XPost: rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.sf.science   
   From: droleary@8usenet2013.subsume.com   
      
   In article ,   
    Chrysi Cat  wrote:   
      
   > Unless I _really_ miss Bernard's meaning here   
      
   You do.  Don't let the limited thinking of people like J. Clarke have an   
   influence on you.  It's best just to drop them into your killfile.   
      
   > Everything is in its little pod.   
      
   No, a "pod" is just a way to push the concept of containerization   
   further out in the supply chain.  Right now, it pretty much stops at   
   retail locations.  At that point, everything is unboxed and shelved,   
   thereby requiring manual effort to pull things from the shelf   
   "container" to put them in our cart container and move them to the   
   checkout so they can go into a bag container to be placed into a car   
   container to move them to our home container for placement on our own   
   shelf containers.  The more steps in there that you can remove/automate,   
   the cheaper and easier the whole process becomes.   
      
   > Your 'home' itself may be a pod.   
      
   It may be.  Mobile homes are pods.  Modular homes start as pods.  We   
   live in a world when it is usually easier to leave our homes than take   
   them with us, but that doesn't mean things couldn't be different.   
      
   > Everything is somehow point-to-poing despite the fact that he's   
   > now turned every transportation event, whether living or inanimate, into   
   > cargo shipping and as FedEx can attest, that's best done via   
   > hub-and-spoke, which his system doesn't seem to be.   
      
   Any fractal configuration will scale, and many solutions are better than   
   simple hub/spoke when you have to deal with existing infrastructure   
   issues (e.g., street grids and left turn delays).   
      
   > If you order a   
   > single unit of milk, it gets packed at the farm, never sees a warehouse,   
   > and is delivered to your door--apparently with nothing else in the   
   > shipment.   
      
   Depends on how the supply chain works out.  It may very well *be* the   
   case that you want to order direct from the farm for whatever reason   
   (ultimate freshness, or maybe one specific cow they have has been   
   genetically modified to produce a medicine you need in its milk).  But   
   the odds are pretty good that the logistics of processing orders will   
   still leave room for a few middle men to add some value.  Stores will   
   still be more popular than factory outlets, for variety/alternatives if   
   nothing else.   
      
   > Yeah, he'd _need_ all retail and commercial buildings gone in order to   
   > make room for all the extra roadspace/railspace all the   
   > crawlers-including-what-we-now-call-train-flatcars would need.   
      
   That makes no sense.  Stores *now* overstock trying to anticipate   
   demand.  Roads *now* are overcrowded by inefficient travel.  It should   
   be obvious that a world with a better supply chain needs fewer   
   resources, not more.   
      
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