thing A is inexpensive, then thing B which costs a fraction of that price might indeed be said to cost X times less. Implying that thing A is already less than some other option, and thing B is even MORE less.

But if thing A is very expensive (as in the example cited in TFA), thing B would be better described as being not a hundred times less ... but one hundredth the cost.

Everything has a price, and if the buyer and seller come to an agreement then it's worth it. If you're a lawyer making $350/hr and you decide that it's worth $20 to have someone hand deliver your lunch instead of you going out and getting it, is that okay? If you're a driver getting 5 of those orders and hour and are grossing $100/hr, is that okay? What if you're just having a shitty day and $20 means getting a meal you *really* want without having to go out in the rain. You don't have to be rich to be lazy every once in a while.

To be fair, both Uber and Amazon don't *want* to have people working for them in absolutely horrible conditions for little pay. On the contrary, they'd like to eliminate those positions entirely and automate everything. Which really doesn't bode any better for local service people.

OTOH, this shouldn't be a surprise. The computer geeks have already put many, many typists, calculators (people, not boxes), secretaries, drafters, and similar people out of business just as the industrial revolution put many laborers out of a job. Do you really think that self-checkouts and ATMs have increased the number of employees in checkers/teller positions?

Taxi drivers are not going to be happy about self-driving cars, and though it's not possible now, it will be in the future. The bar on what can and can't be done automatically raises each year. Those close to the line need to see the writing. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who have already been passed by the line and will never / can never catch up to it. It's going to make for a very bumpy ride over the next half a century.

Prodigy tried pop-up and in-line ads and died, too. Sometimes it's neither the product nor the delivery, but simply market timing.

Ask the Europeans that constantly tell us Americans we are too enslaved to the notion that we all need our own car.

You just made that up. I don't know if you've ever driven around a European city, but car ownership is pretty widespread, at least judging by driving through Rome/London/Paris/etc.

It's funny what some Americans think about Europe. They've got this AM talk radio version of Europe knocking around in their heads. "Yeah, they're all dying in the streets because of socialized medicine and everybody's gay and you can't get a decent hamburger anywhere. And they're a bunch of carpoolers who don't realize that we fought and died so that people could drive their own 4500lb vehicle like God intended." "You betcha, Mack. Next up is Fred from Midland. So, what grinds your gears about Europeans, Fred?"

I guess that would be an answer if nobody ever took the time to show you how to defend yourself with your hands.

I think you have been listening to people, that have gleefully lied to you.

I think you are projecting.

A far cry from "proven to make up data and conceals data that doesn't fit his ideology".

No. Not being able to produce the data that your most important work is based on is not a far cry from making up data and concealing data that doesn't fit his ideology.

If a researcher can't produce his data, his work is not taken seriously. The scientific method includes making your data available so other people can review your work.

And it sure won't solve the government completely changing the contract at the last moment.