The TechMobility Podcast

Autonomy, Brainwave Cars, Chimneys, and Housing Strategy

TechMobility Productions Inc. Season 4 Episode 15

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Autonomy is having a second act, and not everyone is ready for it. We open with Nissan—a brand that once led with the Leaf—now aiming to leapfrog rivals with a hands‑off, eyes‑on system by 2028, even as core models age and Infiniti searches for a pulse. We explain why bold software roadmaps can’t paper over weak product strategy, how legal gray zones and weather still hem in robotaxis, and where autonomy is paying off first: long‑haul trucking across the Sun Belt.

From there, we dive into a Detroit startup that embeds EEG‑style sensors in headrests to detect drowsiness, seizures, or blackouts before drivers notice. The safety upside is real, but so are the tradeoffs. We examine cost targets that make or break adoption, the line between helpful alerts and the “nanny car,” and the privacy guardrails needed so biosignals don’t become an insurance or employer data mine. If this tech succeeds, it will be because opt‑in design, on‑device processing, and strict deletion policies arrive with the hardware.

Then, a plot twist from the past: chimney sweeps are back in London. High energy prices, wood‑burning stoves, and concerns about grid resilience have revived a 500‑year‑old trade—with drones, thermal cameras, and industrial vacuums replacing soot‑covered climbs. We weigh the resilience benefits against public‑health costs, including PM2.5 exposure, and explain why cleaner fuels and annual sweeps matter for households that use fireplaces as backup heat.

Finally, we address housing affordability through a jobs lens. New master‑planned cities promise mixed‑income neighborhoods, smarter zoning, and built‑in transit, but they work only if employers show up. We explore a more immediate path: revitalizing existing towns with mid‑skill industries, better broadband, modular infill, and zoning that places people close to work and services. Technology can accelerate change, but only strategy turns it into value.

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Nissan’s EV Stumble And Autonomy Push

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I'm Ken Chester. On the Docket. How your car headrests may be measuring your brain waves, while London's chimney sweeps are enjoying a resurgence. And maybe, just maybe, America needs some new cities. To join the conversation by asking a question, sharing an opinion, or suggesting an idea for future discussion, call or text the Tech Mobility Hotline, that number, 872-222-9793, or you can email the show directly if you wish. Talk at Techmobility.show. From the TechMobility News Desk. Recent story in automotive news. Headline. I'll tell you. Nissan right now is in the midst of a battle at its core. Its sales are down, its products are old, and they're behind the eight ball. They pioneered one of the first electrics, pure electrics in the industry back in 2011 with the launch of the Leaf. It was a pure electric. Nobody else was selling a pure electric at that time. Bear in mind, this is way before the breakthroughs in battery chemistry and the advances in materials and all sorts of pieces that make up the EV industry today. Nissan was first. And yeah, the Leaf didn't have much range. It had a hundred miles, which was like, why? Why bother? But they were out there. Nissan managed to squander that lead over time. And now they're even their core products are struggling. They used to build a full-size pickup truck called the Titan. And it was a good truck, but it didn't catch on. They discontinued it. Nissan was also in the commercial van business, the full-size van business at one time on that same platform. And it built full-size commercial vans in the United States for a minute. They're out of that business too. They're trying to bring back the X-TERA, which, if you don't remember, was kind of a funky kind of crossover, was sort of rugged in a weird sort of way, kind of narrow. They sold it for a while, they don't sell it now. I bring all this up because Nissan has not overcome its primary challenges in the marketplace. Yet they are trying to leapfrog Tesla with a self-driving system, and they do have one, but I'm just skeptical if this is the best use of their money right now. The article says that the Japanese automaker is developing a hands-off, eyes-on system modeled after Tesla supervised full self-driving with no geographic restrictions. And I wonder what that means. That means I wonder if it could function, I don't know, in case of a blackout. Ask Guemo about that. We covered that last week. Nissan expects the first vehicles with its artificial intelligence-powered next generation propilot system to initially arrive in Japan and North America. Well, 2028 is a peculiar year because there are other automakers, for it to name one, that is expecting to have hands-free self-driving systems in the marketplace that model year. Nissan's not alone. So whatever Nissan is planning for that without compelling product, it may not be enough. Because as always, the big boys never stand still. Nobody's waiting around for Nissan to leapfrog anybody. Everybody's going full steam ahead. And I think what we're seeing is autonomy 2.0. Ten years ago, 2018, 2019, towards the end of the last decade, there was a big push towards autonomous vehicles. Everybody thought that we would be all autonomous by now. We'd have robotaxis all over the country by now. All of that would be kind of an average thing. And while we do have autonomous robotaxis predominantly in San Francisco and Austin and Phoenix, it's not nationwide. It's growing slowly. It's still having some early T you know teeth-cutting issues, like the blackout we talked about last week with Waymo, of all people. And they're considered the gold standard. But yet a blackout disabled their vehicles because they could not navigate intersections that no longer had working traffic lights. And the vehicles didn't know what to do and they stopped. Here's something else to consider. We do not currently have federal laws that regard full autonomous driving relative to passenger vehicles. Waymo, Tesla, these two companies, they're operating on a waiver from the government. This is not law, this is a waiver within geofence and very specific rules that they're following right now. It's not ready for prime time nationwide. And it's still too many questions. How are these, if they get in mass at volume, going to deal with the rest of us? We're still driving. And what about inclement weather? If a blackout could knock out Waymo vehicles, what does an ice storm do? What does a snowstorm do? What does high winds do? Like we get out here in Iowa. Dust storms, what does that do? I got a lot of questions. And I'm I'm concerned for Nissan because this is not where they need to be worried about right now. They just recently reintroduced the leaf with better mileage. But the Ariya, which I thought was a way better vehicle, which was an EV. They stopped making that to push the leaf, but the problem is they're only building, they're only exporting the U.S. market 500 leafs a month. That's nothing. And they discontinued what I considered a superior EV to sell that one. Yeah, I'm not sure that this is a company that's got its eyes on the ball, really. I mean, the article goes into all the detail about how it's gonna roll out, what they're gonna do. But let me ask you a question. Do you remember Infinity? And you're going, what? Yeah, exactly. Infinity's actually Nissan's upscale, upmarket brand. And it's been struggling. And they don't have any new product for them anytime soon. They've got a couple of Halo products, which basically they thought if they add horsepower, that would make everything better. And adding horsepower alone, which also means probably a steep bump in price, does not necessarily mean that it makes the vehicle better just because you made the vehicle faster. It's more than that. When you're paying that kind of money, it's the whole aura of the brand, the history, the equipment, the level of luxury, all of that comes together. More power for power's sake in a vehicle that's typically regarded as a luxury vehicle does not necessarily mean that that would be a home run. But yet, here is Nissan partnering with a British firm called Way, that's W A Y V E, to get into driverless transportation. Honestly, where the money is in autonomous vehicles right now, we've talked about this at length, is actually in trucking. And they're making progress in trucking. And trucks have been being evaluated for the last 10 years. And it's just about to go live in a very serious way. The companies are starting to scale this up. It's about to change the face of trucking, at least in the southern part of the United States. There's still some challenges. Everything I just mentioned, weather, cold, storming, all of that that they need to prove that they can overcome. And I think in the next 10 or 15 years, they'll figure it out. But right now, no. So Nissan, I don't know. Autonomous driving, yes, but it seems like kind of a fool's errand to me when your product line needs more attention and shoring up, both in your upscale lines and your basic lines right now. I think this is this is money that's not being well spent. And I guess we'll have to see. I don't know. It's promising, but I'm not sure it's gonna save them because they don't have the dots. A startup that's developed centered technology for your car headrests. You are listening to Tech Mobility Show.

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The two hundred and sixty-five horsepower Acura MDX gets hearts in the right place, even if you're not.

Brainwave Headrests Explained

SPEAKER_00

That's over 20 years ago. What Acura was selling to the public luxury with capability. It talked about its safety features. It talked about its capability to track off-road. Twenty years ago. Twenty years ago. Hard to believe that a lot of the brands that you're familiar with relative to SUVs 20, 25 years ago, were getting a foothold and sorting out the marketplace. The Japanese were getting aggressive in that area. And Detroit was coming around. Geo most notably, both Cadillac and Chevrolet. Ford was in it. Chrysler was kind of sorta in it. They tried, but they couldn't really take. And from that kind of debacle back in the early part of this century, uh the Dodge Durango seems to be the only thing that came up out the ashes that they were able to salvage and actually market as a solid dependable SUV that wasn't a Jeep. Oh well. We'll see where they're going in the future with that. A Detroit startup has developed center technology that measures brain waves, so drivers may be alerted to potential safety threats even before their mind realizes what's happening, i.e., extreme distraction, drowsiness, heart attack, or epilepsy. Now, I'm usually all in for helpful technology, but when it comes to something like this, yeah. I got questions. This is topic A. The article talks about this happened at CES, and based on a recent discussion with global automakers and suppliers, the CEO of this company called Nemo or NURMO, that's N-E-U-M-O, based at New Lab on the Michigan Central Campus in Corktown, put a pin in that because I'm going to come back to that. That's important. Believes the product could be embedded into headrests and installed into vehicles as soon as 2029 with an estimated cost of fewer than$10 a vehicle. Stop right there. If you heard a couple of words and you paying attention in the auto industry, I said Michigan Central Campus at Corktown. That is a campus that the Ford Motor Company built to be kind of an incubator for new businesses. So guess what automaker may in fact be first with it? Thought I'd share that. Now the$10 a vehicle, I'm gonna help you right there. It doesn't sound much to you, but that's really too much. That's really too much. They need to get that down about one tenth of that, and then it may have a chance. Why? Because the automakers, as I've told you many times before, fight literally over pennies a unit.$10 is like a major commitment expense. Are 250,000 vehicles built in a factory in a year? That's$2.5 million. So yeah, little money adds up real fast in the auto industry. And that would be real fast. They talked about how this product works. They said the product uses electrical brain activity science commonly used for evaluating head injuries, sleep disorders, and seizures, known as EEG or electroenthopology. Yeah, okay. Electroenthepothology. Yeah, close enough. You get the idea. EEG. Just go with that. Okay. They claim that the EEG is the gold standard for sleep and drowningness. We're the only ones that can do that in the vehicle. Let's talk some numbers. Because you're like, okay, is this really, really that big of a deal? Let me read to you what the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says. The most recent data available says back in 2023, three years ago, distracted driving took 3,275 lives. Another 324,819 were injured that same year in crashes related to distracted driving, reported the Governor's Highway Safety Association. A study from NHTSA indicated 84% of the drivers in crashes precipitated by medical emergencies experienced seizures, blackouts, or diabetic reactions. Auto industry analyst Sam Abul Samed, Vice President of Market Research at Telemetry, said the brainwave technology holds a lot of promise. Here's what he said. If you can see what's happening, before you get to a condition where you may not be able to respond, it's a new safety opportunity. With what Niramo is doing, you could potentially start to detect some of those things a little bit earlier while the driver is still able to bring the vehicle to a safe stop. That is definitely a safety benefit. I can see the medical emergencies part. I'm not sure about the distraction part. You already have in vehicles right now what I call the nanny state. You've got vehicles that are looking at the driver. It's studying your eyes and it's responding. Everything from what Mercedes Benz, if it thinks you're drowsy, it will ding a bell and go, time for a break is the question. If you're in a Toyota, it's a little more severe. It is like keep your eyes on the road, keep your hands on the wheel. And the problem with those is they're still not quite ready for prime time. Uh because hands on the wheel, but it thinks it's not. Looking dead at the road, but it thinks you're not. And if you glance to check something out that's legit to the side of the car, if you linger longer than the system thinks you should, it's going to ding, it is going to uh advise you, it's going to give you instructions or admonitions. I'm not okay with that. Because more often than not, it gets it wrong. They did say, and this is one thing that I wonder about, and I'm not totally convinced. No, they said, we're not reading your mind. And I said, not yet. Here's why I say not yet. Anytime you introduce new technology, it provides a platform to build onto and add other features over time. Where do you think autonomous vehicles are building on right now? They're building on what we call adaptive cruise control. They're building on emergency, automatic emergency stop. They're building on lane change mitigation, they're lane centering mitigation. They're building on all of that to build an autonomous driving situation on top of the sensors already there. That's my concern with this. It's another platform to give folks an opportunity to do even more monitoring. That, yeah, right. I mean, at first blanch, first blush, this sounds great. Let's be safe out there. But the question is, what is it the gateway to? That's my question. And at what point does safety for safety's sake be TOO? When is it too much? When is it too much? I'm all for safety. I am. But we're getting to a point, at least even in my estimation, where this might just be a step too far. It's too much. I mean, it's the vehicle is getting too much. Where is my privacy? And how do I know outside of regulations where this data is going, who's using it, and for what purposes? Think about that. Do you know what a chimney sweep is? The Vintage Career is enjoying a resurgence in London. This is the Tech Mobility Show.

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Chimney Sweeps’ Modern Revival

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Did you know that Tech Mobility has a YouTube channel? Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. Each week, I upload a few short videos of some of the hot topics that I cover during my weekly radio program. I've designed these videos to be informative and entertaining. It's another way to keep up on current mobility and technology. Technology, news, and information. Be sure to watch, like, and subscribe to my channel. That's the Tech Mobility Show on YouTube. Check it out. If you're a person of a certain age, you know, like me, when I mentioned the term chimney sweep, you might immediately recall the 1964 movie Mary Poppins, with that legendary actor Dick Van Dyke playing a chimney sweep in London. Heck, you might even remember the song Chim Chimmery that he sang. Believe it or not, chimney sweeps are not only real, the vocation is enjoying a resurgence, yeah, in 2026 in London. This is topic B. You'll probably never guess why chimney sweeps, which have been around from about the year 1519. 1519 is enjoying a resurgence in our tech-heavy um sustainability concerning world. Why now? Why would this work? And what does the work look like now? Back in the day, honest to God, they used to send little boys up to clean these things. Sometimes they get stuck, and sometimes they die in there. It's not like that now, thank God. So, what does this look like? Let's talk about what a chimney sweep this day looks like, their career, and explain a little bit why they're enjoying a resurgence. Well, first of all, think of it as public works. And public works, when they're checking out sewer lines, water lines, stuff, what do they do? They use a digital camera with a scope. That's exactly what today's chimney sweeps do. A digital camera revealed the chimney's interior. An industrial vacuum cleaner removed soot and other debris disblodged by the brush, because they still use a brush that looks very much like the brush they've been using for 500 years. Earlier, a drone buzzed above the house, scanning the state of the rooftop. Notice something. There was nobody in the chimney. It was cleaned from the outside, scanned from the top, looked up from the bottom, and cleaned accordingly. Chimney sweeps were once an essential part of British life when households relied on coal and wood-burning fires to heat their homes. And they have a played and outsized role in cultural imagination, as I just mentioned. But they sent, honest to God, back in the day, they sent children up those sloughs. And not only did they get stuck, and all and they some suffocated up there. The mass adoption of central heating in the second half of the 20th century and introduction of clean air regulations meant what they call open fires, fell out of fashion, and the industry shrank. But notice the industry did not completely go away. According to the National Association of Chimney Sweeps, this is a thing, really, demand has been bolstered by high energy prices, the popularity of wood-burning stoves, and an international climate that has prompted warnings that electricity supplies could be vulnerable to attack by hostile states like Russia. Now, full disclosure, when I was growing up, we had a chimney. We had, well, we had an open fire for a number of years, and then my dad put a furnace that actually uh used the flu of the chimney, but the furnace to be actually more efficient in disseminating heat. I don't ever remember him having anybody ever inspect that chimney. And the reason why that can get serious if you don't is obviously wood, depending on how dry it is, has pitch and tar. That pitch and tar would get burned, coats the inside of these chimneys. And sometimes, if not maintained, they can catch fire, and you have a chimney fire, a literal chimney fire in the chimney. Hence the need for chimney sweeps. Demand is up, people. People are thinking, let's have a backup, let's have a fire, let's have a stove in case the electricity goes off. Yeah, we're in the real world now, says Martin Glynn, the president of the Chimney Sweeps Association, whose membership has risen to about 750 today from about 590 in 2021. This is in London. If you have the ability to burn logs or smokeless fuel, you can keep cooking and have some heating. There's a big increase in demand, and people are actually reopening their fireplaces. And that reminds me, I had a studio apartment in Boston when I was a freshman in college on Beacon Hill. My little studio apartment actually had a working fireplace. I think I used it maybe once or twice. Can you imagine? It was enough. And with the smokeless logs, honestly, you know, becomes an alternative. I mean, we've talked about the grid at length here. We've talked about extreme weather being more extreme more often. That knocks out power for days, maybe weeks. Those people who are fortunate to maybe own an EV that's bi-directional could maybe get a week to ten days of power from their vehicle. But what if you don't own an EV? What if you don't have an external power source or generator? What do you do? If you're in a situation where a flood knocks down the power lines, it knocks out power for two weeks, three weeks. If you're in a northern climate, typically, if you're out in the country, typically you probably have a chimney in an open flame situation. But if you're in a city, not necessarily so. Particularly if you're in an apartment, you're up a creek. What do you do? That's where this is going. On a recent day, Martin Glenn said, three people had booked training courses. The association's membership now includes 40 female sweeps. He said, It's alive and kicking of the group. We don't send little boys up to chimneys anymore. Instead, it's CCTV and smoke testing equipment. It's almost like being a chimney technician. A revival of open fires and stoves and homes, even on a small scale, does not come without costs. Scientists and campaigners warned that both produce a fine particulate matter, PM 2.5, a harmful pollutant that is associated with respiratory problems, heart disease, and even dementia. In 2023, England banned the sale of almost all traditional coal for domestic use. But even urban areas like London allow the burning of officially authorized smokeless fuels which produce very little visible smoke, but do generate soot, although much less than coal does. To limit air pollution, the British government recommends that chimneys be professionally swept once a year and that households choose the cleanest available fuels. Could we be seeing a return back to some of the old ways? Again, if you are in the northern part of the United States where timber is plentiful, and maybe you're out in the country, chances are you already have an open fire, fireplace, or some sort of wood furnace that uh vacuums goes out through the chimney. You're probably already there. Well, we're not even going to mention alternative fuels like corn or wood pellets, all things that get burned out here in Iowa, particularly in the countryside. But who would know that an old technology or an old profession like being a chimney sweep would see a renaissance in the year 2026, over 500 years later? Imagine that. Just to make sure that you have an alternative. 500 years. And it's back on the grow. What can you do? It's something. And needless to say, I expect it to be more, not less, as things go on. With the lack of affordable housing in the United States, perhaps the answer is the creation of some new cities. We are the Tech Mobility Show.

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To learn more about the Tech Mobility Show, start by visiting our website. Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. The website is a treasure trove of information about me and the show, as well as where to find it on the radio across the country. Keep up with the happenings of the Tech Mobility Show by visiting Techmobility.show. That's Techmobility.show. You can also drop us a line at talk at Techmobility.show.

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In business, opportunity doesn't wait, and neither should you. At Playbook Investors Network, we connect visionary entrepreneurs with the strategies, resources, and capital they need to win. Whether you're launching, scaling, or reimagining your business, our network turns ambition into measurable success. Your vision deserves more than a plan. It deserves a playbook that works. Playbook Investors Network, where bold ideas meet bold results. Visit pincommunity.org today.

New Cities And Housing Affordability

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Did you know that Tech Mobility has a YouTube channel? Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. Each week, I upload a few short videos of some of the hot topics that I cover during my weekly radio program. I've designed these videos to be informative and entertaining. It's another way to keep up on current mobility and technology news and information. Be sure to watch, like, and subscribe to my channel. That's the Tech Mobility Show on YouTube. Check it out. Throughout its history, America's always had its share of company towns, those communities that were developed and or grew up around single prominent industry located within its borders. After the Second World War came the planned communities, everywhere from Levitz Town in Pennsylvania to Reston in Virginia, a planner's attempt some sort of suburban utopia. Facing the challenge of housing affordability in so many different parts of the country, maybe it's time to think about creating some new communities to address the problem. This is topic C. The average American settlement across the country has certain things in common over time. One, it was near a water source or some sort of falls or dam or lake. Why? Because water provided sustenance and moving water provided power to power plants, whether they be grain mills or lumber mills or whatever. Always go across the country. As a result, in the early days of most of our cities and towns, they kind of grew willy-nilly, depending on their importance to the area, whether or not railroad came to them or not, their ability to get into or out of, and the proximity to other cities and towns. And our whole country's grown that way. And you find that honestly, east of the Mississippi River is pretty condensed. West of the Sierra Nevada along the Pacific Coast, again, pretty condensed. But here in the upper Midwest, not so much. In Iowa, we've got 99 counties, roughly oh, millions of acres of land. Our density is barely five people an acre, and 3.1 million people. Massachusetts is probably one-third the size and has two million more people. If you go west, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, fewer folks. Montana, fewer folks. We battle with affordable housing. But that's superimposed upon if you grew up in a certain place, if your family's there, if your heritage is there, if you go back a few generations, there may be affordable housing three towns over if you're willing to go and start over in the next date. But it means starting over, and I mean starting over. And you know what happens if you've got teenagers. I mean, that's like the end of the world for them to brood up their whole social system and everything. Look for a new job, new neighbors, new neighborhood, new way of doing things. We have pockets of affordability. The problem is where those places are are not close to the jobs, and vice versa, where the jobs are aren't normally affordable. Because everybody's going there to work. And all the housing within 50 miles is taken and bid up. What do you do? You got areas of the country extremely affordable but nowhere to make a living. And other parts of the country where you can make a great living, but you can't afford to live there. What they are looking at now is perhaps a resurgence of the planned community. There's a few groups out there trying to pull it off, and their whole argument is that this would actually be planned from the ground up to address all the problems of the typical city or town. You wouldn't have the same planning issues, you wouldn't have the same problems of where to put industry as opposed to where to put residential and to make it fair and make it affordable so that people will have a chance to own something or live decently. Question is, it's a big deal. And for the land that people are buying out in the middle of nowhere, not everybody's in favor of suddenly having two or three hundred thousand new neighbors. They moved out there for a reason because nobody else is out there. And this is the kind of give and take. Measure against all of this. The fact that rural America has been fighting this battle for decades. There's a lot of great rural communities, but they're shrinking. You've got the traditionalists that say, you know what? I like our small town the way it is right now because it's always been this way and I want it to stay this way. But the local grocery store is closed. The local variety store has closed. You now have to go an extra 30, 40 miles for medical care. If you're lucky, maybe you still have an urgent care facility in town, but their hours are limited, not like the hospital. And God forbid, if your new bride is in labor. We got that problem in Iowa right now. Where now you've got to travel even further. So, how do you bring this into balance? How do you bring affordable housing near where the jobs are so that people who are working class, blue-collar, salt-of-the-art Americans can get some sort of the American dream where I don't have to travel forever to my job, but I have a home or a piece of property or something that I can afford. It's a challenge because it's not necessarily, I don't think, a need to build new cities. I think we got a lot of cities that have affordable stock right now. Their problem is they don't have any industry nearby. Hence, there's no way to entice people to move there because they got to earn a living to live there, and there's no jobs. Or the jobs they're looking for are not the type of jobs that these folks would be willing or able to fill. The challenge in American industry right now is automation and AI. Industries that employed thousands, maybe 30, 40 years ago, employ a fraction of that now as years of automation and the increasing AI has made them brutally more efficient, more efficient, more efficient. That means fewer workers, and it also means the workers that do have a job are highly specialized, highly educated, and demand a certain level of education and experience. Those folks don't have a problem with affordable housing. They make enough money to pretty much live where they want to. But the rest of us, how do you resolve the fact that there are rural towns you can afford to live in today across this great country? But there are no jobs within 100, 150 miles that you can do in order to afford to live there. You can build your house there, you can afford to build a house there, but you can't afford to live there because there are no jobs to get a job to work. These brand new towns could be part of the answer, but I don't think they are the answer. I think the answer is in all these cities and towns, and we need to find a way to bring some sort of reasonable, realistic employment back to rural America so that affordability and having a job and living in the same town you work in would be a thing again. Hasn't been for a long time. And it's only getting worse. Pick a part of the country. It's worse. If the jobs are there, you can't afford to live there. If you can afford to live there, the jobs aren't there, and not everybody can work remotely. It's great if you've got one of those kind of jobs. But again, if you can do that, you can live anywhere.

SPEAKER_02

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To learn more about the Tech Mobility Show, start by visiting our website. I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. The website is a treasure trove of information about me and the show, as well as where to find it on the radio across the country. Keep up with the happenings at the Tech Mobility Show by visiting Techmobility.show. You can also drop us a line at talk at Techmobility.show.

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