I saw “The Internship” recently. In it two guys in their mid-forties are trying to get hired at a high tech company. They have to compete against twenty year tech-savvy geniuses to win a job position. They triumph because they are in a movie but it’s sad to think of all the real people finding themselves in that situation. The young people aren’t much better off. Even though a lot of them are very smart and hard working, many can’t get a job. They also have the stress of the loans for their over-priced college degrees. Credentials they couldn’t do without to have any chance of success or so they have been told many times. I don’t think this the best way for us to organize ourselves to provide for our needs. I suggest we take a look at the cooperative interactions that could be set up using smart phones. I can see setting up systems similar to the primitive bicycle based food delivery system that has been used in India for decades. It gets a warm lunch from home to working men every working day. A guy on a bike comes to the house late morning and collects a metal lunch bucket that the wife has packed. The bucket has a row of dots on the side perhaps six of various colors. The bucket is put on a bamboo pole and carried with a bunch of other buckets to a central meeting point. The buckets are collected and switched according to the colored dots. They end up being carried by a guy who can deliver all the ones that go to specific job site or area. It happens very quickly, efficiently and on a vast scale.
Smart phones could have apps designed that would allow us to do things for each other and be fairly compensated. Just as there are now micro-transactions that people use to buy small things there could be a system of tracking favors and trades. In many cases you would be paid by someone doing the exact same task you had done for someone else. Bought a bag of cat food when they had run out. Delivered a truckload of boxes full of the things that had been bought and switched around like the Indian lunch pails. It would not be a money making enterprise. I don’t know how to set up keeping track of the relative value of things but I’m sure other people that would like to try this out will eventually help. I can see that it could be very easy to set up small and make a start. It looks to me that ride and food sharing would be reasonable things to try. I don’t see a limit to what needs could be taken care of ultimately. It would also provide a huge opportunity to meet people and maybe even be the seed for real communities. That’s one meaning of the word “pod” in Pod Cities.
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