Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Opening paragraphs............


The Skirball Cultural Center sits just off the 405 Freeway, on the northern edge of Los Angeles.  Built atop the thin spin of the Santa Monica Mountains, the Center offers spectacular views in nearly every direction, except for the freeway below—which is bumper-to-bumper for miles on end.
     Of course it is.
     In 2018, for the sixth straight year, Los Angeles earned the dubious honor of being the most gridlocked metropolis in the world, where the average driver spends two-and-a-half working weeks a year trapped in traffic.  Yet help may be on its way.  In May 2018, the Skirball Center was ground zero for Uber Elevate, the ridesharing company's radical plan for solving this traffic:  their second annual flying car conference.

-Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler,  The Future Is Faster Than You Think:  How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives

Ed. Note:  For what it's worth, a traffic jam in our fair city is when the traffic signal cycles twice before you get through it.  It is likely that we all define the "quality of life" differently.

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