Cambodia's appeal: do you hope it goes hi-tech or stays simple?

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techietraveller84
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Cambodia's appeal: do you hope it goes hi-tech or stays simple?

Post by techietraveller84 »

Read an article today titled, "The case for ... making low-tech 'dumb' cities instead of 'smart' ones," and it got me thinking about the pros and cons of modernization.

Being in the "smart city" tech business, I'm always keeping an eye out for opportunities. Been looking at Cambodia which seems to have a big appetite for development and technology, or at least the government does.

Cambodia has tremendous charm (and challenge) in its current state of development though. I imagine those of you who live there now moved to Cambodia in some part to escape the modernity and fast paced lifestyle in your home country.

My question then is, do expats and locals want development and ever increasing technology, or prefer to keep things simple?

If you want to read the article, it's in The Guardian, here: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2020 ... smart-ones
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Re: Cambodia's appeal: do you hope it goes hi-tech or stays simple?

Post by Spigzy »

That's a huge, huge question and I don't think possible to cover all angles across industries, etc. So will just tackle the one.

One sweeping change I see happening is folks out west switching to technology for transport, and this I can't get my head around. Both my son & daughter in the UK have no interest whatsoever to learn to drive or ride a motorbike; everything is ride hailing & public transport and about creating as low a carbon footprint as possible. With all the electric variations coming out and hydrogen based cars or whatever future tech is coming, I still see a general move to transport being a service rather than something you do yourself, and that's where I don't understand the new generation coming through. I can't think of anything more fulfilling than the first day I got my driving license and being able to go wherever the hell I wanted on a whim - a feeling I still enjoy to this day; getting out of a chauffeur driven car and back on two wheels was one of the best things I did. It is a bit of a shit for formal (suit & tie) meetings in the monsoon season, but those are becoming few & far between, and two wheels gives me the absolute freedom to take whichever route I want to work without fear of being stuck in a traffic jam, or waiting for a driver to do whatever stupid stuff drivers and/or tuk-tuks do. I'm door to door from the farthest reaches of Phnom Penh to the other in 30 mins tops, and that extra 1-2 hours a day I get to spend with my son is utterly irreplaceable.

I'm no Mad Max, but for sure I will not be giving up the V8 I have back in the UK, nor the V-Twin I have here - for all the technology solutions in the world I could not give up freedom on a piece of machine that makes me feel alive and gives me the freedom to go wherever I want. Similarly for all the modern vehicles in the world, there's something about old fashioned petrol/gasoline engines that contribute to feeling alive. I had a go in a hybrid a couple of years back, and it was utterly soulless. Did it get me from A to B? Absolutely. Kind to the planet? Yes (mostly... that universal battery raw material issue,etc). But I'm finding myself more and more like a grumpy Jeremy Clarkson, the machine needs SOUL.

[next double paragraph opinion a la Spigzy: bacon, stay tuned!]
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Re: Cambodia's appeal: do you hope it goes hi-tech or stays simple?

Post by Phnom Poon »

bah keep it for the racetrack and road trips
cars have no place in cities

what is meant by 'smart city', can you give some examples?
or is it code for 'surveillance city'

.

monstra mihi bona!
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Re: Cambodia's appeal: do you hope it goes hi-tech or stays simple?

Post by AzalKH »

Spigzy wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 10:14 am That's a huge, huge question and I don't think possible to cover all angles across industries, etc. So will just tackle the one.

One sweeping change I see happening is folks out west switching to technology for transport, and this I can't get my head around. Both my son & daughter in the UK have no interest whatsoever to learn to drive or ride a motorbike; everything is ride hailing & public transport and about creating as low a carbon footprint as possible. With all the electric variations coming out and hydrogen based cars or whatever future tech is coming, I still see a general move to transport being a service rather than something you do yourself, and that's where I don't understand the new generation coming through. I can't think of anything more fulfilling than the first day I got my driving license and being able to go wherever the hell I wanted on a whim - a feeling I still enjoy to this day; getting out of a chauffeur driven car and back on two wheels was one of the best things I did. It is a bit of a shit for formal (suit & tie) meetings in the monsoon season, but those are becoming few & far between, and two wheels gives me the absolute freedom to take whichever route I want to work without fear of being stuck in a traffic jam, or waiting for a driver to do whatever stupid stuff drivers and/or tuk-tuks do. I'm door to door from the farthest reaches of Phnom Penh to the other in 30 mins tops, and that extra 1-2 hours a day I get to spend with my son is utterly irreplaceable.

I'm no Mad Max, but for sure I will not be giving up the V8 I have back in the UK, nor the V-Twin I have here - for all the technology solutions in the world I could not give up freedom on a piece of machine that makes me feel alive and gives me the freedom to go wherever I want. Similarly for all the modern vehicles in the world, there's something about old fashioned petrol/gasoline engines that contribute to feeling alive. I had a go in a hybrid a couple of years back, and it was utterly soulless. Did it get me from A to B? Absolutely. Kind to the planet? Yes (mostly... that universal battery raw material issue,etc). But I'm finding myself more and more like a grumpy Jeremy Clarkson, the machine needs SOUL.

[next double paragraph opinion a la Spigzy: bacon, stay tuned!]
Wouldn't mind seeing the car and truck side of transport becoming a service, and instead the majority riding various forms of motorbikes. At 1-2 people per bike you're using space far more efficiently than any western road legal car (though I guess you could also bring up the 2 adult, 2-3 kids on a bike here to counter the extended family squished into a single car), which leads to smoother flowing roads, which in turn leads to less pollution. If cars were all electric/hybrid then you'd cut a serious amount of pollution.
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Re: Cambodia's appeal: do you hope it goes hi-tech or stays simple?

Post by Freightdog »

My big bugbear is people believing that tech will replace everything. Thinking, planning, precaution, patience, courtesy, reasoning among others. All the basic human traits that make us variably tolerable among ourselves will slowly become nothing.

Now, we have a tech savvy society that seemingly is learning how not to interact without tech. We can SMS, video message, etc, but face to face interaction is bordering on dysfunctional. We’re seeing this in the flightdeck with a small but growing segment of the younger generation unable to think without following an exact prescribed process, or even communicate their lack of understanding of a developing situation. It’s slowly moving outside their scope of development.
By the time that tech has sufficiently evolved to be less ‘Digital’. and more ‘Analogue’ like us fallible monkeys, our own behaviour norms will be utterly unrecognizable from how they are today. Not evolved. Changed. We’ll learn to be warm meat machines based on how the programming requires us to interact.
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Re: Cambodia's appeal: do you hope it goes hi-tech or stays simple?

Post by BR549 »

I would rather my daughters be driving to school in a car than get fucking killed by a fucking school bus because of some propaganda bullshit about their carbon footprint some adult crammed in their head like it was year zero carbon footprint time.
Cars not in cities???
What a joke...
'smart city'...
Need to solve basic issues like garbage...electricity..water.. sewage...erosion.
Building inspections..roads..bridges...
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Re: Cambodia's appeal: do you hope it goes hi-tech or stays simple?

Post by Spigzy »

BR549 wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 12:25 pm I would rather my daughters be driving to school in a car than get fucking killed by a fucking school bus because of some propaganda bullshit about their carbon footprint some adult crammed in their head like it was year zero carbon footprint time.
I tend to agree with this also - I for one would not let my son ride a motorbike here at 16 without all the training and proper tests I had to do back in the UK. Likewise his first car isn't going to be a 0-60mph in 3 seconds job either - you only really learn to take it easy on the throttle/accelerator as you wise up; any 16 year old is utterly ill equipped to operate a vehicle safely, too many hormones knocking around. Again a lot to be said for keeping such performance vehicles on a race track - but entirely unfeasible to say cities shouldn't have cars or motorbikes; that's not going to go away until everyone is floating around with their own compact jet pack!

The other point on this one is (a) I wouldn't trust my son to ride himself at 16 to school on a pocket rocket, and (b) I similarly wouldn't trust "Samnang" to drop him off either - it's the one thing again that I prefer to put my own life in my own hands, and that which is precious to me, also in my own hands. Whilst I ride a motorbike in town, I'd always take a car with the family if traveling on a national road. With all these new folks coming through - I see and hear the environmental impact of not owning/driving a car, I get it - but like BR549 I prefer to not be scraped off the road with my family because "Samnang", in his zero emission Tesla summoned via some app, thought it was a good idea to overtake on a blind corner, steering wheel on the wrong side of the car and talking to his 'buk-mak' on his phone.
:hattip:

Now, about that bacon ...
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Re: Cambodia's appeal: do you hope it goes hi-tech or stays simple?

Post by fax »

BR549 wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 12:25 pm get fucking killed by a fucking school bus because of some propaganda bullshit
Why are you so angry? You’re writing on a thread about Cambodia’s technical advancement. It’s not very pleasant to read your Tourette’s induced ticks... There must be a better way to get your point across.
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Re: Cambodia's appeal: do you hope it goes hi-tech or stays simple?

Post by Duncan »

If we were to live in a hi-tec / smart city , there would be no need to drive to school . The way i see it, way into the future is every kids home would be their classroom, linked together with other kids and the teacher by hi-speed fibre optic video system.

I think we are nearly there already.
Cambodia,,,, Don't fall in love with her.
Like the spoilt child she is, she will not be happy till she destroys herself from within and breaks your heart.
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Re: Cambodia's appeal: do you hope it goes hi-tech or stays simple?

Post by Kuroneko »

Freightdog wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 12:19 pm My big bugbear is people believing that tech will replace everything. Thinking, planning, precaution, patience, courtesy, reasoning among others. All the basic human traits that make us variably tolerable among ourselves will slowly become nothing.
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