Everything Silicon Valley touches turns to gold for them and shit for everyone else. They extract wealth and replace it with ash.
A block down Baiitsu, toward the port, stood a featureless ten-story office building in ugly yellow brick. Its windows were dark now, but a faint glow from the roof was visible if you craned your neck. An unlit neon sign near the main entrance offered CHEAP HOTEL under a cluster of ideograms. If the place had another name, Case didn’t know it; it was always referred to as Cheap Hotel. You reached it through an alley off Baiitsu, where an elevator waited at the foot of a transparent shaft. The elevator, like Cheap Hotel, was an af terthought, lashed to the building with bamboo and epoxy. Case climbed into the plastic cage and used his key, an unmarked length of rigid magnetic tape.
Case had rented a coffin here, on a weekly basis, since he’d arrived in Chiba, but he’d never slept in Cheap Hotel. He slept in cheaper places.
The elevator smelled of perfume and cigarettes; the sides of the cage was scratched and thumb-smudged. As it passed the fifth floor, he saw the lights of Ninsei. He drummed his fingers against the pistolgrip as the cage slowed with a gradual hiss. As always, it came to a full stop with a violent jolt, but he was ready for it. He stepped out into the courtyard that served the place as some combination of lobby and lawn.
Centered in the square carpet of green plastic turf, a Japanese teenager sat behind a C-shaped console, reading a textbook. The white fiberglass coffins were racked in a framework of industrial scaffolding. Six tiers of coffins, ten coffins on a side. Case nodded in the boy’s direction and limped across the plastic grass to the nearest ladder. The compound was roofed with cheap laminated matting that rattled in a strong wind and leaked when it rained, but the coffins were reasonably difficult to open without a key.
The expansion-grate catwalk vibrated with his weight as he edged his way along the third tier to Number 92. The coffins were three meters long, the oval hatches a meter wide and just under a meter and a half tall. He fed his key into the slot and waited for verification from the house computer. Magnetic bolts thudded reassuringly and the hatch rose vertically with a creak of springs. Fluorescents flickered on as he crawled in, pulling the hatch shut behind him and slapping the panel that activated the manual latch. There was nothing in Number 92 but a standard Hitachi pocket computer and a small white styrofoam cooler chest.– William Gibson, Neuromancer
Fucking guy I thought you were quoting the article
I think I sort of was. I think the people in the article read that passage and thought it sounded like a great idea.
There was nothing in Number 92 but a standard Hitachi pocket computer and a small white styrofoam cooler chest.
Its been decades since I read this. Doesn’t he steal the tiny bit of RAM out of the Hitachi computer?
I think so? I admit I just quickly scanned the first chapter for this part. It’s been decades since I’ve read it.
Those are called prison cells.
Prison cells are larger.
I’ve been in a few up in Canada.
There’s one in a city near Toronto that is basically a series of narrow hallways of cells with built-in bunk beds.
The floor space is the length of the bed and depth of a toilet -maybe 10 square feet of floor and 20 of concrete bed.
There were 3 people housed in each cell.
That wasn’t even the most overcrowded one I had the pleasure of visiting.
Some are definitely more spacious and actually feel less dystopian than the pods shown here.
I’ve stayed in hostels like this for months when traveling. Not everyone has the same requirements.
Of course, if San Fracisco approved tearing down existing smaller buildings to actually build large apartment buildings, the place would be a lot more affordable
Hostels are temporary, and fun.
So are tents (allegedly).
They both provide shelter.
Neither is a long term solution to housing. And neither provide personal security.
These meat boxes are exactly what some prisons look like. Albeit with a better paint job.
Up here in Canada a recent report stated there are about 5 times the number of vacant homes as there are homeless. Yet, somehow, there’s still a housing crisis.
Yeah but you don’t have to stay in that room. You have freedom.
Sounds great until you are sick.
In fairness, if you’re sleeping in a 3.5ft x 4ft x 6.5ft cube with a curtain for a door, you’re not having sex anyway…
I did as a tourist. It’s called going to a proper hotel for one night.
People have sex in youth hostels though
This has “Sorry to Bother You” energy
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