920592I used to love to sit in my condo on the 35th floor, turn off the lights and watch the summer thunderstorms roll in from the west. Better than watching TV.
This must be the 'go' signal from the AP to the boys down in Miami. The ink was probably still wet when the news of the arrests came in.
920592I wonder: how many of the 30 recommendations that NIST/NFPA issued, as a result of the 9/11 study, are they following?
Skyscrapers have always fascinated me and I wonder why we do not build more of them because they represent our future.
Eventually, unless some dread disease or nuclear war or some other natural disaster of epic proportions was to strike earth, we are going to have to build up - and not just in major cities.
In fact, if our society was to continue for the next several thousand years with minimal disruption, and we are unable to colonize other planets, we are going to have a very crowded Earthspace.
This will necessitate the building of millions of skyscrapers.
Consider that in 5,000 years, we will have one hundred trillion people living in the United States alone. That's a lot of people. I come up with that number because our medical technology will be such that people will live for hundreds of years on a routine basis (humans living for a thousand years will become commonplace).
Now what I see is an endless parade of skyscrapers from coast to coast that are several hundred stories high on average with some skyscrapers reaching 10,000 feet plus in the metropolitian areas. Out in the rural areas, the skyscrapers will probably top out around 2,000 to 3,000 feet but that is still a lot of skyscraper in terms of our perception today.
These skyscrapers will be connected to each other by tunnels both underground and above ground so that one would be able to travel coast to coast without ever being outdoors.
In fact, the network of subterranean tunnels will be so vast that entire generations of people will live down there having never seen the sun or being above ground level yet they will still have luxuries undreamed of today and they will not think themselves disadvantaged. To them, going above ground and seeing the outdoors (through windows) will be roughly equivalent to how we perceive space travel today. And going outdoors? Why that would be the equivalent of a "space walk" today and many will be afraid to even attempt it.
This is because the outdoors will be perceived as being dangerous. Remember, people are now living for hundreds if not thousands of years and they do not want their skin ruined by direct sunlight and they do not want to expose their "perfect" bodies to any pollution or microbes that might be present out of doors. In effect, we will all become "bubble people" and only reckless adventurers will want to go out of doors and even in those cases, in full "spacesuits".
We will have robots building and maintaining the infrastructure. Vast armies of robots will be constantly adding on to the skyscrapers and underground tunnels with little regard giving to architecture because there will be nobody on the outside to admire it.
In fact, robots will do most everything and most people will have very little in the way of work to do. Combine that with a lifespan of hundreds of years and your biggest societal problem will be boredom.
Indeed, there will be people dedicated their entire lives to arcane trivial research. For example, one person might spend two hundred years watching and studying every single TV show from the 20th Century and doing multiple research papers on it. Another may dedicate his life to studying the Bay City Rollers. He will memorize every note of every song they ever performed and will study every word ever written about them. Remember that computer technology will be such that every single document and all video and audio ever produced will be instantly accessible by all. Even diaries of little girls who lived in the 1970s will be digitalized (if they were available) so that one studying the Bay City Rollers will be able to access every single diary entry about them from every single fan that ever kept such a diary. So in essence, the entire life of the Bay City Rollers will be able to be relived and documented by some bored twerp of the 25th or 26th Century.
Bttt