Intellectual Bonsai

For artists, the size of the studio dictates the size of the work. For musicians, the place where volume is not an issue dictates what is dynamically possible. People that spend lots of time in cars generally read less if at all, and get all their information from TV, or social media where information is bite-sized. In some sense, the expansive interstate highway system, initiated during the Eisenhower administration, took time away from lots of things they used to do because attention was siphoned by driving. The network was large and created massive growth, but constrained or at least re-directed what we spent our time on.

The size of the pot determines the size of the bonsai. Imposed constraints, either willingly or unwillingly make you smaller than what nature may have prescribed. No one likes cold and wet climates, but it forced people to busy their minds. Once AI becomes the base upon which future societies grow, that will then be the size of the vessel that will determine the size of the intellect. But it might be more like Lotus Feet, a strange non-purposeful cultural dwarfing, a side effect of stanching the natural limits for social status. New city "zones", contrived only for the purpose idealized "growth", can't be a Silicon Valley type of scenius as Renaissance cities were. They are more like Lotus Feet.