Container drivers/Space Cowboy

[hirez]

I'm most of the way through an interesting history of the shipping container and its effects on trade, prices, globalisation and all that malarkey. Inspired by this, it seems to me that there's a deal of SF where the universe is assumed to run on a pre-Napoleonic basis, and that's likely a bit rubbish.

I mean, either you've still got big boys fireworks, which means little more than grown up slashdotters queueing for a go in Branson's sub-orbital pickle jar. Or you've got a handwave drive and it's business as usual for Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk, other than the truck drivers having to negotiate the picket lines of angry physicists outside the depot.

Assuming interplanetary trade or shipping isn't a ludicrous idea in the first place.

Hm. I think I've just re-invented Ken McLeod's 'Engines of light' books.

Best not do that.

Comments

[hirez.livejournal.com]

That's excellent.

It wasn't that long ago that one used to see the superstructure of wooden railway wagons in the corners of fields. Now that they've either rotted away or been thieved by preservationists, they've not been replaced with containers. Odd.

[jhaelan.livejournal.com]

Isn't Google turning them into self-contained data centres? Did have a link..

[hirez.livejournal.com]

They are/were, as were/are Sun. Generators come in the same form-factor now, too.

Looking at the photos from here (http://limasite85.us/index.html) it seems like the US military were packaging radar gear in something very similarly-sized by the late sixties.

[jhaelan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link!