Social Life of Information

Another predictive post, this time about the things I expect to like about Syracuse. We went out there last weekend to look at some houses, learn about the neighborhoods, and start to find our way around. We found a house that we really like, but we have to wait on making an offer due to a number of dependencies along the timeline for closing. Aside from arranging a down payment and all that fun stuff, we are both working out telecommuting arrangements with our employers. It seems that the myriad details might all work out just in time, but we have to wait and see.

1. Affordable housing. Real affordable housing, not the tongue-in-cheek joke that Ann Arbor calls affordable housing.
2. Syracuse University; I am moving out there for the information school, so I had better like it!
3. Central New York’s great outdoors, especially the NY State Parks. They actually have real topography there, which will be a nice change from the flat landscape I’ve been looking at my whole life.
4. Community Darkrooms
5. Syracuse Real Food Cooperative, which makes wind energy available to the locals
6. Syracuse’s professional theater, opera, symphony, and modern art museum
7. Rosamond Gifford Zoo at Burnet Park
8. Syracuse Sky Chiefs, Toronto’s AAA baseball team
9. Less frenzied traffic than in Southeast Michigan
10. Exploring

Syracuse seems to have many of the amenities (subject to scale!) of Detroit and Ann Arbor combined, but without the A2 snobbery or the Detroit decay. It will be a good place to live and study for a few years.