[militiaman21]

I'd love to see a cultural movement towards anti-urban, anti-density enabled by technology. You're not alone :)

In my view we would use technology to empower people to form stronger community bonds. The author mentions food industry tech, and that's a major part of my vision also. I think we need to move towards a locally grown seasonal food source instead of shipping food to all corners of the globe just because we can. That's just one piece to the puzzle though, there's obviously a lot more planning that would need to go into it.

[nickpinkston]

Though I would expect that from "militiaman21" ;-)

However, the local food movement needs to talk more about yield. It doesn't appear that humanity can sustain itself this way - small communities perhaps, but it's a first world luxury.

Also, "food miles" is a BS metric, the biggest energy sink is fertilizer (by far!). Ammonium Nitrate is made by fossil fuel + air - you are mostly eating energy from natural gas, not the sun, it would seem.

[scarmig]

Don't the fancy arduino hydroponic setups have pretty exciting yield?

Admittedly, it's too expensive to set up to be used commercially for anything except... well, high-margin cash crops, let us say. But those costs should go down.