My sister worked at Summit Shasta in Daily City (south of SF) as a teacher and then administrator. I can say that the school itself was quite a success, with a lot of local, low income students getting into Berkley, Carnegie Mellon, etc.
Now did the CZI need to invest $100m to build that platform and could it scale, maybe not, but I wouldn't write the whole thing off as a failure.
I'd prefer banning personal cars (within city limits), as those take up a massive amount of space, with regards to parking.
Taxis on the other hand, have usage rates of ~50 percent. Whereas personal cars, parked on the side of the road, are only being used ~5 % of the time, and the other 95% is wasted.
Personal cars spend most of their time parked on the side of the road using up valuable real-estate.
Transportation services like Uber or taxis use the road to move people around and don't take up as much space as personal cars. Public transit and bikes are much more space and energy efficient, though don't get the investment they need to work for most people.
US cities are optimized for sprawl and personal car centric transportation, which makes it annoying that new ideas like these scooter startups (which are actually pretty great when you try them) are blocked by officials in favor of a system that is expensive and sub-optimal for the health of society.
I don't see this program going through. The government there (any everywhere) is constantly trying crazy schemes like this with little results to show.
Instead of worrying about what China is doing, those of us in the US should be worried what our own government and private corporations are up to.
I went from no Mandarin skills, to managing teams in the language over a few years. Here are 3 things I learned along the way about language learning:
1. Pick a method and stick with it - at any given time I was doing flash cards to practice vocabulary, working through a grammar book, and listening to a language learning podcast, Chinesepod. Every now and then, I tried new methods, but generally, once something worked I stuck with it until I felt it wasn't working anymore.
2. Habit - Every morning I woke up and completed my flashcards. Every day I reviewed my flashcards at least once during my break at work. Most days I listened to an episode of Chinesepod on my commute to or from work. Most nights I spent 30-60 minutes going through my book and reviewing my notecards/podcast notes. I had a schedule and stuck to it most days (though there was wiggle room when things got busy).
3. Don't be afraid to sounds stupid - Whenever I had an opportunity, I would try to converse with someone. Even though I butchered the language for at least 2 years, I got a lot of feedback and practice with pronunciation and tones that I would have missed if I just stuck to reading my books and practicing speaking to myself.
To sum it all up: pick a method and practice daily. You can do this anywhere with little investment beyond 60 minutes of uninterrupted study per day.
From the 1920-2014, technology progressed and made many jobs irrelevant, just as improvements in robotics have put a lot of people out of work. So if technology puts people out of work, then our unemployment should have increased since the 20's. Let's take a look at some data from The U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This doesn't seem to be the case. As people lose jobs, new types of jobs are created, just as they were in the past. The job market will continue to evolve as the world changes.
Why? Because you will be able to get such a robot for practically nothing and it will fill all your material needs without you having to pay any one any more money.
That's right. Head for the hills. The world is coming to an end.
An unprecedented wave of prosperity is coming to destroy us.
The only way this could be a problem is if robotic labor becomes super cheap, while at the same time becoming super expensive. The picture usually painted is the overlords will have it and those underfoot won't be able to buy it. Unlike any other technology revolution, ever.
The reality is that even the poorest sap unable to operate a robot will be handed a $500 self-assembling house that grows all its own food, collects all its own energy, and cleans itself. Imagine the untold suffering that awaits us.
Even for someone who personally suspects that the market will always find sufficient use for the displaced labor, it seems a little silly to ignore the possibility that it won't simply on account of it not having happened yet.
Now did the CZI need to invest $100m to build that platform and could it scale, maybe not, but I wouldn't write the whole thing off as a failure.