Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, what this stuff to Blow your Mind?
Speaker 1: This is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas and we're
Speaker 1: joining you from the Radiation Proof podcast Chamber here at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Now for now, Julie, what's
Speaker 1: your favorite vision of a futuristic city. I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to go super old school and say the Jetsons. The Jetsons,
Speaker 1: I love the domestic setup that they have and the
Speaker 1: robot doing everything, yes, and then the the whole food
Speaker 1: being prepared. Um. And then you know, I love that
Speaker 1: you're just flying around and you can go through your
Speaker 1: drive throughs in your your own little spacecraft. Cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well this is a this is the topic I could.
Speaker 1: I could like the fashion sorry, the fashion, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they had like I love a little like a little
Speaker 1: like Saturn rings around everything. Um. When it comes to,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about futuris futuristic cities, I could. I
Speaker 1: could probably go on too long, and I probably will
Speaker 1: start going on too long and which guy's just beeper
Speaker 1: had to jump in and stop me. But okay, I
Speaker 1: mean there's so many classic visions. There's of course Metropolis, Yes,
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenty nine or something thereabout the old black
Speaker 1: and white silent Yeah, German expression is some film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just showed this massive just you know today. It's
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like a retrofuturist thing, I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, just a massive city. It's like the city
Speaker 1: Um on steroids, if you will, Um with the giant skyscrape,
Speaker 1: the fat cats at the top, yeah, and the idea
Speaker 1: everybody else toiling underneath exactly, almost kind of like a
Speaker 1: more Locks kind of thing going on, you know. And
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's kind of a natural extrapolation
Speaker 1: of population growth and technological advance. Buildings keep getting higher,
Speaker 1: so they're just gonna keep getting higher, right, You're thinking
Speaker 1: about that even back in the day, right right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so by the time like Blade Runner came out,
Speaker 1: you know that that really set the standard for for
Speaker 1: a lot of people's imaginations of what a just a
Speaker 1: future city skate might look out look like. Well, I
Speaker 1: think I finally revealed that replicants are among us. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was actually it was a documentary actually, um little
Speaker 1: man in fact. Yeah, And there's there's another example that
Speaker 1: I personally really love and I have a love hate
Speaker 1: relationship with this particular book. But there's a book called
Speaker 1: The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson, and this was
Speaker 1: like an early twentieth century book that dealt with like
Speaker 1: a post apocalyptic world in which the the sun has
Speaker 1: gone out and the world is cooled, and the last
Speaker 1: remnants of humanity living this enormous pyramid called the Last
Speaker 1: Redoubt and um, and so it's like that everybody lives
Speaker 1: on these different different floors and they grow food in there,
Speaker 1: and it's heated by geo thermal energies, and there's like
Speaker 1: a whole there's like a second pyramid underneath the top
Speaker 1: one where they grow like all the food. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of a horribly written book. It's really a pain
Speaker 1: to read. Um, really outrageous writing style where he's he's
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's just it's rough. But the but
Speaker 1: if you can you sort of pick through all the
Speaker 1: bad writing, there's just a tremendous ahead of its time vision.
Speaker 1: I mean, just telling me that right there is amazing,
Speaker 1: because that's what futurists are planning for us not too
Speaker 1: far off here. I mean, some people are thinking about
Speaker 1: what you just describe happening for us within twenty years,
Speaker 1: let alone like a hundred. There's there's actually an excellent,
Speaker 1: really kind of theoretical plan for something called the Shimazoo
Speaker 1: Mega City Pyramid. And this is again very theoretical, but
Speaker 1: it's it's partially inspired by Blade Runner. But this would
Speaker 1: be a giant pyramid on Tokyo Bay, twelve times higher
Speaker 1: than the Great Pyramid of Giza, with an occupancy of
Speaker 1: seven fifty thousand. And again this is an example of
Speaker 1: most of these these really large scale when we're talking
Speaker 1: about like cities that are just like a city skate
Speaker 1: kind of situation, a Blade Runner type of situation. Um,
Speaker 1: we're talking about something that's called arcology, which is a
Speaker 1: portmanteau or wordable if you like, of the words architecture
Speaker 1: and ecology. So in other words, it's just architecture, um
Speaker 1: and and design on a scale that is really more
Speaker 1: like a landscape that can accommodate our enormous population and
Speaker 1: to bring it down to brass tacks. I think the
Speaker 1: reason why we're so interested in this topic is because
Speaker 1: right now half of the world population six point eight
Speaker 1: billion people live in cities, and it's estimated by fifty
Speaker 1: that two thirds of the population will live in cities.
Speaker 1: So obviously this trend is not stopping. And then just
Speaker 1: to put this into context, think about in eighteen hundred
Speaker 1: when less than three percent of the world lived in cities.
Speaker 1: So what does that mean for us? I mean that
Speaker 1: means obviously, besides a lot more people, a lot more
Speaker 1: mouth to feed, we have less available land. We've got
Speaker 1: all sorts of issues that we need to try to
Speaker 1: to solve. And and I even think about it in
Speaker 1: this in this way, like the best uh d I
Speaker 1: y Home show worth its salt will always tell you
Speaker 1: when you run out of room, what do you do? Build?
Speaker 1: You build up, build up, you go vertical. So we're
Speaker 1: looking at a future where the sky, the landscape is
Speaker 1: just gonna be completely populated with these superstructures. And again
Speaker 1: it's not too far down the road that this is happening.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there are a lot of construction projects
Speaker 1: right now that are underway. Yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: there there. There are even people who look into the
Speaker 1: future and and start dreaming about I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's a dream or it's really more like a nightmare,
Speaker 1: but um, the idea of the uk monopolis, which is
Speaker 1: a city made from an entire world. So if you
Speaker 1: can imagine, it's really like the concept that I think
Speaker 1: Grant Morrison presented this in The Invisibles. But like the
Speaker 1: city as it is is a is a cancer that
Speaker 1: kind of takes over a whole planet, and and sort
Speaker 1: of yeah, the city as as a cancer and the
Speaker 1: city is this is the physical manifestation of humanity, uh
Speaker 1: you know, all its worst properties. The city as a
Speaker 1: character is a living, breathing thing. Yeah. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: it's not just us thinking about this. The TED founder
Speaker 1: Richard Saul Wurman, he actually has a project called nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty one and that is a case study of nineteen
Speaker 1: cities with populations that will meet or exceed twenty million
Speaker 1: by the end of the twenty first century. And uh,
Speaker 1: these most of these nineteen cities border oceans, and so
Speaker 1: his thinking and that foundation is thinking, is that there's
Speaker 1: going to be rising sea levels and there's going to
Speaker 1: be all sorts of weird meteorological patterns happening, and so
Speaker 1: the cities really need to be studied in terms of
Speaker 1: how they're going to deal with food production, transportation, water resources,
Speaker 1: and all that good stuff so on. On a very
Speaker 1: practical level, it's an issue that we need to look at.
Speaker 1: And people just keep pointing up and saying, we're going
Speaker 1: to be living in these crazy vertical structures and you know,
Speaker 1: we may be on the floor. Yeah, it's easy to know.
Speaker 1: People look at these these giant megastructures and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: they'll be they'll be like a restaurant in there. There'll
Speaker 1: be a restaurant every floor, you know. But but when
Speaker 1: you look at the stats for you know, revolving around
Speaker 1: the feeding the people on this planet, it gets pretty staggering.
Speaker 1: I mean, for starters, demographics predicted the planet will host
Speaker 1: nine point five billion people by at least according to
Speaker 1: one study we're looking at. And because each of us
Speaker 1: require a minimum of fift calories a day. Uh, you
Speaker 1: were pointing, this civilization would have to cultivate like a
Speaker 1: Brazil's worth of land, right, it's like two point one
Speaker 1: billion acres. And it relates directly to something that is
Speaker 1: often referred to as the eco footprint analysis. And uh,
Speaker 1: and that's the thing as you look at different parts
Speaker 1: of the world, Uh, the amount of land required to
Speaker 1: feed one given person ferries. So people in the developed
Speaker 1: and developed countries such as United States and Japan, for instance,
Speaker 1: each require an estimated ten to twenty five acres of
Speaker 1: land to support their lifestyle. So that's that's a you know,
Speaker 1: pretty staggering footprint. And and according to population ecologist of
Speaker 1: William E. Rees, the global average breaks down to five
Speaker 1: point four acres per person. And unfortunately, the planet only
Speaker 1: has enough bioproductive surface area to a lot four point
Speaker 1: four acres to each of its six point eight billion residents.
Speaker 1: So um, human civilizations current eco footprint is already beyond
Speaker 1: sustainable levels. Okay, So what you're saying is we just
Speaker 1: we don't have the land. We don't have arable land
Speaker 1: new arable land available to us. So again we're in
Speaker 1: the same room. What are we gonna do? Go up? Um?
Speaker 1: And I think it's interesting to look right now at
Speaker 1: at a couple of current examples just so that we
Speaker 1: can kind of get our footing on what this means
Speaker 1: to us. And one of the examples is the Bionic
Speaker 1: Tower in Shanghai is pretty staggering. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: crazy structure. It's it's slated to start construction in and
Speaker 1: it's going to take fifteen years to build four thousand
Speaker 1: feet tall with three hundred floors, and the structural will
Speaker 1: contain twelve vertical neighborhoods. And we're talking about green spaces,
Speaker 1: urban spaces. I mean, just think about think about New
Speaker 1: York sort of sandwich into building for instance. And the structure,
Speaker 1: if I may, is a very fallic structure. And uh,
Speaker 1: it is centered in an artificial lake. And the reason
Speaker 1: for the lake is so that it could absorb any
Speaker 1: shock waves from earthquakes. And uh, they proposed putting a
Speaker 1: bunch of I guess you what, you'd say, regular size
Speaker 1: buildings at the base that they'd have little trams to
Speaker 1: go to. And I mean basically you would never ever
Speaker 1: have to leave the structure your entire life, which is
Speaker 1: just mind blowing. Yeah. Well, it reminds me again of
Speaker 1: the Last re Doubt in the Night Land, where the
Speaker 1: situation is there are people that live and die old
Speaker 1: generations without leaving the structure, right, And then I mean
Speaker 1: it begs the question for me, like, Okay, well, this
Speaker 1: is this is something we're looking in the next years.
Speaker 1: In five hundred years, are we just gonna all be
Speaker 1: in like a little five by five pod up in
Speaker 1: the sky, you know, living and dying in that same space,
Speaker 1: or you know, you know, not to get depressing. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not depressing because you have to realize video games
Speaker 1: are gonna be crazy good by time, you know. So
Speaker 1: why would you believe you wouldn't even care about the
Speaker 1: sunset looking so beautiful at that? Right? I mean they're
Speaker 1: pretty great now, but you know by this point they're
Speaker 1: gonna be like, I don't have to go outside. Great
Speaker 1: just on the first level of that's right. Yeah, um so, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that's not so much of a concern, but you know,
Speaker 1: in our minds right now, it's sort of inconceivable. And
Speaker 1: then just from an engineering standpoint, you think about wind
Speaker 1: and movement at that height, you know, you can't have
Speaker 1: any structure move anymore than one four hundreds of its
Speaker 1: height else it's too unstable. Yeah. I ran across some
Speaker 1: interesting UM statistics on this. In numerical terms, the support
Speaker 1: and state built and stability of a building translates to
Speaker 1: an aspect ratio between six and eight. Okay, so bear
Speaker 1: with me, um so you want Okay, So the aspect
Speaker 1: ratio in this case is calculated by dividing the height
Speaker 1: of the building by the width of its base. This
Speaker 1: is kind of the if you've ever liked built anything
Speaker 1: to play or something, and you want like a strong
Speaker 1: base to support heights. Okay, so um to achieve a
Speaker 1: desirable aspect ratio of seven a bionic tower. And this
Speaker 1: is based on a like you give a four thousand
Speaker 1: foot height, and I've seen other height estimates that were lower,
Speaker 1: like three thousand, two eighty one, so this might not
Speaker 1: completely mesh with that with the four thousand number, but
Speaker 1: if it worth, if the tower worth three thousand two
Speaker 1: one ft tall, the base would then need to be
Speaker 1: four dred and sixty nine ft wide. Whoa, Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: so I mean we're talking about just an enormous structure, right.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing that I'm thinking about too
Speaker 1: is something called the stack effect, which is that the
Speaker 1: wind moaning that you hear when you're up a really
Speaker 1: really high space, and particularly in buildings where you get
Speaker 1: that whistling effect with elevators. So yeah, you might have
Speaker 1: a great view, but you won't be haunted. I like
Speaker 1: this eraser head like noise all the time. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: speaking of l a ators, Uh, the estimate that I
Speaker 1: was looking at for the Balonot Tower, three dred and
Speaker 1: sixty eight elevators. Okay, so you need to completely rethink
Speaker 1: elevator talk at this point, right, Yeah, I mean assuming
Speaker 1: we canna assume that they have some good speed to them.
Speaker 1: But still, yeah, even if they're basically won clevators, I mean,
Speaker 1: they're the three center and sixty eight is is pretty
Speaker 1: massive up and it's one of the the problems you
Speaker 1: run into with with a lot of like super tall
Speaker 1: skyscraper situations. For instance, Uh, how stuff works is located
Speaker 1: in a what we're fifteen floors fourteen technically because is
Speaker 1: taken out and then there's the secret floor with the
Speaker 1: moment and you know. But but so we have two
Speaker 1: banks of elevators to one one with four elevators going
Speaker 1: up what like halfway and then four other elevators going
Speaker 1: up the rest of the way. And that more or
Speaker 1: less makes sense if you've ever been saying, like, like
Speaker 1: the dorm that I was in in college had two
Speaker 1: elevators that serviced twelve floors, and it was one of
Speaker 1: these situations where the the higher you were, the more
Speaker 1: difficult it was to catch an elevator. So, uh, extrapolate
Speaker 1: that to a five hundred floor of building, and it
Speaker 1: gets ridiculous, like you have to have elevators that that
Speaker 1: that say, do you know floors one through tin, then
Speaker 1: another has to do the next tin floors, the next
Speaker 1: tin floors, etcetera. You have to make it to where
Speaker 1: people aren't spending half their day just ascending. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I guess I would invert the paradigm to that
Speaker 1: maybe that the best floor would be like the tenth floor. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: But that's just something to think about. And and then
Speaker 1: also talking about extrapolating if people were to be living
Speaker 1: in these sort of mega cities with these structures, you
Speaker 1: start to think about any sort of interlocking tunnels that
Speaker 1: might run between the buildings. Oh yeah, because that's another
Speaker 1: big staple of I mean, I'm a huge fan of
Speaker 1: sky bridges. I see a sky bridge between buildings and like,
Speaker 1: I'm magine the like it goes back to the Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I'm thinking, like as a kid, it's like I
Speaker 1: would always like dream up like fight scenarios between characters
Speaker 1: and non existent action films, like where they would have
Speaker 1: to fight on a on a on a sky bridge
Speaker 1: in a sky bridge. And then of course the window
Speaker 1: breaks and they have to find on top of the
Speaker 1: sky bridge. They're amazing, you know, So I didn't know
Speaker 1: that skybridge is like they they're pretty important to you. Well,
Speaker 1: they're They're just great. I mean it's like it's this
Speaker 1: man made little bridge on the top of like two
Speaker 1: man made mountains, are you know, bridging them together? Like
Speaker 1: I almost wrecked the car anytime I drive under one. Wow,
Speaker 1: get to know if you're driving with you. So, I
Speaker 1: mean that's bionic tower. That's one example. Well, a little
Speaker 1: more about the ma bionic tower though, Um, I was
Speaker 1: reading that. There's also a you're talking about the wind
Speaker 1: going on, Well, it can actually turn a building into
Speaker 1: a giant tuning fork. There's a phenomenon called vortex shedding,
Speaker 1: and basically it breaks down like this is the wind
Speaker 1: blows around the corners of the building, spins off into
Speaker 1: eddies all right, or masses of whirling air, and the
Speaker 1: frequency at which the eddies of air or shed increases
Speaker 1: the wind speed. So, um, this can build up and
Speaker 1: you end up with a dangerous effect called residents and
Speaker 1: and so and this just causes the building to move
Speaker 1: more and more to where you could pensually potentially have
Speaker 1: windows shatter. Um, you know, stuff is cracking, things are
Speaker 1: falling apart, right, Yeah, I haven't even thought. So that's
Speaker 1: the tuning fork effect, So that the it's it's basically
Speaker 1: conducting all of these vibrations to the point where it shatters.
Speaker 1: Am I hearing you right on that? Okay? So you
Speaker 1: end up having to you need to have like aerodynamic
Speaker 1: features to a building a lot of times, or you
Speaker 1: use a dampening system. And this is just something like
Speaker 1: a or like a four hundred ton concrete blocks such
Speaker 1: as in New York City's City Core building to absorb
Speaker 1: the vibrations like a giant shock absorber. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: I had to just make sure because as soon as
Speaker 1: you said tuning forks, I was like thrown back to
Speaker 1: Costa Rica where I was staying at this place unbeknownst
Speaker 1: to me with a woman was a healer who was
Speaker 1: trying to heal me with tuning forks. So I had
Speaker 1: a little bit of a moment there. How to repress memory?
Speaker 1: I hope you don't mind. Um, So, I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: there are there are some practical things that would hinder
Speaker 1: us right now in terms of the technology at like
Speaker 1: you would think so with bionic Tower like that that
Speaker 1: sort of upkeep seems insane. Now, Bionic Tower is also
Speaker 1: interesting in that they, I mean, the whole name comes
Speaker 1: from bionic because in bio as in bio mimetics, as
Speaker 1: in looking to nature to solve human problems, not the
Speaker 1: bionic man. Well no, not really, but I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm not. But you know, it's the idea that it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I need to design a um I need to design
Speaker 1: an airplane. I need to design something that can fly
Speaker 1: in the air. So I can either have a scientist
Speaker 1: look at look at this problem and depend on human science.
Speaker 1: It's you know, maybe been analyzing this problem for what,
Speaker 1: you know, some few hundred years or something. I can
Speaker 1: look to evolution, which has been tackling this problem for
Speaker 1: a much longer period of time, looking to nature to
Speaker 1: solve human engineering problems. So they make a big show
Speaker 1: with the Bionic Tower of talking about how that the
Speaker 1: how they have these ninety two vertical columns and the
Speaker 1: design to you know, for energy and water and other supplies,
Speaker 1: and that this is like the some of the transport
Speaker 1: systems in a vascular plant. And they also talk about
Speaker 1: the base of the tower would be kind of like
Speaker 1: a root system and a tree, which on the surface
Speaker 1: sounds great. But but but the if if you look
Speaker 1: at some of the info out there about I'm just
Speaker 1: thinking about. I recently went to Yosseminate National Park and
Speaker 1: they have the giant sequoias there, which, you know, enormous trees,
Speaker 1: really interesting to look at, and on the service you
Speaker 1: might think, yeah, if I wanted to build a super
Speaker 1: tall building, I totally looked to a giant sekoia because
Speaker 1: they have it all figured out. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: giant tekoias, though they live pretty long, they fall down
Speaker 1: when they're when the wind blows too too strong or
Speaker 1: there's like a really harsh winter, they collapse. They're not
Speaker 1: reinforced with steel, right, and you know the whole um,
Speaker 1: the whole you know, giant tree with the tunnel cut
Speaker 1: out in the middle. No, tell me about you have
Speaker 1: you seen this? I'm sure um in Yosemite is a
Speaker 1: great place. But but like a lot lot of parks,
Speaker 1: and yeah, there was a time when it was like
Speaker 1: totally fine to like feed garbage to bears and tout
Speaker 1: a pathway through through the trees so you could drive
Speaker 1: your car through, and uh, the tree eventually die, but
Speaker 1: not because of the tunnel. Like the tree can survive that.
Speaker 1: They're typically damaged by fire to the point where there's
Speaker 1: a giant hole in the base anyway, but the cars
Speaker 1: driving over the roots system like that. The root system
Speaker 1: is pretty shallow, and that's one of the things that
Speaker 1: really did it in. So that's one. You can't actually
Speaker 1: walk up and, thank goodness, carved your name onto the
Speaker 1: side of the giant Sekoya in Yosemite. So anyway, no,
Speaker 1: I did not do that. I just respect very respectful name.
Speaker 1: Um I spray painted it, so it's not so um.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, when when I when I read about people
Speaker 1: looking to trees, and obviously they're not gonna it's not
Speaker 1: gonna be that simplistic situation. But I can't help but
Speaker 1: think that it's like, well, this is this is not
Speaker 1: really a problem that nature has solved. It's not a
Speaker 1: problem nature wants to solve, you know, So that that's
Speaker 1: still there are the concept of looking to nature to
Speaker 1: solve engineering problems is a really good one. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it was it. But Minister Fuller, maybe I have
Speaker 1: some memory of uh reading something once in which he
Speaker 1: said that a structure can be perfect, but it's not
Speaker 1: beautiful until it does have some sort of mimicry of
Speaker 1: nature to it. Oh yeah, like you get into the
Speaker 1: whole um um, you know, any kind of you know,
Speaker 1: look at classical architecture. They were really big into the
Speaker 1: the Golden mean and all that, you know, right right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So bionic tower. There you go with that one. And
Speaker 1: then another one in the works is Masdar City and
Speaker 1: Abu Dhabi and that is going to be the first
Speaker 1: carbon neutral city and it should be completed by and
Speaker 1: what they're trying to do is to build a city
Speaker 1: of fort abitants where of the water can be recycled
Speaker 1: and cars will be banned and replaced by a personal
Speaker 1: rapid trans transit system, which is a subterranean system using
Speaker 1: cars powered by solar batteries. And that they look really cool,
Speaker 1: I have to say, but I'm kind of picturing like
Speaker 1: a little casket that you climb into and it's like
Speaker 1: shoot shoots your you know, from the restaurant to your apartment.
Speaker 1: So dark. Well, I mean it's more like a pod,
Speaker 1: a casting pod, and it's white. Well that's not nightmarek
Speaker 1: at all, No, not at all. I mean just bolting
Speaker 1: you through a town, but it can carry somethinging three
Speaker 1: to six people depending on the design and the ideas
Speaker 1: that it could be shared by people. Um and asopp
Speaker 1: as it could be sort of like a taxi cab
Speaker 1: system too. But they actually have those in use at Pitha.
Speaker 1: I believe they're testing them out, but they're not open
Speaker 1: to the public. So that's one of the technologies that
Speaker 1: we actually have in place right now, which is kind
Speaker 1: of interesting to see that that's happening. Um. And then
Speaker 1: there's another structure, of course in Dubai. It's called the
Speaker 1: Crescent Hydropolis, and this is an instance where they're going
Speaker 1: underground into the ocean and it's supposedly it's the world's
Speaker 1: first luxury underwater hotel. I say supposedly just because it's
Speaker 1: not because because there could be more under because they're underwater,
Speaker 1: you can't see them. Yeah, I don't know. They could
Speaker 1: be it could be a shack under their um but
Speaker 1: there's supposed to be two hundred submarine suites and guests
Speaker 1: will be arrived at a land station and then be
Speaker 1: transported via a train. And it has a one point
Speaker 1: one million square feet which includes a shopping mall, restaurants,
Speaker 1: movie theaters, and oh, a missile defense system. Well, of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you gotta wonder like that was sort of the
Speaker 1: impetus for the whole design first place. How can we
Speaker 1: sell a missile defense system? Yeah? Yeah, what luxury boutique hotel?
Speaker 1: And you know sixt under the water. Um. So there
Speaker 1: are different ways that people are thinking about moving the population.
Speaker 1: I mean this obviously that's the luxury hotel that isn't
Speaker 1: going to be. That's not a model that we could
Speaker 1: use across the board to try to deal with our
Speaker 1: population problems. But it's certainly a different way of thinking
Speaker 1: about using the space that we have. Um. And then
Speaker 1: that also we talked about this already, that the fact
Speaker 1: that there is going to be a huge demand for food,
Speaker 1: uh nine point five billion people. Like so again people
Speaker 1: are looking up and saying vertical farming is the answer.
Speaker 1: And uh, if you look at our model right now, agriculture,
Speaker 1: we use like of fresh water resources and then we
Speaker 1: render that most of that unsafe to drink because of pesticides, fertilizers, etcetera.
Speaker 1: In there so, if you do a hydroponic system or
Speaker 1: if you if you grow vertical farms, obviously you're not
Speaker 1: having to pollute the nactual earth, and you get a
Speaker 1: lot cleaner of a resource. And this that was a
Speaker 1: really interesting stut that one square block farm once we're
Speaker 1: about form thirty stories high, could yield as much food
Speaker 1: as outdoor acres, which is yeah, crazy, And then supposedly
Speaker 1: there's there's not as much spoilerg either there. They didn't
Speaker 1: really go into why that is, and you know, I
Speaker 1: was just sort of thinking, well, maybe that's just because
Speaker 1: you reach outside of your window and you grab that
Speaker 1: tomato or whatever and it's more visible. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's harvested better. But um so growing food in high
Speaker 1: glass high rises could really like drastically reduce fossil fuel
Speaker 1: missions and recycle wastewater. And this is an actual a
Speaker 1: good logical way to try to deal with population growth
Speaker 1: and and go up and a found our skyscrapers and
Speaker 1: utilize them. Yeah, especially when I was thinking about this
Speaker 1: too in an apocalyptic way too, not to not to
Speaker 1: go dark, but I mean, if you do have all
Speaker 1: of these buildings that are just empty husks sitting around,
Speaker 1: why not try to to grow vertically up them? You know,
Speaker 1: waste use as a surface. Yeah, it's better than using
Speaker 1: it for you know, giant advertisements, which always irritates me.
Speaker 1: Because there's like one particular building in Atlanta, uh and
Speaker 1: I don't know the name of it. It's just it's
Speaker 1: very visible when you're going up straight through the city
Speaker 1: on the Connector. There's this old building and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's clearly just decrepit, and I think there's maybe
Speaker 1: a parking lot at the bottom that they make money
Speaker 1: off of. But it's an awesome old building. I love
Speaker 1: looking at it. And there was a brief period where
Speaker 1: they covered it with an advertisement like they do all
Speaker 1: the time in New York, and I was I was heartbroken.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, that's that's that's horrible, Like they
Speaker 1: covered up this beautiful, ruinous building, which if if nothing else,
Speaker 1: Atlanta has some great ruinous looking buildings. Like there's a
Speaker 1: there's a current television show I'm sure everybody or a
Speaker 1: lot of people are watching The Walking Dead, which is
Speaker 1: you know, zombie apocalypse thing, and they filmed it in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and it's great because the characters. It takes place like,
Speaker 1: you know, a few months after the zombie Apocalypse and
Speaker 1: they're walking through really apocalyptic looking buildings. And of course
Speaker 1: the take come here is that Atlanta already looked apocalyptic
Speaker 1: because not enough time has passed in the show for
Speaker 1: things to you know, turn into rubble. It's like, we
Speaker 1: already have all that rubble around and all these like
Speaker 1: really cool urban contested spaces. That's why they picked us.
Speaker 1: We're not just all you know, Veranda's and and the
Speaker 1: iced tea we've got. We've got some molten going on,
Speaker 1: I guess you would say. But getting back to the
Speaker 1: buildings of the future and and what might eventually become
Speaker 1: some sort of crumbling building, you definitely need technology right
Speaker 1: to support these models. And I'm thinking about the trams
Speaker 1: between buildings and the personal transit systems, and I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about like your favorite subject, jet packs. I'm kidding because
Speaker 1: I know that like they're the ban of your existence.
Speaker 1: Never they're not the bane of my existence. I just
Speaker 1: they're just so silly. Now, I mean, they're either're great.
Speaker 1: I love the Rocketeer when it came out, but I
Speaker 1: know they're silly. But I'm telling you, I think that
Speaker 1: like in fifty years, they're going to be the best
Speaker 1: bots up in the sky. You know, people are going
Speaker 1: to be drinking their latte's with you know, little jet packs.
Speaker 1: But in particularly because next year they're going to be
Speaker 1: commercially released to the public and they're gonna start a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars. Right, well, I'm gonna I need to
Speaker 1: invest in like spinal replacement technology because I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people are gonna get knows up. That's just
Speaker 1: my prediction. I think you're right. I think that's not
Speaker 1: a bad idea. Still flying around with martiniz that's a
Speaker 1: pretty optimistic vision of the future, right, I mean you
Speaker 1: have to think that's you know, in fifty years, a
Speaker 1: hundred years, that could be a hundred thousand dollars will
Speaker 1: be a dollar and everybody's gonna fee with their personal
Speaker 1: jet packs flying around, And that's just a whole other
Speaker 1: can of worms. But I mean, you need the technology,
Speaker 1: right right if you're going to get vertical, I mean,
Speaker 1: how else are you gonna pick the tomatoes off the skyscraper.
Speaker 1: This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Of course, one of the interesting things to keep in
Speaker 1: mind about a lot of these plans is, you know,
Speaker 1: people are saying, oh, you're gonna build a You're gonna
Speaker 1: build a giant pyramid and jet hand. Great, who's going
Speaker 1: to build it? Well? Maybe robots, it's the I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's Japan. They love their their robots and are
Speaker 1: generally at the forefront of of robotic technology. So the
Speaker 1: ideas that you'll have robotic workers building these things, robotic
Speaker 1: workers servicing these things, and possibly I mean nanotechnology in
Speaker 1: the fabric of the thing itself, these you know, artificial
Speaker 1: UH structures at at a very minute scale, right, I
Speaker 1: mean imagine this like you you go to check in
Speaker 1: to your residents right where you also work, you know,
Speaker 1: and you never leave this building. It's you know, twenty
Speaker 1: three right now, and maybe you're the robot who's checking
Speaker 1: you in is actually has uh outfit, if you will,
Speaker 1: made out of nanotubes that you couldn't mention there. And
Speaker 1: those nanotubes are so super crazy sophisticated that they're that
Speaker 1: they're actually pulling in photons into the photo voltaic cells
Speaker 1: on there, and they're basically like solar panels because you're
Speaker 1: in an all glass building, right, So even the robots
Speaker 1: are recycling energy for you. So I mean, not only
Speaker 1: are they checking you in and cooking your food and
Speaker 1: pretty much doing everything for you so that you're you're
Speaker 1: living the life of Riley on the floor. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're providing your energy for you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's basically stunny that it's kind of like the basic
Speaker 1: concept between behind E. N. M. Banks culture series, where
Speaker 1: we reach a point where robots basically do everything and
Speaker 1: humans kind of yeah, yeah, and this you're telling me,
Speaker 1: it made me feel so much better. It's that's the
Speaker 1: benevolent version of the technological singularity, which in technological singularity
Speaker 1: we can do an entire podcast on and well, just's
Speaker 1: the idea that that machines reached the point the singularity
Speaker 1: where they're smarter than us and it just keeps getting
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger, and the distance between machine intellect and
Speaker 1: human elect just expands exponentially, right, And it sounds very
Speaker 1: sci fi, but it's actually an idea that's that's worth
Speaker 1: looking into when in considering carefully, and it has to
Speaker 1: do with More's law and all sorts of stuff that
Speaker 1: again we could talk about later, but you have to
Speaker 1: think that at least in three with that sort of
Speaker 1: technology we have right now, that robots would play a
Speaker 1: really big parton in our lives. So it's a I
Speaker 1: like the idea that we would just we sit around
Speaker 1: and they do everything for us, and we become this
Speaker 1: benevolent culture that's trying to spread it to other uh planets?
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah? Pretty much? Yeah? Yeah, Okay, so
Speaker 1: that's the lighthearted side of giant you know, machine driven
Speaker 1: mega cultures. But yeah, and and there's some pros and
Speaker 1: cons to this, Yeah, I mean the pros to having
Speaker 1: the sort of population growth or that denser populations would
Speaker 1: necessitate environmental solutions so potentially we could live greener. Then
Speaker 1: there's humanity track record, right, Yeah, I mean I look
Speaker 1: at the situation and I say, I don't know, these
Speaker 1: these uh hypers, sky scrapers, they could just end up
Speaker 1: being ghettos or you know, essentially mirror the way that
Speaker 1: we already live culturally with all sorts of different strata
Speaker 1: of socioeconomic conditions. Yeah, and it's I also have a
Speaker 1: hard time, though, Like I have a hard time looking
Speaker 1: up at like a normal skyscraper today like that, or
Speaker 1: you know, a really high rise apartment building and thinking
Speaker 1: who are the people that live here? You know, are
Speaker 1: that are there that many like surgeons and lawyers that
Speaker 1: can occupy this uh, this pristine real estate. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: we're not pristine, but joy, I guess it's Christine. It's
Speaker 1: probably clean up there. Um, you know, who are these people?
Speaker 1: And then when I start thinking about like these giant skyscrapers,
Speaker 1: like who are who are these people living in there?
Speaker 1: What do they do for a living within the skyscraper?
Speaker 1: They never leave, you know, unless you have this situation
Speaker 1: where people don't have to do anything, and that of
Speaker 1: course comes with its share of utopian problems as well,
Speaker 1: right right, And I'm for any theater geeks out there too.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about you're in town in which the you know,
Speaker 1: the the head of this corporation um, lives at the
Speaker 1: very top of this giant structure, and they've had a
Speaker 1: twenty year drought. Their sewer system is crazy. They just
Speaker 1: have very little water resources and people have to start
Speaker 1: paying to go to the bathroom. And so again it's
Speaker 1: like Metropolis where you've got the fat cats at the top,
Speaker 1: the you know, the corporate tycoons, and the lowlies at
Speaker 1: the bottom, you know, as leaves we toiling. It reminds
Speaker 1: me a lot um into talking about sort of pessimistic
Speaker 1: views of what these like this kind of life on
Speaker 1: the five floor we consist of. There's a San Francisco artist.
Speaker 1: He's dead now, but his name's Irving Norman, and uh,
Speaker 1: do look him up because he created this this fabulous
Speaker 1: Nightmarck visions. You know, he was he was like a
Speaker 1: huge he was Spanish born. He was a huge critic
Speaker 1: of of where the country was going in the twentieth
Speaker 1: century and where and when what capitalism was going to
Speaker 1: do um to society and uh, and so he created
Speaker 1: these There's one particular like tryptic that's uh in Uh.
Speaker 1: You can you can see if you go to the
Speaker 1: Art Museum there in San Francisco, where it's just these
Speaker 1: massive skyscrapers and it's just like miserable, like soul is
Speaker 1: looking people occupying little cells and uh. And if you
Speaker 1: in in the higher portions of the building, and then
Speaker 1: if you look at the base of the building in
Speaker 1: the basement, it's like just assembly lines of like human misery,
Speaker 1: and it's it's like I say, beautiful nightmaric stuff. And
Speaker 1: it's it's sort of a nice counterweight to the whole
Speaker 1: you know, flying around with your martini and a with
Speaker 1: a jet pack and you know, taking your Wonka vad
Speaker 1: or up to the restaurant on the on the dining deck.
Speaker 1: So I feel like you're apocalypse. That's that's a good
Speaker 1: one to go to. Yeah, a little little apocalyptic sort
Speaker 1: of in a different way. I suppose. I was also
Speaker 1: thinking about the antithesis of this, which is Thomas Kincaid,
Speaker 1: the Painter of Lights. Are you familiar with his work?
Speaker 1: It's just the like to describe a piece formula. It's
Speaker 1: crazy popular. Like I heard something on the other day
Speaker 1: that he's in like one out of every twenty homes
Speaker 1: in some fashions, that a lot of like really pale
Speaker 1: looking women holding like things that are glowing, no, like
Speaker 1: really blown out, like white looking. No, but that these
Speaker 1: are paintings, and these are like these really nostalgic paintings.
Speaker 1: He's called the Painter of Lights, and it's usually snowy scenes,
Speaker 1: you know, nineteen hundreds or what would appear to be
Speaker 1: like the nineteen hundreds, Um, you know, the night stars twinkling,
Speaker 1: and you know, it doesn't really actually depict the nineteen
Speaker 1: hundreds as they wore. It's it's more of like this
Speaker 1: imagic history of simpler times, and you know, it's our
Speaker 1: our penchant for creating these false histories for ourselves. So
Speaker 1: I was sort of thinking, Okay, in the in the
Speaker 1: benevolent version that we have of the future or robot
Speaker 1: are doing everything for us, and we become these these
Speaker 1: great benevolent creatures trying to um share our our robotic
Speaker 1: wealth with the galaxy that we pine for yesteryear and
Speaker 1: that we you know, even though we've got all these trips,
Speaker 1: plan to go to Mars in the moon um and
Speaker 1: those are super fantastic things that we still can't help
Speaker 1: but look back and idealize the past. And so I
Speaker 1: was thinking about, like this Thomas Kincaid like pictures, like
Speaker 1: what would they look like of where we are in
Speaker 1: would it would be like an office scene instead of
Speaker 1: snow that you'd have the concrete like being all per lescented,
Speaker 1: and the glow from the from our screens like you know,
Speaker 1: like this candlelight glow and people in the future will
Speaker 1: look back. It was just so much easier. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's it's interesting too that you pointed out
Speaker 1: because we're talking about idealized visions of the past and
Speaker 1: this whole podcast has been about basically for the most
Speaker 1: part idealized visions of the future. It's the same movement, uh,
Speaker 1: in in a different direction. Um, don't get quantum ammy. No, No,
Speaker 1: I'm just a you know, we're basically talking about the
Speaker 1: same sort of thing where we're where. It's also I've
Speaker 1: heard it compared like science fiction is is a you know,
Speaker 1: it's a fantastic future and it's and then fantasy Uh
Speaker 1: fiction is the same, the same movement but in reverse
Speaker 1: looking into the past like a fantastic vision of the path. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's no, no, I know, I know what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Like you're even bringing up the Frank Lloyd right earlier
Speaker 1: of the Illinois the the um fictional skyscraper that Frank Lloyd,
Speaker 1: And there's there's something nostalgic about looking at at that.
Speaker 1: That's what like he designed that to be five thousand
Speaker 1: ft tall or something. Yeah, it was gonna be yeah,
Speaker 1: five thousand two feet tall like durn near a mile
Speaker 1: high and uh and it's pretty visionary. Uh go to Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, if listening to this now, you can go
Speaker 1: to the blogs. I'm going to post this awesome video.
Speaker 1: But that someone did for um a Googenheim exhibit, and
Speaker 1: it's like a three D model of what this would
Speaker 1: have looked like had it been built and how it
Speaker 1: rates with the other existing skyscrapers. Right. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very if you look at it now and it's it's
Speaker 1: this interesting, it's kind of like science fiction. It's where um,
Speaker 1: you know, right, thought we might be in the future. Right,
Speaker 1: he didn't think about all the elevators. It was going
Speaker 1: to say, no, yeah, there were some three definite problems
Speaker 1: with the engineering on that building. Yeah, that's why architects
Speaker 1: and engineers they just it's always budding heads. I know,
Speaker 1: look at falling Water that that needed a little help
Speaker 1: from the engineers. So yeah, there you go. Nostalgia. That's
Speaker 1: how it happens. To talk about the future and you
Speaker 1: get all nostalgic. Speaking of past and future. We do
Speaker 1: have some listener mail from the present for now. So
Speaker 1: we have one listener by the name of Oscar, and
Speaker 1: Oscar right in every now and then, and he just
Speaker 1: really he's one of these these listeners who really shares
Speaker 1: his his mind. Yeah, and he's got some really thought
Speaker 1: provoking ideas. Yeah, and he knows that we cannot read everything.
Speaker 1: He sends us because it's he gives us a lot
Speaker 1: of data. But I wanted to read a little a bit.
Speaker 1: He was a responding to our recent podcast Alien Etiquette
Speaker 1: one oh one, in which we discuss um what kind
Speaker 1: of information we're providing aliens within, what information we should
Speaker 1: provide them with potentially and and how and what kind
Speaker 1: of processes need to be involved in preparing to speak
Speaker 1: to aliens, should their presence right? And how people are
Speaker 1: trying to legislate that right now even though this is
Speaker 1: just sort of this idea there in the ether. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Oscar shared some thoughts, he said regarding content. I
Speaker 1: think lawyers and politicians should keep as far away from
Speaker 1: that project as possible, mainly because they both based their
Speaker 1: careers on twisting word, selfish use of information, and strong
Speaker 1: personal greed not something to be shared. Really. I have
Speaker 1: always thought that artists would not be a very good
Speaker 1: choice either, since, as you mentioned, no matter how much
Speaker 1: of the human essence they managed to capture, the information
Speaker 1: only makes sense within our human context. Love, friendship, selfishness
Speaker 1: are considered to be different things, even when in our
Speaker 1: own communities, not to different cultures and or times. Until
Speaker 1: a more objective you un abstractions can be obtained. We
Speaker 1: should try to avoid those two, if only to avoid
Speaker 1: confusion on first meetings. That would leave science. It is
Speaker 1: the best way to make our first approach, and math
Speaker 1: is the way to go here here Oscar, Yeah, talk
Speaker 1: to the aliens with math. I think that makes the
Speaker 1: most sense, though it also brings in share problems as
Speaker 1: we discussed in that podcast. Yes, some logistical things going
Speaker 1: on there, right, so hey, be sure to check out
Speaker 1: Tom Harris's amazing article how Skyscrapers Work that goes into
Speaker 1: all the engineering problems and solutions inherent in building something
Speaker 1: that tall and uh and it's really it's really a
Speaker 1: great article. This I think may have been one of
Speaker 1: the first house stuff Works articles that I read personally,
Speaker 1: uh Lena, way before I actually became employed here. And
Speaker 1: then Jacob Silverman has an article called where will there
Speaker 1: be Farms in New York City Skyscrapers which goes into
Speaker 1: some of the vertical farming issues that we've been talking
Speaker 1: about in the Hydroponica. Be sure check out our Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter pages. You can find each as blow the Mind,
Speaker 1: and we keep those updated with all sorts of cool
Speaker 1: links to both the how stuff works related to content
Speaker 1: and blogs, et cetera, as well as just really cool
Speaker 1: stuff that we find on the web in our daily research.
Speaker 1: And if you've got any thoughts, questions, or you want
Speaker 1: to share your favorite Thomas Kincaid painting with us, please
Speaker 1: email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about
Speaker 1: the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper
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