[extropy-chat] thank evolution for the interstate highway system

[kevinfreels at hotmail.com]

That's just plain silly if you ask me. Roads have been around far longer
than cars. Long before the society was developed enough to make flying cars,
they would have had to invent roads and agriculture. The technology of a
civilization relies somewhat on the size of the population.
For example: You coulndn't have flying cars without highly developed
computer systems. Those wouldn;t exist unless the civilization was heavily
computerized.
That wouldn;t happen without a solid infrastructure of utilities and roads
to deliver the computers.
etc, etc.
Roads were a necessary contribution to the development of our civilization.

On a side note, I am currently considering the possibility that neandertal
man lacked the fine motor skills necessary for manipulating small objects.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Dartfield" <twodeel at jornada.org>
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2003 12:48 AM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] thank evolution for the interstate highway
system


> On Mon, 1 Dec 2003, Spike wrote:
>
> > If all tax dollars were spent as well as they are on the good old
> > interstate highway system, well then, even *I* would be in favor of
> > taxes, and this is *me* talking.
>
> OK, so here's a question I was pondering briefly the other day: if all of
> the money spent on the Interstates since their inception had been instead
> pumped into R&D for several companies like Moller, would we have
> competitively-priced flying cars yet?  And if we did have (VTOL) flying
> vehicles, would we still need roads?
>
> The reason I was thinking about it is that I recently finished reading
> Robert J. Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, where the Neanderthal
> society in an alternate universe has developed advanced technology while
> maintaining their hunter-gatherer ways, and although they have flying
> vehicles and helicopters, they never invented roads, or even non-VTOL
> aircraft with their required long clearings for takeoff and landing.  And
> I was wondering how feasible this was -- wouldn't you still need roads for
> shipping heavy items?
>
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