{"id":11827,"date":"2025-11-02T19:14:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T23:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/living-in-ghost-cities-seths-blog\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T19:14:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T23:14:04","slug":"living-in-ghost-cities-seths-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/living-in-ghost-cities-seths-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Living in ghost cities | Seth&#8217;s Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Cities used to die slowly. Ancient Rome, Babylon, Memphis (in Egypt) and others took generations to fade from their peaks. The reasons were easy to see: <\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Shifts in trade routes<\/li>\n<li>Loss of political capital status<\/li>\n<li>Slow environmental changes (silting harbors, soil exhaustion)<\/li>\n<li>Incremental population drift<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now, we can see it happening in a single generation. Rust Belt cities, projects in China, mining towns\u2013they come and they go. The reasons are a bit different:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Economic specialization<\/li>\n<li>Mobility<\/li>\n<li>Speed of technological change<\/li>\n<li>Capital flight<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But I\u2019m not writing about cities here. It\u2019s a useful metaphor for software, online networks and the tools we use to do our jobs and live our digital lives.<\/p>\n<p>Your ability to find a new game for your Amiga, or join a chat with your AOL buddies is mostly gone. I have no idea if it\u2019s possible to log into myspace or second life, and my blog is no longer visible at Typepad. A relentless cycle of creative destruction, fueled by VC churn, technological advances and the network effect means that networks and software are growing faster than ever (an online network can become bigger than many countries in just a few weeks). But as these networks grow, they suck the energy out of the ones that came before.<\/p>\n<p>Most of us, most of the time, are living in a ghost city.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, as in almost all discussions, this is multiplied by a thousand when we add AI to the mix.<\/p>\n<p>There are problems to consider and, perhaps, opportunities for contribution here.<\/p>\n<p>DUMBER: In general, the arc of tools and networks that seek critical mass is to be simpler, easier to get started with and deskilled. The good news is that this gives more people a chance to participate. The bad news is that deskilling the user moves the power to the network creator. In a paint by numbers world, Picasso doesn\u2019t often show up.<\/p>\n<p>WASTE: Those old files, hard-won skills and valuable human networks from the <a href=\"https:\/\/tidbits.com\/2025\/10\/25\/nisus-writer-schrodingers-word-processor\/\">old software stack<\/a> are difficult and expensive to replace or reproduce. We\u2019ve done almost nothing to increase adversarial interoperability and provide ownership and interchange for network users\u2026 because it\u2019s not in the interest of the old network to make it easy for people to leave with their data, and the members of the new networks don\u2019t care\u2013until they become members of old networks.<\/p>\n<p>AMNESIA: Not only do we lose access to our data and our social graph, we lose particular skills and the ability to pass them on to others. The new architects don\u2019t know what we did, and since we\u2019re often starting over, we reproduce past mistakes.<\/p>\n<p>DECREASING VASTNESS: I got my first email address 50 years ago. During that lifetime online, there\u2019s always been room for doubling. The speed of human connection, the size of the network, the bandwidth\u2013it felt infinite, doubling every few years. But we\u2019ve hit our last doubling. We can\u2019t spend twice as much time online. We can\u2019t double the number of people using the networks. We won\u2019t notice if our bandwidth doubles\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Just as the westward expansion of Europeans in North America eventually hit the Pacific Ocean, sooner or later we have to settle in and make where we are <em>better<\/em>, not relentlessly head west. <\/p>\n<p>The system is far more powerful than any individual. When a network or a software stack gains critical mass, there\u2019s not a lot an isolated person can do about it. But just as LEED and and local building codes pushed architecture in a certain direction, organized individuals can create more digital resilience. Email\u2019s persistence is a miracle, but that\u2019s partly because standards bodies kept its API open and thriving. <\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re not stuck in traffic, we are traffic. <\/p>\n<p>Software isn\u2019t just a nerd in a basement writing code. It\u2019s a craft. The UX and UI, the design of the data stack, the culture of the organization that builds and supports it\u2013this is the architecture of our time. Except it\u2019s not Frank Lloyd Wright building a few houses in Buffalo, it\u2019s contagious.<\/p>\n<p class=\"byline\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"date\">November 2, 2025<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script>\n\t\t\/\/ Delaying FB pixel script to load after 4 seconds to not affect on initial page load.\n\t\tsetTimeout( function () {\n\t\t\t!function ( f, b, e, v, n, t, s ) {\n\t\t\t\tif ( f.fbq ) {\n\t\t\t\t\treturn;\n\t\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\tn = f.fbq = function () {\n\t\t\t\t\tn.callMethod ? n.callMethod.apply( n, arguments ) : n.queue.push( arguments )\n\t\t\t\t};\n\t\t\t\tif ( !f._fbq ) {\n\t\t\t\t\tf._fbq = n;\n\t\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\tn.push = n;\n\t\t\t\tn.loaded = !0;\n\t\t\t\tn.version = '2.0';\n\t\t\t\tn.queue = [];\n\t\t\t\tt = b.createElement( e );\n\t\t\t\tt.async = !0;\n\t\t\t\tt.src = v;\n\t\t\t\ts = b.getElementsByTagName( e )[0];\n\t\t\t\ts.parentNode.insertBefore( t, s )\n\t\t\t}( window, document, 'script',\n\t\t\t\t'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js' );\n\t\t\tfbq( 'init', '221651354884486' );\n\t\t\tfbq( 'track', 'PageView' );\n\t\t}, 4000 );\n\t<\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cities used to die slowly. Ancient Rome, Babylon, Memphis (in Egypt) and others took generations to fade from their peaks. The reasons were easy to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}