I'm 55 years old and my sons are in their thirties. When they were kids, we had a living room lined with bookcases filled with hundreds of books.
We were a military family, so we moved pretty frequently. Movers would get the living room packed, sigh a big sigh of relief and head into the bedrooms, only to find more books. They would then groan in reaction and say "More books."
My sons and I currently live in a tiny rental and it works because reading material and games and many other things essential to our lives have moved to virtual goods of various sorts. We do a lot of stuff online and we don't need the kind of physical space we once needed for things like books, magazines and games.
For example, my sons own hundreds of games but those games all exist in the cloud. There are no physical copies.
I recently thought of the scene from Bruce Almighty that illustrates this idea really well. He first decides to organize prayers in file cabinets, then as post-it notes and then as emails.
This is why I think we can and should bring back SROs: The internet means that you no longer necessarily need a ton of physical space to have some of the important elements of an upper class life, like access to vast stores of knowledge.
It used to be that if you wanted access to a wealth of knowledge, you needed a ton of physical space to store books. Having a library at home was an upper class thing and it was essential for some professions, like lawyers. This is largely no longer true.
Knowledge and education have long been upper class perks and upper class forms of power. Now pretty much anyone, even someone who is currently homeless, can have access to a lot of knowledge via some cheap cell phone or laptop.
You can also have a variety of hobbies without necessarily needing a lot of space.
When my sons were later elementary school aged, they used to have three gaming consoles. We were in the largest house I ever lived in and had the most upper class life I have ever had.
One of their gaming consoles was permanently hooked up in the living room and the other two were positioned on either side of the TV in the family room. You had physically unplug one of those two systems to plug the other one in.
They also required a lot of physical space for the game cartridges. My sons had dozens of game cartridges and they required special shelving to store it and you had to dust it, etc.
They currently own so many games that are stored in the cloud that if you had to store physical copies in our apartment, their games alone would take up a large percentage of the space we have. That would be untenable for us, both because we don't have the space and the dust would be a big issue for our respiratory problems.
The same things that make it possible to live out of a backpack or suitcase as a digital nomad make it possible to arrange a fairly high quality of life in a fairly small home. And if it is a home in a walkable neighborhood with lots of eateries and other amenities nearby, you really don't need a lot of space at home to have a very full life.
Of course, some hobbies and the like take up space. You can't, say, keep a horse in a small apartment.
(To be fair, you aren't going to keep a horse in a large apartment either or even most suburban homes with a big yard.)
So it's not something that would be for everyone. Nothing ever is.
But living in an SRO or other small space does not have to be a "poverty lifestyle." It doesn't have to mean you have a terrible quality of life. <
We were a military family, so we moved pretty frequently. Movers would get the living room packed, sigh a big sigh of relief and head into the bedrooms, only to find more books. They would then groan in reaction and say "More books."
My sons and I currently live in a tiny rental and it works because reading material and games and many other things essential to our lives have moved to virtual goods of various sorts. We do a lot of stuff online and we don't need the kind of physical space we once needed for things like books, magazines and games.
For example, my sons own hundreds of games but those games all exist in the cloud. There are no physical copies.
I recently thought of the scene from Bruce Almighty that illustrates this idea really well. He first decides to organize prayers in file cabinets, then as post-it notes and then as emails.
It's maybe the first minute of this clip.
This is why I think we can and should bring back SROs: The internet means that you no longer necessarily need a ton of physical space to have some of the important elements of an upper class life, like access to vast stores of knowledge.
It used to be that if you wanted access to a wealth of knowledge, you needed a ton of physical space to store books. Having a library at home was an upper class thing and it was essential for some professions, like lawyers. This is largely no longer true.
Knowledge and education have long been upper class perks and upper class forms of power. Now pretty much anyone, even someone who is currently homeless, can have access to a lot of knowledge via some cheap cell phone or laptop.
You can also have a variety of hobbies without necessarily needing a lot of space.
When my sons were later elementary school aged, they used to have three gaming consoles. We were in the largest house I ever lived in and had the most upper class life I have ever had.
One of their gaming consoles was permanently hooked up in the living room and the other two were positioned on either side of the TV in the family room. You had physically unplug one of those two systems to plug the other one in.
They also required a lot of physical space for the game cartridges. My sons had dozens of game cartridges and they required special shelving to store it and you had to dust it, etc.
They currently own so many games that are stored in the cloud that if you had to store physical copies in our apartment, their games alone would take up a large percentage of the space we have. That would be untenable for us, both because we don't have the space and the dust would be a big issue for our respiratory problems.
The same things that make it possible to live out of a backpack or suitcase as a digital nomad make it possible to arrange a fairly high quality of life in a fairly small home. And if it is a home in a walkable neighborhood with lots of eateries and other amenities nearby, you really don't need a lot of space at home to have a very full life.
Of course, some hobbies and the like take up space. You can't, say, keep a horse in a small apartment.
(To be fair, you aren't going to keep a horse in a large apartment either or even most suburban homes with a big yard.)
So it's not something that would be for everyone. Nothing ever is.
But living in an SRO or other small space does not have to be a "poverty lifestyle." It doesn't have to mean you have a terrible quality of life. <