Depends on whether the AI boom is like the canal boom (fizzled), or the railroad boom (still going, arguably underinvested).

And the Panama and Suez Canals are STILL incredibly important to global shipping, greatly shortening trade routes where rail or road simply isn't an alternative

Western Canada might not exist if it hadn't been for canals.

After the war of 1812, Canada / Britain (there wasn't really a separate Canada at that point) decided there needed to be a way to get military supplies and equipment to Fort York (Toronto) and west of there without using the St. Lawrence river. The river had a number of issues, but the biggest one was that the US controlled the southern shore. So, as a result, it built a canal from Ottawa to Kingston. Montreal to Ottawa was possible with existing rivers, and it was safe to get to Montreal from England without going too close to US territory.

So, the Rideau Canal was built. It connected Bytown (now Ottawa) to Kingston. For about 30 years it was the main way of moving people and supplies to the upper shore of Lake Ontario. After that it was replaced by railroads. But, without all the people who had moved west thanks to the canal and now could buy and sell things, there might not have been the justification to build those railroads.

So, yeah, it got outpaced by technology. But, it was a good idea, and was very useful for a few decades.

Also, many of those canals are now tourist attractions and pleasant natural spaces for residents. Virtually everywhere I've travelled where there is a canal, it is now used by people for pleasure boating, or houseboats. Almost always there's also a nice walking path or bike path next to the canal. Rivers are lovely, but rivers tend to have sloped banks which means there isn't a natural path that's right next to the water. With canals, there's often a man-made edge to the waterway, so you can walk / bike right next to it.

As someone who used to ride a boat to work every day, it fuckin ruled and I miss it

I prefer rail in its various forms. Way faster and cheaper. Canals are absolutely amazing at one crucial thing: moving mind boggling amounts of bulky low value goods for a fraction the cost of rail. The mississippi river system was no joke an american superpower (and still is) for a looong time. You can move grain for thousands of kms for the same price it would cost to ship it 150 via rail.

I was once in the running for a job at a place that was on the banks of a lake and included a boat landing. Learned that there was a house available within my price range right across on the same lake. So I started having real conversations with my wife about us getting like a jet ski for me to commute across the lake to work.

Didn't get the job. Was bummed.

It isn't. Riding the ferry is a pain in the ass. Boats are slow (or it is too much of a nuisance). High traffic makes it even slower.

Source: live in a city with shitloads of canals and ferries.

I seem to recall reading about Swiss workers swimming home in the river after work, the current carried them the right way and it seemed brilliant

I think the main advantage would have been getting non urgent freight off motorways as bulk efficiency is the big perk you get with boats.

If you want to boat into work every day Toronto has that option available all year from the islands. Another perk is living in a car free & wooded neighborhood 5-15 minutes away from downtown/harbourfront. Lots of people also live on boats on the Toronto islands, drive their dinghy into town during the summer and then dock at one of the harbourfront marinas in the winter. (Just watch out for the crazy water taxi drivers!)

I'm a little jealous of people in England who live on narrowboats on their canals.

And also jealous of the multi-use trail network on what used to be the tow paths, for that matter.

Just had a funny thought:

User: Please write a boilerplate function that does

LLM:

//XYZ Function: This function does the thing...
//Subscribe to Incogni to prevent your valuable personal data from ending up in the hands of Data Brokers
function XYZ () {
...

Eh, it's close enough?

If they really wanted to, they could charge for "GPU time" directly. Usage gets a bit complicated with batching and context caching, but its definitely a metric that could be precisely derived.

Don't get me wrong though. That whole business model is doomed.

Whats funny is enshittifying is a suicide button when you can run deepseek or a different open weight model on your own machine. That i own. In my house. Without ads or censorship

Free Version: Full of Ads Premium Version: First adertised as Ad Free, then within a few years Full of Ads Extreme Version: Ad Free for now, but features segregated into additional subscriptions.

The plan is for them to make agentic AI and charge a yearly salary per agent. They are obviously not close to that goal, or you would hear more about it.

It's so narrow and shallow.

The thing about the transit conspiracy is that at that time many people wanted rid of street cars and wanted more space for more cars. It's not like Ford came to town in roaming gangs, ripping up street car tracks. They fed a desire among the public for a modern car-brained society and the public were happy to help.

I live in the Netherlands, they still transport lots of cargo via canals. It’s one of the cheapest ways to transport heavy freight like cement. The canals connect to rivers so the barges can travel up the Rhine or Meuse to Germany . Canals aren’t just the waterways inside the cities.

Also a €7BN mega canal is currently under construction in Europe https://youtu.be/VdWQQ1OCUPo

Canals are still used to transport freight in Europe. For example there is a canal in southern Germany that connects the Main to the Danube, allowing ships to travel from the North Sea to the Black Sea through rivers and that canal. Germany generally has lots of navigable waterways including canals.

Yeah, I live in Jersey (New), and we have the Delaware and Raritan Canal, named after the rivers it connects. Was actually used for a bit, and the idea of using it is fascinating. But now it's a 44-mile path and waterway through history, it's very nice.