/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15805390
It's interesting to read personal accounts of life at Oak Ridge during WWII. Most people found the intentional managed community to be a great place to live, though the necessary war secrecy did make visiting relatives and other beyond the base difficult. The top talent it was built to foster was able to be very productive because all the external garbage that society usually forces everyone to deal with was kept away. Beyond just it being an intellectual nirvana, the social aspects were greatly appreciated. You could find others with similar interests that appeal to the highly intelligent and not have to worry about those with other agendas disrupting the community.
The "dark side" was the service workers, who initially found life there boring and unfulfilling since the community wasn't designed for them but needed them. Black men in particular had a high level of turnover, which was solved by the management of Oak Ridge getting rid of their then high tech street sweeping machines and replacing them with black women who would sweep the streets manually. Adding black women to the community satisfied the social needs of the black men there in support roles.
After the war many tech companies tried to replicate the fruitful environment of Oak Ridge by building research parks away from the distractions of large cities. Initially these worked well, though not always as well as Oak Ridge had. But over time it became more and more difficult to control the makeup of these communities, which often attracted people of limited ability seeking a better situation for themselves.
It makes one wonder what could result if intentional communities weren't mostly illegal. Universities were often located in rural areas not just because of various land grant considerations but also so they could be isolated intellectual communities. They have of course been perverted into something bordering on the grotesque, wearing the skinsuit of what academia once was able to be.