In the run-up to Christmas, even the most ‘correct’, pedantic and nerdish of us become dreamers, and those who do not, like to hear stories about other people’s dreams. That was probably why my last year’s real-life tale about Manea Colony – a peculiar Utopian community in 19th-century Cambridgeshire – triggered considerable reader response.
This time we’ll have a look at yet another – much more modern – Utopian techno project.
Let us begin with a protracted, yet relevant, quote:
“Pedestrians should be loved.
“Pedestrians make up the greater part of mankind. Not only that, the finer part. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built towns; put up sky-scrapers; installed drainage and plumbing; paved the streets and lit them with electric lights. It was they who invented printing; thought up gunpowder; built bridges across rivers; deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs; introduced the safety razor; abolished slavery, and discovered that 114 tasty,...