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you are absolutely right, it's a super-bubble and Cory Doctorow (among others) is trying with all his might to make it pop.
Bu they are actually 3D printing houses, and food ! Not so common but the technology exists.
@masayume @thomasfuchs This is pitting my instinct to avoid AI BS and my instinct to avoid Cory Doctorow BS against each other.
@masayume @thomasfuchs 3d printing houses is in the domain of “technically possible” and has some interesting advantages, but i have my doubts that the process will ever become more economical than traditional building methods. i’m not sure it even makes a case for itself outside of “ooh neat”
@timmy @masayume @thomasfuchs that's probably the whole point about these promises from tech bros: technically possible, not really worth it.
@gdupont @masayume @thomasfuchs i expect that is true. The reason there’s a company that can print a house is that there was a lot of VC money available to people who were playing in that space at one point. So if you can make a case for how this might be the next big thing, you just have to plan your exit for before scaling the tech points out the shortcomings
@masayume @thomasfuchs As far as I saw those "3D-printed" houses are solid concrete construction and very expensive, because that much concrete is pretty expensive. Also shit for maintenance, can't easily do wiring/piping because it can only be run either on layers and laid-over, and thus embedded, or run between drywall and the concrete. Can of course drill through but that's a long drilling distance!
We were promised cheap housing as a result but now it's more expensive than ever and being snatched up with this bullshit built-to-rent trend, with entire developments springing up marketing their new housing to rental firms with the hopes they'll be bought at even-more-inflated prices purely to rent, meanwhile often sitting empty because the prices are unafforable to so many, and those who can afford are the ones running the scams to begin with. Still waiting to see what inevitably bursts that bubble explosively, because surely CNN or whoever else will blame millenials or "the 99%" or whatever the hell scapegoat for the bad investment choices of others.
I'm just so salty about the housing in particular as I watch my town being transformed into an empty husk of a hellhole where my rent costs keep rising because new units are being built with higher rent, even though my unit hasn't got nearly the treatment to deserve those kinds of price increases. And even though I can afford it, I have friends living here who can't, and are frightened with nothing else they can really do. They already live in some of the cheapest housing in a "low-cost-of-living" area. So what do they do now?
@KayOhtie @masayume @thomasfuchs
About the printing of buildings:
1. That's useless for earthquake-prone areas, because non-reinforced concrete is fragile.
2. There are dozens of proven methods of industrialised building, and the fact that they aren't being used isn't a lack of appropriate technology, is because building many housing units very fast is a bad business for private real estate owners.
@KayOhtie @masayume @thomasfuchs we were literally building entire apartment blocks in one week 50 years ago, the technological side of this problem is solved.
And the reason why we aren't doing it now, even with a need for more than 600k extra houses, is because the industry that did it back then was deliberately dismantled to protect businesses from competition.