December 23, 2010 • 40 mins
By 2050, experts believe approximately two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities. How will this urbanization change life for individuals, and how will it affect the world? Listen in and learn more about life on the 500th floor.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, what this stuff to Blow your Mind?
This is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas and we're
joining you from the Radiation Proof podcast Chamber here at
how stuff works dot com. Now for now, Julie, what's
(00:25):
your favorite vision of a futuristic city. I'm gonna have
to go super old school and say the Jetsons. The Jetsons,
I love the domestic setup that they have and the
robot doing everything, yes, and then the the whole food
being prepared. Um. And then you know, I love that
(00:46):
you're just flying around and you can go through your
drive throughs in your your own little spacecraft. Cool. Yeah,
well this is a this is the topic I could.
I could like the fashion sorry, the fashion, yeah, yeah,
they had like I love a little like a little
like Saturn rings around everything. Um. When it comes to,
(01:07):
you know, talking about futuris futuristic cities, I could. I
could probably go on too long, and I probably will
start going on too long and which guy's just beeper
had to jump in and stop me. But okay, I
mean there's so many classic visions. There's of course Metropolis, Yes,
the nineteen twenty nine or something thereabout the old black
and white silent Yeah, German expression is some film. Yeah,
(01:30):
I just showed this massive just you know today. It's
you know, kind of like a retrofuturist thing, I guess,
you know, just a massive city. It's like the city
Um on steroids, if you will, Um with the giant skyscrape,
the fat cats at the top, yeah, and the idea
everybody else toiling underneath exactly, almost kind of like a
(01:51):
more Locks kind of thing going on, you know. And
and it's you know, it's kind of a natural extrapolation
of population growth and technological advance. Buildings keep getting higher,
so they're just gonna keep getting higher, right, You're thinking
about that even back in the day, right right. Yeah.
And so by the time like Blade Runner came out,
you know that that really set the standard for for
(02:12):
a lot of people's imaginations of what a just a
future city skate might look out look like. Well, I
think I finally revealed that replicants are among us. Yeah, yeah,
it was actually it was a documentary actually, um little
man in fact. Yeah, And there's there's another example that
I personally really love and I have a love hate
relationship with this particular book. But there's a book called
(02:33):
The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson, and this was
like an early twentieth century book that dealt with like
a post apocalyptic world in which the the sun has
gone out and the world is cooled, and the last
remnants of humanity living this enormous pyramid called the Last
Redoubt and um, and so it's like that everybody lives
(02:55):
on these different different floors and they grow food in there,
and it's heated by geo thermal energies, and there's like
a whole there's like a second pyramid underneath the top
one where they grow like all the food. And it's
kind of a horribly written book. It's really a pain
to read. Um, really outrageous writing style where he's he's
(03:16):
you know, it's it's just it's rough. But the but
if you can you sort of pick through all the
bad writing, there's just a tremendous ahead of its time vision.
I mean, just telling me that right there is amazing,
because that's what futurists are planning for us not too
far off here. I mean, some people are thinking about
what you just describe happening for us within twenty years,
(03:40):
let alone like a hundred. There's there's actually an excellent,
really kind of theoretical plan for something called the Shimazoo
Mega City Pyramid. And this is again very theoretical, but
it's it's partially inspired by Blade Runner. But this would
be a giant pyramid on Tokyo Bay, twelve times higher
(04:01):
than the Great Pyramid of Giza, with an occupancy of
seven fifty thousand. And again this is an example of
most of these these really large scale when we're talking
about like cities that are just like a city skate
kind of situation, a Blade Runner type of situation. Um,
we're talking about something that's called arcology, which is a
(04:22):
portmanteau or wordable if you like, of the words architecture
and ecology. So in other words, it's just architecture, um
and and design on a scale that is really more
like a landscape that can accommodate our enormous population and
to bring it down to brass tacks. I think the
reason why we're so interested in this topic is because
(04:45):
right now half of the world population six point eight
billion people live in cities, and it's estimated by fifty
that two thirds of the population will live in cities.
So obviously this trend is not stopping. And then just
to put this into context, think about in eighteen hundred
when less than three percent of the world lived in cities.
(05:08):
So what does that mean for us? I mean that
means obviously, besides a lot more people, a lot more
mouth to feed, we have less available land. We've got
all sorts of issues that we need to try to
to solve. And and I even think about it in
this in this way, like the best uh d I
(05:29):
y Home show worth its salt will always tell you
when you run out of room, what do you do? Build?
You build up, build up, you go vertical. So we're
looking at a future where the sky, the landscape is
just gonna be completely populated with these superstructures. And again
it's not too far down the road that this is happening.
(05:51):
And in fact, there are a lot of construction projects
right now that are underway. Yeah, it's a it's a
there there. There are even people who look into the
future and and start dreaming about I don't know if
it's a dream or it's really more like a nightmare,
but um, the idea of the uk monopolis, which is
a city made from an entire world. So if you
(06:11):
can imagine, it's really like the concept that I think
Grant Morrison presented this in The Invisibles. But like the
city as it is is a is a cancer that
kind of takes over a whole planet, and and sort
of yeah, the city as as a cancer and the
city is this is the physical manifestation of humanity, uh
(06:33):
you know, all its worst properties. The city as a
character is a living, breathing thing. Yeah. Well, I mean
it's not just us thinking about this. The TED founder
Richard Saul Wurman, he actually has a project called nineteen
twenty one and that is a case study of nineteen
cities with populations that will meet or exceed twenty million
by the end of the twenty first century. And uh,
(06:55):
these most of these nineteen cities border oceans, and so
his thinking and that foundation is thinking, is that there's
going to be rising sea levels and there's going to
be all sorts of weird meteorological patterns happening, and so
the cities really need to be studied in terms of
how they're going to deal with food production, transportation, water resources,
(07:18):
and all that good stuff so on. On a very
practical level, it's an issue that we need to look at.
And people just keep pointing up and saying, we're going
to be living in these crazy vertical structures and you know,
we may be on the floor. Yeah, it's easy to know.
People look at these these giant megastructures and they're like, oh,
they'll be they'll be like a restaurant in there. There'll
(07:39):
be a restaurant every floor, you know. But but when
you look at the stats for you know, revolving around
the feeding the people on this planet, it gets pretty staggering.
I mean, for starters, demographics predicted the planet will host
nine point five billion people by at least according to
one study we're looking at. And because each of us
(08:00):
require a minimum of fift calories a day. Uh, you
were pointing, this civilization would have to cultivate like a
Brazil's worth of land, right, it's like two point one
billion acres. And it relates directly to something that is
often referred to as the eco footprint analysis. And uh,
and that's the thing as you look at different parts
(08:22):
of the world, Uh, the amount of land required to
feed one given person ferries. So people in the developed
and developed countries such as United States and Japan, for instance,
each require an estimated ten to twenty five acres of
land to support their lifestyle. So that's that's a you know,
pretty staggering footprint. And and according to population ecologist of
(08:44):
William E. Rees, the global average breaks down to five
point four acres per person. And unfortunately, the planet only
has enough bioproductive surface area to a lot four point
four acres to each of its six point eight billion residents.
So um, human civilizations current eco footprint is already beyond
sustainable levels. Okay, So what you're saying is we just
(09:06):
we don't have the land. We don't have arable land
new arable land available to us. So again we're in
the same room. What are we gonna do? Go up? Um?
And I think it's interesting to look right now at
at a couple of current examples just so that we
can kind of get our footing on what this means
to us. And one of the examples is the Bionic
(09:26):
Tower in Shanghai is pretty staggering. Yeah, this is a
crazy structure. It's it's slated to start construction in and
it's going to take fifteen years to build four thousand
feet tall with three hundred floors, and the structural will
contain twelve vertical neighborhoods. And we're talking about green spaces,
(09:48):
urban spaces. I mean, just think about think about New
York sort of sandwich into building for instance. And the structure,
if I may, is a very fallic structure. And uh,
it is centered in an artificial lake. And the reason
for the lake is so that it could absorb any
shock waves from earthquakes. And uh, they proposed putting a
(10:12):
bunch of I guess you what, you'd say, regular size
buildings at the base that they'd have little trams to
go to. And I mean basically you would never ever
have to leave the structure your entire life, which is
just mind blowing. Yeah. Well, it reminds me again of
the Last re Doubt in the Night Land, where the
situation is there are people that live and die old
(10:34):
generations without leaving the structure, right, And then I mean
it begs the question for me, like, Okay, well, this
is this is something we're looking in the next years.
In five hundred years, are we just gonna all be
in like a little five by five pod up in
the sky, you know, living and dying in that same space,
or you know, you know, not to get depressing. Well,
(10:56):
it's not depressing because you have to realize video games
are gonna be crazy good by time, you know. So
why would you believe you wouldn't even care about the
sunset looking so beautiful at that? Right? I mean they're
pretty great now, but you know by this point they're
gonna be like, I don't have to go outside. Great
just on the first level of that's right. Yeah, um so, yeah,
(11:16):
maybe that's not so much of a concern, but you know,
in our minds right now, it's sort of inconceivable. And
then just from an engineering standpoint, you think about wind
and movement at that height, you know, you can't have
any structure move anymore than one four hundreds of its
height else it's too unstable. Yeah. I ran across some
interesting UM statistics on this. In numerical terms, the support
(11:42):
and state built and stability of a building translates to
an aspect ratio between six and eight. Okay, so bear
with me, um so you want Okay, So the aspect
ratio in this case is calculated by dividing the height
of the building by the width of its base. This
is kind of the if you've ever liked built anything
to play or something, and you want like a strong
(12:02):
base to support heights. Okay, so um to achieve a
desirable aspect ratio of seven a bionic tower. And this
is based on a like you give a four thousand
foot height, and I've seen other height estimates that were lower,
like three thousand, two eighty one, so this might not
completely mesh with that with the four thousand number, but
(12:25):
if it worth, if the tower worth three thousand two
one ft tall, the base would then need to be
four dred and sixty nine ft wide. Whoa, Okay, alright,
so I mean we're talking about just an enormous structure, right.
And then the other thing that I'm thinking about too
is something called the stack effect, which is that the
wind moaning that you hear when you're up a really
(12:48):
really high space, and particularly in buildings where you get
that whistling effect with elevators. So yeah, you might have
a great view, but you won't be haunted. I like
this eraser head like noise all the time. Yeah, And
speaking of l a ators, Uh, the estimate that I
was looking at for the Balonot Tower, three dred and
sixty eight elevators. Okay, so you need to completely rethink
elevator talk at this point, right, Yeah, I mean assuming
(13:10):
we canna assume that they have some good speed to them.
But still, yeah, even if they're basically won clevators, I mean,
they're the three center and sixty eight is is pretty
massive up and it's one of the the problems you
run into with with a lot of like super tall
skyscraper situations. For instance, Uh, how stuff works is located
(13:31):
in a what we're fifteen floors fourteen technically because is
taken out and then there's the secret floor with the
moment and you know. But but so we have two
banks of elevators to one one with four elevators going
up what like halfway and then four other elevators going
up the rest of the way. And that more or
(13:51):
less makes sense if you've ever been saying, like, like
the dorm that I was in in college had two
elevators that serviced twelve floors, and it was one of
these situations where the the higher you were, the more
difficult it was to catch an elevator. So, uh, extrapolate
that to a five hundred floor of building, and it
(14:12):
gets ridiculous, like you have to have elevators that that
that say, do you know floors one through tin, then
another has to do the next tin floors, the next
tin floors, etcetera. You have to make it to where
people aren't spending half their day just ascending. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
So I guess I would invert the paradigm to that
maybe that the best floor would be like the tenth floor. Yeah. Um,
(14:34):
But that's just something to think about. And and then
also talking about extrapolating if people were to be living
in these sort of mega cities with these structures, you
start to think about any sort of interlocking tunnels that
might run between the buildings. Oh yeah, because that's another
big staple of I mean, I'm a huge fan of
sky bridges. I see a sky bridge between buildings and like,
(14:54):
I'm magine the like it goes back to the Yeah,
like I'm thinking, like as a kid, it's like I
would always like dream up like fight scenarios between characters
and non existent action films, like where they would have
to fight on a on a on a sky bridge
in a sky bridge. And then of course the window
breaks and they have to find on top of the
sky bridge. They're amazing, you know, So I didn't know
(15:14):
that skybridge is like they they're pretty important to you. Well,
they're They're just great. I mean it's like it's this
man made little bridge on the top of like two
man made mountains, are you know, bridging them together? Like
I almost wrecked the car anytime I drive under one. Wow,
get to know if you're driving with you. So, I
mean that's bionic tower. That's one example. Well, a little
(15:35):
more about the ma bionic tower though, Um, I was
reading that. There's also a you're talking about the wind
going on, Well, it can actually turn a building into
a giant tuning fork. There's a phenomenon called vortex shedding,
and basically it breaks down like this is the wind
blows around the corners of the building, spins off into
eddies all right, or masses of whirling air, and the
(16:00):
frequency at which the eddies of air or shed increases
the wind speed. So, um, this can build up and
you end up with a dangerous effect called residents and
and so and this just causes the building to move
more and more to where you could pensually potentially have
windows shatter. Um, you know, stuff is cracking, things are
falling apart, right, Yeah, I haven't even thought. So that's
(16:21):
the tuning fork effect, So that the it's it's basically
conducting all of these vibrations to the point where it shatters.
Am I hearing you right on that? Okay? So you
end up having to you need to have like aerodynamic
features to a building a lot of times, or you
use a dampening system. And this is just something like
a or like a four hundred ton concrete blocks such
(16:43):
as in New York City's City Core building to absorb
the vibrations like a giant shock absorber. Yeah, all right.
I had to just make sure because as soon as
you said tuning forks, I was like thrown back to
Costa Rica where I was staying at this place unbeknownst
to me with a woman was a healer who was
trying to heal me with tuning forks. So I had
a little bit of a moment there. How to repress memory?
(17:03):
I hope you don't mind. Um, So, I mean, obviously
there are there are some practical things that would hinder
us right now in terms of the technology at like
you would think so with bionic Tower like that that
sort of upkeep seems insane. Now, Bionic Tower is also
interesting in that they, I mean, the whole name comes
from bionic because in bio as in bio mimetics, as
(17:24):
in looking to nature to solve human problems, not the
bionic man. Well no, not really, but I don't know,
I'm not. But you know, it's the idea that it's like, hey,
I need to design a um I need to design
an airplane. I need to design something that can fly
in the air. So I can either have a scientist
look at look at this problem and depend on human science.
(17:47):
It's you know, maybe been analyzing this problem for what,
you know, some few hundred years or something. I can
look to evolution, which has been tackling this problem for
a much longer period of time, looking to nature to
solve human engineering problems. So they make a big show
with the Bionic Tower of talking about how that the
(18:07):
how they have these ninety two vertical columns and the
design to you know, for energy and water and other supplies,
and that this is like the some of the transport
systems in a vascular plant. And they also talk about
the base of the tower would be kind of like
a root system and a tree, which on the surface
sounds great. But but but the if if you look
(18:28):
at some of the info out there about I'm just
thinking about. I recently went to Yosseminate National Park and
they have the giant sequoias there, which, you know, enormous trees,
really interesting to look at, and on the service you
might think, yeah, if I wanted to build a super
tall building, I totally looked to a giant sekoia because
they have it all figured out. But the thing is,
giant tekoias, though they live pretty long, they fall down
(18:49):
when they're when the wind blows too too strong or
there's like a really harsh winter, they collapse. They're not
reinforced with steel, right, and you know the whole um,
the whole you know, giant tree with the tunnel cut
out in the middle. No, tell me about you have
you seen this? I'm sure um in Yosemite is a
great place. But but like a lot lot of parks,
(19:09):
and yeah, there was a time when it was like
totally fine to like feed garbage to bears and tout
a pathway through through the trees so you could drive
your car through, and uh, the tree eventually die, but
not because of the tunnel. Like the tree can survive that.
They're typically damaged by fire to the point where there's
(19:30):
a giant hole in the base anyway, but the cars
driving over the roots system like that. The root system
is pretty shallow, and that's one of the things that
really did it in. So that's one. You can't actually
walk up and, thank goodness, carved your name onto the
side of the giant Sekoya in Yosemite. So anyway, no,
I did not do that. I just respect very respectful name.
(19:51):
Um I spray painted it, so it's not so um.
So Yeah, when when I when I read about people
looking to trees, and obviously they're not gonna it's not
gonna be that simplistic situation. But I can't help but
think that it's like, well, this is this is not
really a problem that nature has solved. It's not a
problem nature wants to solve, you know, So that that's
(20:11):
still there are the concept of looking to nature to
solve engineering problems is a really good one. Yeah, I
think it was it. But Minister Fuller, maybe I have
some memory of uh reading something once in which he
said that a structure can be perfect, but it's not
beautiful until it does have some sort of mimicry of
nature to it. Oh yeah, like you get into the
whole um um, you know, any kind of you know,
(20:34):
look at classical architecture. They were really big into the
the Golden mean and all that, you know, right right, Okay,
So bionic tower. There you go with that one. And
then another one in the works is Masdar City and
Abu Dhabi and that is going to be the first
carbon neutral city and it should be completed by and
(20:56):
what they're trying to do is to build a city
of fort abitants where of the water can be recycled
and cars will be banned and replaced by a personal
rapid trans transit system, which is a subterranean system using
cars powered by solar batteries. And that they look really cool,
I have to say, but I'm kind of picturing like
(21:18):
a little casket that you climb into and it's like
shoot shoots your you know, from the restaurant to your apartment.
So dark. Well, I mean it's more like a pod,
a casting pod, and it's white. Well that's not nightmarek
at all, No, not at all. I mean just bolting
you through a town, but it can carry somethinging three
(21:39):
to six people depending on the design and the ideas
that it could be shared by people. Um and asopp
as it could be sort of like a taxi cab
system too. But they actually have those in use at Pitha.
I believe they're testing them out, but they're not open
to the public. So that's one of the technologies that
we actually have in place right now, which is kind
of interesting to see that that's happening. Um. And then
(22:01):
there's another structure, of course in Dubai. It's called the
Crescent Hydropolis, and this is an instance where they're going
underground into the ocean and it's supposedly it's the world's
first luxury underwater hotel. I say supposedly just because it's
not because because there could be more under because they're underwater,
you can't see them. Yeah, I don't know. They could
(22:21):
be it could be a shack under their um but
there's supposed to be two hundred submarine suites and guests
will be arrived at a land station and then be
transported via a train. And it has a one point
one million square feet which includes a shopping mall, restaurants,
movie theaters, and oh, a missile defense system. Well, of course, yeah,
(22:42):
it's you gotta wonder like that was sort of the
impetus for the whole design first place. How can we
sell a missile defense system? Yeah? Yeah, what luxury boutique hotel?
And you know sixt under the water. Um. So there
are different ways that people are thinking about moving the population.
I mean this obviously that's the luxury hotel that isn't
(23:04):
going to be. That's not a model that we could
use across the board to try to deal with our
population problems. But it's certainly a different way of thinking
about using the space that we have. Um. And then
that also we talked about this already, that the fact
that there is going to be a huge demand for food,
uh nine point five billion people. Like so again people
(23:27):
are looking up and saying vertical farming is the answer.
And uh, if you look at our model right now, agriculture,
we use like of fresh water resources and then we
render that most of that unsafe to drink because of pesticides, fertilizers, etcetera.
In there so, if you do a hydroponic system or
(23:49):
if you if you grow vertical farms, obviously you're not
having to pollute the nactual earth, and you get a
lot cleaner of a resource. And this that was a
really interesting stut that one square block farm once we're
about form thirty stories high, could yield as much food
as outdoor acres, which is yeah, crazy, And then supposedly
(24:13):
there's there's not as much spoilerg either there. They didn't
really go into why that is, and you know, I
was just sort of thinking, well, maybe that's just because
you reach outside of your window and you grab that
tomato or whatever and it's more visible. I don't know,
it's harvested better. But um so growing food in high
glass high rises could really like drastically reduce fossil fuel
missions and recycle wastewater. And this is an actual a
(24:35):
good logical way to try to deal with population growth
and and go up and a found our skyscrapers and
utilize them. Yeah, especially when I was thinking about this
too in an apocalyptic way too, not to not to
go dark, but I mean, if you do have all
of these buildings that are just empty husks sitting around,
(24:55):
why not try to to grow vertically up them? You know,
waste use as a surface. Yeah, it's better than using
it for you know, giant advertisements, which always irritates me.
Because there's like one particular building in Atlanta, uh and
I don't know the name of it. It's just it's
very visible when you're going up straight through the city
on the Connector. There's this old building and it's you know,
it's it's clearly just decrepit, and I think there's maybe
(25:18):
a parking lot at the bottom that they make money
off of. But it's an awesome old building. I love
looking at it. And there was a brief period where
they covered it with an advertisement like they do all
the time in New York, and I was I was heartbroken.
I was like, oh, that's that's that's horrible, Like they
covered up this beautiful, ruinous building, which if if nothing else,
Atlanta has some great ruinous looking buildings. Like there's a
(25:39):
there's a current television show I'm sure everybody or a
lot of people are watching The Walking Dead, which is
you know, zombie apocalypse thing, and they filmed it in Atlanta,
and it's great because the characters. It takes place like,
you know, a few months after the zombie Apocalypse and
they're walking through really apocalyptic looking buildings. And of course
the take come here is that Atlanta already looked apocalyptic
because not enough time has passed in the show for
(26:00):
things to you know, turn into rubble. It's like, we
already have all that rubble around and all these like
really cool urban contested spaces. That's why they picked us.
We're not just all you know, Veranda's and and the
iced tea we've got. We've got some molten going on,
I guess you would say. But getting back to the
buildings of the future and and what might eventually become
(26:23):
some sort of crumbling building, you definitely need technology right
to support these models. And I'm thinking about the trams
between buildings and the personal transit systems, and I'm thinking
about like your favorite subject, jet packs. I'm kidding because
I know that like they're the ban of your existence.
Never they're not the bane of my existence. I just
(26:44):
they're just so silly. Now, I mean, they're either're great.
I love the Rocketeer when it came out, but I
know they're silly. But I'm telling you, I think that
like in fifty years, they're going to be the best
bots up in the sky. You know, people are going
to be drinking their latte's with you know, little jet packs.
But in particularly because next year they're going to be
commercially released to the public and they're gonna start a
(27:04):
hundred thousand dollars. Right, well, I'm gonna I need to
invest in like spinal replacement technology because I think a
lot of people are gonna get knows up. That's just
my prediction. I think you're right. I think that's not
a bad idea. Still flying around with martiniz that's a
pretty optimistic vision of the future, right, I mean you
have to think that's you know, in fifty years, a
hundred years, that could be a hundred thousand dollars will
(27:26):
be a dollar and everybody's gonna fee with their personal
jet packs flying around, And that's just a whole other
can of worms. But I mean, you need the technology,
right right if you're going to get vertical, I mean,
how else are you gonna pick the tomatoes off the skyscraper.
This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow.
(27:52):
Of course, one of the interesting things to keep in
mind about a lot of these plans is, you know,
people are saying, oh, you're gonna build a You're gonna
build a giant pyramid and jet hand. Great, who's going
to build it? Well? Maybe robots, it's the I mean
it's it's Japan. They love their their robots and are
generally at the forefront of of robotic technology. So the
(28:13):
ideas that you'll have robotic workers building these things, robotic
workers servicing these things, and possibly I mean nanotechnology in
the fabric of the thing itself, these you know, artificial
UH structures at at a very minute scale, right, I
mean imagine this like you you go to check in
to your residents right where you also work, you know,
(28:37):
and you never leave this building. It's you know, twenty
three right now, and maybe you're the robot who's checking
you in is actually has uh outfit, if you will,
made out of nanotubes that you couldn't mention there. And
those nanotubes are so super crazy sophisticated that they're that
(28:58):
they're actually pulling in photons into the photo voltaic cells
on there, and they're basically like solar panels because you're
in an all glass building, right, So even the robots
are recycling energy for you. So I mean, not only
are they checking you in and cooking your food and
pretty much doing everything for you so that you're you're
(29:20):
living the life of Riley on the floor. Yeah, but
I mean they're they're providing your energy for you. Yeah.
It's basically stunny that it's kind of like the basic
concept between behind E. N. M. Banks culture series, where
we reach a point where robots basically do everything and
humans kind of yeah, yeah, and this you're telling me,
it made me feel so much better. It's that's the
(29:42):
benevolent version of the technological singularity, which in technological singularity
we can do an entire podcast on and well, just's
the idea that that machines reached the point the singularity
where they're smarter than us and it just keeps getting
bigger and bigger, and the distance between machine intellect and
human elect just expands exponentially, right, And it sounds very
(30:04):
sci fi, but it's actually an idea that's that's worth
looking into when in considering carefully, and it has to
do with More's law and all sorts of stuff that
again we could talk about later, but you have to
think that at least in three with that sort of
technology we have right now, that robots would play a
really big parton in our lives. So it's a I
(30:25):
like the idea that we would just we sit around
and they do everything for us, and we become this
benevolent culture that's trying to spread it to other uh planets?
Is that right? Yeah? Pretty much? Yeah? Yeah, Okay, so
that's the lighthearted side of giant you know, machine driven
mega cultures. But yeah, and and there's some pros and
(30:46):
cons to this, Yeah, I mean the pros to having
the sort of population growth or that denser populations would
necessitate environmental solutions so potentially we could live greener. Then
there's humanity track record, right, Yeah, I mean I look
at the situation and I say, I don't know, these
(31:07):
these uh hypers, sky scrapers, they could just end up
being ghettos or you know, essentially mirror the way that
we already live culturally with all sorts of different strata
of socioeconomic conditions. Yeah, and it's I also have a
hard time, though, Like I have a hard time looking
(31:28):
up at like a normal skyscraper today like that, or
you know, a really high rise apartment building and thinking
who are the people that live here? You know, are
that are there that many like surgeons and lawyers that
can occupy this uh, this pristine real estate. You know, Um,
we're not pristine, but joy, I guess it's Christine. It's
probably clean up there. Um, you know, who are these people?
(31:49):
And then when I start thinking about like these giant skyscrapers,
like who are who are these people living in there?
What do they do for a living within the skyscraper?
They never leave, you know, unless you have this situation
where people don't have to do anything, and that of
course comes with its share of utopian problems as well,
right right, And I'm for any theater geeks out there too.
(32:10):
I'm thinking about you're in town in which the you know,
the the head of this corporation um, lives at the
very top of this giant structure, and they've had a
twenty year drought. Their sewer system is crazy. They just
have very little water resources and people have to start
paying to go to the bathroom. And so again it's
like Metropolis where you've got the fat cats at the top,
(32:32):
the you know, the corporate tycoons, and the lowlies at
the bottom, you know, as leaves we toiling. It reminds
me a lot um into talking about sort of pessimistic
views of what these like this kind of life on
the five floor we consist of. There's a San Francisco artist.
He's dead now, but his name's Irving Norman, and uh,
(32:54):
do look him up because he created this this fabulous
Nightmarck visions. You know, he was he was like a
huge he was Spanish born. He was a huge critic
of of where the country was going in the twentieth
century and where and when what capitalism was going to
do um to society and uh, and so he created
these There's one particular like tryptic that's uh in Uh.
(33:16):
You can you can see if you go to the
Art Museum there in San Francisco, where it's just these
massive skyscrapers and it's just like miserable, like soul is
looking people occupying little cells and uh. And if you
in in the higher portions of the building, and then
if you look at the base of the building in
the basement, it's like just assembly lines of like human misery,
and it's it's like I say, beautiful nightmaric stuff. And
(33:39):
it's it's sort of a nice counterweight to the whole
you know, flying around with your martini and a with
a jet pack and you know, taking your Wonka vad
or up to the restaurant on the on the dining deck.
So I feel like you're apocalypse. That's that's a good
one to go to. Yeah, a little little apocalyptic sort
of in a different way. I suppose. I was also
(34:00):
thinking about the antithesis of this, which is Thomas Kincaid,
the Painter of Lights. Are you familiar with his work?
It's just the like to describe a piece formula. It's
crazy popular. Like I heard something on the other day
that he's in like one out of every twenty homes
in some fashions, that a lot of like really pale
looking women holding like things that are glowing, no, like
(34:23):
really blown out, like white looking. No, but that these
are paintings, and these are like these really nostalgic paintings.
He's called the Painter of Lights, and it's usually snowy scenes,
you know, nineteen hundreds or what would appear to be
like the nineteen hundreds, Um, you know, the night stars twinkling,
and you know, it doesn't really actually depict the nineteen
(34:43):
hundreds as they wore. It's it's more of like this
imagic history of simpler times, and you know, it's our
our penchant for creating these false histories for ourselves. So
I was sort of thinking, Okay, in the in the
benevolent version that we have of the future or robot
are doing everything for us, and we become these these
great benevolent creatures trying to um share our our robotic
(35:07):
wealth with the galaxy that we pine for yesteryear and
that we you know, even though we've got all these trips,
plan to go to Mars in the moon um and
those are super fantastic things that we still can't help
but look back and idealize the past. And so I
was thinking about, like this Thomas Kincaid like pictures, like
(35:28):
what would they look like of where we are in
would it would be like an office scene instead of
snow that you'd have the concrete like being all per lescented,
and the glow from the from our screens like you know,
like this candlelight glow and people in the future will
look back. It was just so much easier. Yeah, I
don't know. It's it's interesting too that you pointed out
(35:50):
because we're talking about idealized visions of the past and
this whole podcast has been about basically for the most
part idealized visions of the future. It's the same movement, uh,
in in a different direction. Um, don't get quantum ammy. No, No,
I'm just a you know, we're basically talking about the
same sort of thing where we're where. It's also I've
(36:10):
heard it compared like science fiction is is a you know,
it's a fantastic future and it's and then fantasy Uh
fiction is the same, the same movement but in reverse
looking into the past like a fantastic vision of the path. Anyway,
it's no, no, I know, I know what you're saying.
Like you're even bringing up the Frank Lloyd right earlier
of the Illinois the the um fictional skyscraper that Frank Lloyd,
(36:36):
And there's there's something nostalgic about looking at at that.
That's what like he designed that to be five thousand
ft tall or something. Yeah, it was gonna be yeah,
five thousand two feet tall like durn near a mile
high and uh and it's pretty visionary. Uh go to Uh.
In fact, if listening to this now, you can go
to the blogs. I'm going to post this awesome video.
(36:59):
But that someone did for um a Googenheim exhibit, and
it's like a three D model of what this would
have looked like had it been built and how it
rates with the other existing skyscrapers. Right. But yeah, it's
very if you look at it now and it's it's
this interesting, it's kind of like science fiction. It's where um,
you know, right, thought we might be in the future. Right,
(37:21):
he didn't think about all the elevators. It was going
to say, no, yeah, there were some three definite problems
with the engineering on that building. Yeah, that's why architects
and engineers they just it's always budding heads. I know,
look at falling Water that that needed a little help
from the engineers. So yeah, there you go. Nostalgia. That's
how it happens. To talk about the future and you
get all nostalgic. Speaking of past and future. We do
(37:42):
have some listener mail from the present for now. So
we have one listener by the name of Oscar, and
Oscar right in every now and then, and he just
really he's one of these these listeners who really shares
his his mind. Yeah, and he's got some really thought
provoking ideas. Yeah, and he knows that we cannot read everything.
He sends us because it's he gives us a lot
(38:03):
of data. But I wanted to read a little a bit.
He was a responding to our recent podcast Alien Etiquette
one oh one, in which we discuss um what kind
of information we're providing aliens within, what information we should
provide them with potentially and and how and what kind
of processes need to be involved in preparing to speak
to aliens, should their presence right? And how people are
(38:24):
trying to legislate that right now even though this is
just sort of this idea there in the ether. Yeah,
so Oscar shared some thoughts, he said regarding content. I
think lawyers and politicians should keep as far away from
that project as possible, mainly because they both based their
careers on twisting word, selfish use of information, and strong
personal greed not something to be shared. Really. I have
always thought that artists would not be a very good
(38:46):
choice either, since, as you mentioned, no matter how much
of the human essence they managed to capture, the information
only makes sense within our human context. Love, friendship, selfishness
are considered to be different things, even when in our
own communities, not to different cultures and or times. Until
a more objective you un abstractions can be obtained. We
should try to avoid those two, if only to avoid
(39:07):
confusion on first meetings. That would leave science. It is
the best way to make our first approach, and math
is the way to go here here Oscar, Yeah, talk
to the aliens with math. I think that makes the
most sense, though it also brings in share problems as
we discussed in that podcast. Yes, some logistical things going
on there, right, so hey, be sure to check out
(39:27):
Tom Harris's amazing article how Skyscrapers Work that goes into
all the engineering problems and solutions inherent in building something
that tall and uh and it's really it's really a
great article. This I think may have been one of
the first house stuff Works articles that I read personally,
uh Lena, way before I actually became employed here. And
(39:48):
then Jacob Silverman has an article called where will there
be Farms in New York City Skyscrapers which goes into
some of the vertical farming issues that we've been talking
about in the Hydroponica. Be sure check out our Facebook
and Twitter pages. You can find each as blow the Mind,
and we keep those updated with all sorts of cool
links to both the how stuff works related to content
(40:10):
and blogs, et cetera, as well as just really cool
stuff that we find on the web in our daily research.
And if you've got any thoughts, questions, or you want
to share your favorite Thomas Kincaid painting with us, please
email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(40:32):
visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about
the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper
right corner of our homepage. The how stuff Works iPhone
app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, what this stuff to Blow your Mind?
This is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas and we're
joining you from the Radiation Proof podcast Chamber here at
how stuff works dot com. Now for now, Julie, what's
(00:25):
your favorite vision of a futuristic city. I'm gonna have
to go super old school and say the Jetsons. The Jetsons,
I love the domestic setup that they have and the
robot doing everything, yes, and then the the whole food
being prepared. Um. And then you know, I love that
(00:46):
you're just flying around and you can go through your
drive throughs in your your own little spacecraft. Cool. Yeah,
well this is a this is the topic I could.
I could like the fashion sorry, the fashion, yeah, yeah,
they had like I love a little like a little
like Saturn rings around everything. Um. When it comes to,
(01:07):
you know, talking about futuris futuristic cities, I could. I
could probably go on too long, and I probably will
start going on too long and which guy's just beeper
had to jump in and stop me. But okay, I
mean there's so many classic visions. There's of course Metropolis, Yes,
the nineteen twenty nine or something thereabout the old black
and white silent Yeah, German expression is some film. Yeah,
(01:30):
I just showed this massive just you know today. It's
you know, kind of like a retrofuturist thing, I guess,
you know, just a massive city. It's like the city
Um on steroids, if you will, Um with the giant skyscrape,
the fat cats at the top, yeah, and the idea
everybody else toiling underneath exactly, almost kind of like a
(01:51):
more Locks kind of thing going on, you know. And
and it's you know, it's kind of a natural extrapolation
of population growth and technological advance. Buildings keep getting higher,
so they're just gonna keep getting higher, right, You're thinking
about that even back in the day, right right. Yeah.
And so by the time like Blade Runner came out,
you know that that really set the standard for for
(02:12):
a lot of people's imaginations of what a just a
future city skate might look out look like. Well, I
think I finally revealed that replicants are among us. Yeah, yeah,
it was actually it was a documentary actually, um little
man in fact. Yeah, And there's there's another example that
I personally really love and I have a love hate
relationship with this particular book. But there's a book called
(02:33):
The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson, and this was
like an early twentieth century book that dealt with like
a post apocalyptic world in which the the sun has
gone out and the world is cooled, and the last
remnants of humanity living this enormous pyramid called the Last
Redoubt and um, and so it's like that everybody lives
(02:55):
on these different different floors and they grow food in there,
and it's heated by geo thermal energies, and there's like
a whole there's like a second pyramid underneath the top
one where they grow like all the food. And it's
kind of a horribly written book. It's really a pain
to read. Um, really outrageous writing style where he's he's
(03:16):
you know, it's it's just it's rough. But the but
if you can you sort of pick through all the
bad writing, there's just a tremendous ahead of its time vision.
I mean, just telling me that right there is amazing,
because that's what futurists are planning for us not too
far off here. I mean, some people are thinking about
what you just describe happening for us within twenty years,
(03:40):
let alone like a hundred. There's there's actually an excellent,
really kind of theoretical plan for something called the Shimazoo
Mega City Pyramid. And this is again very theoretical, but
it's it's partially inspired by Blade Runner. But this would
be a giant pyramid on Tokyo Bay, twelve times higher
(04:01):
than the Great Pyramid of Giza, with an occupancy of
seven fifty thousand. And again this is an example of
most of these these really large scale when we're talking
about like cities that are just like a city skate
kind of situation, a Blade Runner type of situation. Um,
we're talking about something that's called arcology, which is a
(04:22):
portmanteau or wordable if you like, of the words architecture
and ecology. So in other words, it's just architecture, um
and and design on a scale that is really more
like a landscape that can accommodate our enormous population and
to bring it down to brass tacks. I think the
reason why we're so interested in this topic is because
(04:45):
right now half of the world population six point eight
billion people live in cities, and it's estimated by fifty
that two thirds of the population will live in cities.
So obviously this trend is not stopping. And then just
to put this into context, think about in eighteen hundred
when less than three percent of the world lived in cities.
(05:08):
So what does that mean for us? I mean that
means obviously, besides a lot more people, a lot more
mouth to feed, we have less available land. We've got
all sorts of issues that we need to try to
to solve. And and I even think about it in
this in this way, like the best uh d I
(05:29):
y Home show worth its salt will always tell you
when you run out of room, what do you do? Build?
You build up, build up, you go vertical. So we're
looking at a future where the sky, the landscape is
just gonna be completely populated with these superstructures. And again
it's not too far down the road that this is happening.
(05:51):
And in fact, there are a lot of construction projects
right now that are underway. Yeah, it's a it's a
there there. There are even people who look into the
future and and start dreaming about I don't know if
it's a dream or it's really more like a nightmare,
but um, the idea of the uk monopolis, which is
a city made from an entire world. So if you
(06:11):
can imagine, it's really like the concept that I think
Grant Morrison presented this in The Invisibles. But like the
city as it is is a is a cancer that
kind of takes over a whole planet, and and sort
of yeah, the city as as a cancer and the
city is this is the physical manifestation of humanity, uh
(06:33):
you know, all its worst properties. The city as a
character is a living, breathing thing. Yeah. Well, I mean
it's not just us thinking about this. The TED founder
Richard Saul Wurman, he actually has a project called nineteen
twenty one and that is a case study of nineteen
cities with populations that will meet or exceed twenty million
by the end of the twenty first century. And uh,
(06:55):
these most of these nineteen cities border oceans, and so
his thinking and that foundation is thinking, is that there's
going to be rising sea levels and there's going to
be all sorts of weird meteorological patterns happening, and so
the cities really need to be studied in terms of
how they're going to deal with food production, transportation, water resources,
(07:18):
and all that good stuff so on. On a very
practical level, it's an issue that we need to look at.
And people just keep pointing up and saying, we're going
to be living in these crazy vertical structures and you know,
we may be on the floor. Yeah, it's easy to know.
People look at these these giant megastructures and they're like, oh,
they'll be they'll be like a restaurant in there. There'll
(07:39):
be a restaurant every floor, you know. But but when
you look at the stats for you know, revolving around
the feeding the people on this planet, it gets pretty staggering.
I mean, for starters, demographics predicted the planet will host
nine point five billion people by at least according to
one study we're looking at. And because each of us
(08:00):
require a minimum of fift calories a day. Uh, you
were pointing, this civilization would have to cultivate like a
Brazil's worth of land, right, it's like two point one
billion acres. And it relates directly to something that is
often referred to as the eco footprint analysis. And uh,
and that's the thing as you look at different parts
(08:22):
of the world, Uh, the amount of land required to
feed one given person ferries. So people in the developed
and developed countries such as United States and Japan, for instance,
each require an estimated ten to twenty five acres of
land to support their lifestyle. So that's that's a you know,
pretty staggering footprint. And and according to population ecologist of
(08:44):
William E. Rees, the global average breaks down to five
point four acres per person. And unfortunately, the planet only
has enough bioproductive surface area to a lot four point
four acres to each of its six point eight billion residents.
So um, human civilizations current eco footprint is already beyond
sustainable levels. Okay, So what you're saying is we just
(09:06):
we don't have the land. We don't have arable land
new arable land available to us. So again we're in
the same room. What are we gonna do? Go up? Um?
And I think it's interesting to look right now at
at a couple of current examples just so that we
can kind of get our footing on what this means
to us. And one of the examples is the Bionic
(09:26):
Tower in Shanghai is pretty staggering. Yeah, this is a
crazy structure. It's it's slated to start construction in and
it's going to take fifteen years to build four thousand
feet tall with three hundred floors, and the structural will
contain twelve vertical neighborhoods. And we're talking about green spaces,
(09:48):
urban spaces. I mean, just think about think about New
York sort of sandwich into building for instance. And the structure,
if I may, is a very fallic structure. And uh,
it is centered in an artificial lake. And the reason
for the lake is so that it could absorb any
shock waves from earthquakes. And uh, they proposed putting a
(10:12):
bunch of I guess you what, you'd say, regular size
buildings at the base that they'd have little trams to
go to. And I mean basically you would never ever
have to leave the structure your entire life, which is
just mind blowing. Yeah. Well, it reminds me again of
the Last re Doubt in the Night Land, where the
situation is there are people that live and die old
(10:34):
generations without leaving the structure, right, And then I mean
it begs the question for me, like, Okay, well, this
is this is something we're looking in the next years.
In five hundred years, are we just gonna all be
in like a little five by five pod up in
the sky, you know, living and dying in that same space,
or you know, you know, not to get depressing. Well,
(10:56):
it's not depressing because you have to realize video games
are gonna be crazy good by time, you know. So
why would you believe you wouldn't even care about the
sunset looking so beautiful at that? Right? I mean they're
pretty great now, but you know by this point they're
gonna be like, I don't have to go outside. Great
just on the first level of that's right. Yeah, um so, yeah,
(11:16):
maybe that's not so much of a concern, but you know,
in our minds right now, it's sort of inconceivable. And
then just from an engineering standpoint, you think about wind
and movement at that height, you know, you can't have
any structure move anymore than one four hundreds of its
height else it's too unstable. Yeah. I ran across some
interesting UM statistics on this. In numerical terms, the support
(11:42):
and state built and stability of a building translates to
an aspect ratio between six and eight. Okay, so bear
with me, um so you want Okay, So the aspect
ratio in this case is calculated by dividing the height
of the building by the width of its base. This
is kind of the if you've ever liked built anything
to play or something, and you want like a strong
(12:02):
base to support heights. Okay, so um to achieve a
desirable aspect ratio of seven a bionic tower. And this
is based on a like you give a four thousand
foot height, and I've seen other height estimates that were lower,
like three thousand, two eighty one, so this might not
completely mesh with that with the four thousand number, but
(12:25):
if it worth, if the tower worth three thousand two
one ft tall, the base would then need to be
four dred and sixty nine ft wide. Whoa, Okay, alright,
so I mean we're talking about just an enormous structure, right.
And then the other thing that I'm thinking about too
is something called the stack effect, which is that the
wind moaning that you hear when you're up a really
(12:48):
really high space, and particularly in buildings where you get
that whistling effect with elevators. So yeah, you might have
a great view, but you won't be haunted. I like
this eraser head like noise all the time. Yeah, And
speaking of l a ators, Uh, the estimate that I
was looking at for the Balonot Tower, three dred and
sixty eight elevators. Okay, so you need to completely rethink
elevator talk at this point, right, Yeah, I mean assuming
(13:10):
we canna assume that they have some good speed to them.
But still, yeah, even if they're basically won clevators, I mean,
they're the three center and sixty eight is is pretty
massive up and it's one of the the problems you
run into with with a lot of like super tall
skyscraper situations. For instance, Uh, how stuff works is located
(13:31):
in a what we're fifteen floors fourteen technically because is
taken out and then there's the secret floor with the
moment and you know. But but so we have two
banks of elevators to one one with four elevators going
up what like halfway and then four other elevators going
up the rest of the way. And that more or
(13:51):
less makes sense if you've ever been saying, like, like
the dorm that I was in in college had two
elevators that serviced twelve floors, and it was one of
these situations where the the higher you were, the more
difficult it was to catch an elevator. So, uh, extrapolate
that to a five hundred floor of building, and it
(14:12):
gets ridiculous, like you have to have elevators that that
that say, do you know floors one through tin, then
another has to do the next tin floors, the next
tin floors, etcetera. You have to make it to where
people aren't spending half their day just ascending. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
So I guess I would invert the paradigm to that
maybe that the best floor would be like the tenth floor. Yeah. Um,
(14:34):
But that's just something to think about. And and then
also talking about extrapolating if people were to be living
in these sort of mega cities with these structures, you
start to think about any sort of interlocking tunnels that
might run between the buildings. Oh yeah, because that's another
big staple of I mean, I'm a huge fan of
sky bridges. I see a sky bridge between buildings and like,
(14:54):
I'm magine the like it goes back to the Yeah,
like I'm thinking, like as a kid, it's like I
would always like dream up like fight scenarios between characters
and non existent action films, like where they would have
to fight on a on a on a sky bridge
in a sky bridge. And then of course the window
breaks and they have to find on top of the
sky bridge. They're amazing, you know, So I didn't know
(15:14):
that skybridge is like they they're pretty important to you. Well,
they're They're just great. I mean it's like it's this
man made little bridge on the top of like two
man made mountains, are you know, bridging them together? Like
I almost wrecked the car anytime I drive under one. Wow,
get to know if you're driving with you. So, I
mean that's bionic tower. That's one example. Well, a little
(15:35):
more about the ma bionic tower though, Um, I was
reading that. There's also a you're talking about the wind
going on, Well, it can actually turn a building into
a giant tuning fork. There's a phenomenon called vortex shedding,
and basically it breaks down like this is the wind
blows around the corners of the building, spins off into
eddies all right, or masses of whirling air, and the
(16:00):
frequency at which the eddies of air or shed increases
the wind speed. So, um, this can build up and
you end up with a dangerous effect called residents and
and so and this just causes the building to move
more and more to where you could pensually potentially have
windows shatter. Um, you know, stuff is cracking, things are
falling apart, right, Yeah, I haven't even thought. So that's
(16:21):
the tuning fork effect, So that the it's it's basically
conducting all of these vibrations to the point where it shatters.
Am I hearing you right on that? Okay? So you
end up having to you need to have like aerodynamic
features to a building a lot of times, or you
use a dampening system. And this is just something like
a or like a four hundred ton concrete blocks such
(16:43):
as in New York City's City Core building to absorb
the vibrations like a giant shock absorber. Yeah, all right.
I had to just make sure because as soon as
you said tuning forks, I was like thrown back to
Costa Rica where I was staying at this place unbeknownst
to me with a woman was a healer who was
trying to heal me with tuning forks. So I had
a little bit of a moment there. How to repress memory?
(17:03):
I hope you don't mind. Um, So, I mean, obviously
there are there are some practical things that would hinder
us right now in terms of the technology at like
you would think so with bionic Tower like that that
sort of upkeep seems insane. Now, Bionic Tower is also
interesting in that they, I mean, the whole name comes
from bionic because in bio as in bio mimetics, as
(17:24):
in looking to nature to solve human problems, not the
bionic man. Well no, not really, but I don't know,
I'm not. But you know, it's the idea that it's like, hey,
I need to design a um I need to design
an airplane. I need to design something that can fly
in the air. So I can either have a scientist
look at look at this problem and depend on human science.
(17:47):
It's you know, maybe been analyzing this problem for what,
you know, some few hundred years or something. I can
look to evolution, which has been tackling this problem for
a much longer period of time, looking to nature to
solve human engineering problems. So they make a big show
with the Bionic Tower of talking about how that the
(18:07):
how they have these ninety two vertical columns and the
design to you know, for energy and water and other supplies,
and that this is like the some of the transport
systems in a vascular plant. And they also talk about
the base of the tower would be kind of like
a root system and a tree, which on the surface
sounds great. But but but the if if you look
(18:28):
at some of the info out there about I'm just
thinking about. I recently went to Yosseminate National Park and
they have the giant sequoias there, which, you know, enormous trees,
really interesting to look at, and on the service you
might think, yeah, if I wanted to build a super
tall building, I totally looked to a giant sekoia because
they have it all figured out. But the thing is,
giant tekoias, though they live pretty long, they fall down
(18:49):
when they're when the wind blows too too strong or
there's like a really harsh winter, they collapse. They're not
reinforced with steel, right, and you know the whole um,
the whole you know, giant tree with the tunnel cut
out in the middle. No, tell me about you have
you seen this? I'm sure um in Yosemite is a
great place. But but like a lot lot of parks,
(19:09):
and yeah, there was a time when it was like
totally fine to like feed garbage to bears and tout
a pathway through through the trees so you could drive
your car through, and uh, the tree eventually die, but
not because of the tunnel. Like the tree can survive that.
They're typically damaged by fire to the point where there's
(19:30):
a giant hole in the base anyway, but the cars
driving over the roots system like that. The root system
is pretty shallow, and that's one of the things that
really did it in. So that's one. You can't actually
walk up and, thank goodness, carved your name onto the
side of the giant Sekoya in Yosemite. So anyway, no,
I did not do that. I just respect very respectful name.
(19:51):
Um I spray painted it, so it's not so um.
So Yeah, when when I when I read about people
looking to trees, and obviously they're not gonna it's not
gonna be that simplistic situation. But I can't help but
think that it's like, well, this is this is not
really a problem that nature has solved. It's not a
problem nature wants to solve, you know, So that that's
(20:11):
still there are the concept of looking to nature to
solve engineering problems is a really good one. Yeah, I
think it was it. But Minister Fuller, maybe I have
some memory of uh reading something once in which he
said that a structure can be perfect, but it's not
beautiful until it does have some sort of mimicry of
nature to it. Oh yeah, like you get into the
whole um um, you know, any kind of you know,
(20:34):
look at classical architecture. They were really big into the
the Golden mean and all that, you know, right right, Okay,
So bionic tower. There you go with that one. And
then another one in the works is Masdar City and
Abu Dhabi and that is going to be the first
carbon neutral city and it should be completed by and
(20:56):
what they're trying to do is to build a city
of fort abitants where of the water can be recycled
and cars will be banned and replaced by a personal
rapid trans transit system, which is a subterranean system using
cars powered by solar batteries. And that they look really cool,
I have to say, but I'm kind of picturing like
(21:18):
a little casket that you climb into and it's like
shoot shoots your you know, from the restaurant to your apartment.
So dark. Well, I mean it's more like a pod,
a casting pod, and it's white. Well that's not nightmarek
at all, No, not at all. I mean just bolting
you through a town, but it can carry somethinging three
(21:39):
to six people depending on the design and the ideas
that it could be shared by people. Um and asopp
as it could be sort of like a taxi cab
system too. But they actually have those in use at Pitha.
I believe they're testing them out, but they're not open
to the public. So that's one of the technologies that
we actually have in place right now, which is kind
of interesting to see that that's happening. Um. And then
(22:01):
there's another structure, of course in Dubai. It's called the
Crescent Hydropolis, and this is an instance where they're going
underground into the ocean and it's supposedly it's the world's
first luxury underwater hotel. I say supposedly just because it's
not because because there could be more under because they're underwater,
you can't see them. Yeah, I don't know. They could
(22:21):
be it could be a shack under their um but
there's supposed to be two hundred submarine suites and guests
will be arrived at a land station and then be
transported via a train. And it has a one point
one million square feet which includes a shopping mall, restaurants,
movie theaters, and oh, a missile defense system. Well, of course, yeah,
(22:42):
it's you gotta wonder like that was sort of the
impetus for the whole design first place. How can we
sell a missile defense system? Yeah? Yeah, what luxury boutique hotel?
And you know sixt under the water. Um. So there
are different ways that people are thinking about moving the population.
I mean this obviously that's the luxury hotel that isn't
(23:04):
going to be. That's not a model that we could
use across the board to try to deal with our
population problems. But it's certainly a different way of thinking
about using the space that we have. Um. And then
that also we talked about this already, that the fact
that there is going to be a huge demand for food,
uh nine point five billion people. Like so again people
(23:27):
are looking up and saying vertical farming is the answer.
And uh, if you look at our model right now, agriculture,
we use like of fresh water resources and then we
render that most of that unsafe to drink because of pesticides, fertilizers, etcetera.
In there so, if you do a hydroponic system or
(23:49):
if you if you grow vertical farms, obviously you're not
having to pollute the nactual earth, and you get a
lot cleaner of a resource. And this that was a
really interesting stut that one square block farm once we're
about form thirty stories high, could yield as much food
as outdoor acres, which is yeah, crazy, And then supposedly
(24:13):
there's there's not as much spoilerg either there. They didn't
really go into why that is, and you know, I
was just sort of thinking, well, maybe that's just because
you reach outside of your window and you grab that
tomato or whatever and it's more visible. I don't know,
it's harvested better. But um so growing food in high
glass high rises could really like drastically reduce fossil fuel
missions and recycle wastewater. And this is an actual a
(24:35):
good logical way to try to deal with population growth
and and go up and a found our skyscrapers and
utilize them. Yeah, especially when I was thinking about this
too in an apocalyptic way too, not to not to
go dark, but I mean, if you do have all
of these buildings that are just empty husks sitting around,
(24:55):
why not try to to grow vertically up them? You know,
waste use as a surface. Yeah, it's better than using
it for you know, giant advertisements, which always irritates me.
Because there's like one particular building in Atlanta, uh and
I don't know the name of it. It's just it's
very visible when you're going up straight through the city
on the Connector. There's this old building and it's you know,
it's it's clearly just decrepit, and I think there's maybe
(25:18):
a parking lot at the bottom that they make money
off of. But it's an awesome old building. I love
looking at it. And there was a brief period where
they covered it with an advertisement like they do all
the time in New York, and I was I was heartbroken.
I was like, oh, that's that's that's horrible, Like they
covered up this beautiful, ruinous building, which if if nothing else,
Atlanta has some great ruinous looking buildings. Like there's a
(25:39):
there's a current television show I'm sure everybody or a
lot of people are watching The Walking Dead, which is
you know, zombie apocalypse thing, and they filmed it in Atlanta,
and it's great because the characters. It takes place like,
you know, a few months after the zombie Apocalypse and
they're walking through really apocalyptic looking buildings. And of course
the take come here is that Atlanta already looked apocalyptic
because not enough time has passed in the show for
(26:00):
things to you know, turn into rubble. It's like, we
already have all that rubble around and all these like
really cool urban contested spaces. That's why they picked us.
We're not just all you know, Veranda's and and the
iced tea we've got. We've got some molten going on,
I guess you would say. But getting back to the
buildings of the future and and what might eventually become
(26:23):
some sort of crumbling building, you definitely need technology right
to support these models. And I'm thinking about the trams
between buildings and the personal transit systems, and I'm thinking
about like your favorite subject, jet packs. I'm kidding because
I know that like they're the ban of your existence.
Never they're not the bane of my existence. I just
(26:44):
they're just so silly. Now, I mean, they're either're great.
I love the Rocketeer when it came out, but I
know they're silly. But I'm telling you, I think that
like in fifty years, they're going to be the best
bots up in the sky. You know, people are going
to be drinking their latte's with you know, little jet packs.
But in particularly because next year they're going to be
commercially released to the public and they're gonna start a
(27:04):
hundred thousand dollars. Right, well, I'm gonna I need to
invest in like spinal replacement technology because I think a
lot of people are gonna get knows up. That's just
my prediction. I think you're right. I think that's not
a bad idea. Still flying around with martiniz that's a
pretty optimistic vision of the future, right, I mean you
have to think that's you know, in fifty years, a
hundred years, that could be a hundred thousand dollars will
(27:26):
be a dollar and everybody's gonna fee with their personal
jet packs flying around, And that's just a whole other
can of worms. But I mean, you need the technology,
right right if you're going to get vertical, I mean,
how else are you gonna pick the tomatoes off the skyscraper.
This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow.
(27:52):
Of course, one of the interesting things to keep in
mind about a lot of these plans is, you know,
people are saying, oh, you're gonna build a You're gonna
build a giant pyramid and jet hand. Great, who's going
to build it? Well? Maybe robots, it's the I mean
it's it's Japan. They love their their robots and are
generally at the forefront of of robotic technology. So the
(28:13):
ideas that you'll have robotic workers building these things, robotic
workers servicing these things, and possibly I mean nanotechnology in
the fabric of the thing itself, these you know, artificial
UH structures at at a very minute scale, right, I
mean imagine this like you you go to check in
to your residents right where you also work, you know,
(28:37):
and you never leave this building. It's you know, twenty
three right now, and maybe you're the robot who's checking
you in is actually has uh outfit, if you will,
made out of nanotubes that you couldn't mention there. And
those nanotubes are so super crazy sophisticated that they're that
(28:58):
they're actually pulling in photons into the photo voltaic cells
on there, and they're basically like solar panels because you're
in an all glass building, right, So even the robots
are recycling energy for you. So I mean, not only
are they checking you in and cooking your food and
pretty much doing everything for you so that you're you're
(29:20):
living the life of Riley on the floor. Yeah, but
I mean they're they're providing your energy for you. Yeah.
It's basically stunny that it's kind of like the basic
concept between behind E. N. M. Banks culture series, where
we reach a point where robots basically do everything and
humans kind of yeah, yeah, and this you're telling me,
it made me feel so much better. It's that's the
(29:42):
benevolent version of the technological singularity, which in technological singularity
we can do an entire podcast on and well, just's
the idea that that machines reached the point the singularity
where they're smarter than us and it just keeps getting
bigger and bigger, and the distance between machine intellect and
human elect just expands exponentially, right, And it sounds very
(30:04):
sci fi, but it's actually an idea that's that's worth
looking into when in considering carefully, and it has to
do with More's law and all sorts of stuff that
again we could talk about later, but you have to
think that at least in three with that sort of
technology we have right now, that robots would play a
really big parton in our lives. So it's a I
(30:25):
like the idea that we would just we sit around
and they do everything for us, and we become this
benevolent culture that's trying to spread it to other uh planets?
Is that right? Yeah? Pretty much? Yeah? Yeah, Okay, so
that's the lighthearted side of giant you know, machine driven
mega cultures. But yeah, and and there's some pros and
(30:46):
cons to this, Yeah, I mean the pros to having
the sort of population growth or that denser populations would
necessitate environmental solutions so potentially we could live greener. Then
there's humanity track record, right, Yeah, I mean I look
at the situation and I say, I don't know, these
(31:07):
these uh hypers, sky scrapers, they could just end up
being ghettos or you know, essentially mirror the way that
we already live culturally with all sorts of different strata
of socioeconomic conditions. Yeah, and it's I also have a
hard time, though, Like I have a hard time looking
(31:28):
up at like a normal skyscraper today like that, or
you know, a really high rise apartment building and thinking
who are the people that live here? You know, are
that are there that many like surgeons and lawyers that
can occupy this uh, this pristine real estate. You know, Um,
we're not pristine, but joy, I guess it's Christine. It's
probably clean up there. Um, you know, who are these people?
(31:49):
And then when I start thinking about like these giant skyscrapers,
like who are who are these people living in there?
What do they do for a living within the skyscraper?
They never leave, you know, unless you have this situation
where people don't have to do anything, and that of
course comes with its share of utopian problems as well,
right right, And I'm for any theater geeks out there too.
(32:10):
I'm thinking about you're in town in which the you know,
the the head of this corporation um, lives at the
very top of this giant structure, and they've had a
twenty year drought. Their sewer system is crazy. They just
have very little water resources and people have to start
paying to go to the bathroom. And so again it's
like Metropolis where you've got the fat cats at the top,
(32:32):
the you know, the corporate tycoons, and the lowlies at
the bottom, you know, as leaves we toiling. It reminds
me a lot um into talking about sort of pessimistic
views of what these like this kind of life on
the five floor we consist of. There's a San Francisco artist.
He's dead now, but his name's Irving Norman, and uh,
(32:54):
do look him up because he created this this fabulous
Nightmarck visions. You know, he was he was like a
huge he was Spanish born. He was a huge critic
of of where the country was going in the twentieth
century and where and when what capitalism was going to
do um to society and uh, and so he created
these There's one particular like tryptic that's uh in Uh.
(33:16):
You can you can see if you go to the
Art Museum there in San Francisco, where it's just these
massive skyscrapers and it's just like miserable, like soul is
looking people occupying little cells and uh. And if you
in in the higher portions of the building, and then
if you look at the base of the building in
the basement, it's like just assembly lines of like human misery,
and it's it's like I say, beautiful nightmaric stuff. And
(33:39):
it's it's sort of a nice counterweight to the whole
you know, flying around with your martini and a with
a jet pack and you know, taking your Wonka vad
or up to the restaurant on the on the dining deck.
So I feel like you're apocalypse. That's that's a good
one to go to. Yeah, a little little apocalyptic sort
of in a different way. I suppose. I was also
(34:00):
thinking about the antithesis of this, which is Thomas Kincaid,
the Painter of Lights. Are you familiar with his work?
It's just the like to describe a piece formula. It's
crazy popular. Like I heard something on the other day
that he's in like one out of every twenty homes
in some fashions, that a lot of like really pale
looking women holding like things that are glowing, no, like
(34:23):
really blown out, like white looking. No, but that these
are paintings, and these are like these really nostalgic paintings.
He's called the Painter of Lights, and it's usually snowy scenes,
you know, nineteen hundreds or what would appear to be
like the nineteen hundreds, Um, you know, the night stars twinkling,
and you know, it doesn't really actually depict the nineteen
(34:43):
hundreds as they wore. It's it's more of like this
imagic history of simpler times, and you know, it's our
our penchant for creating these false histories for ourselves. So
I was sort of thinking, Okay, in the in the
benevolent version that we have of the future or robot
are doing everything for us, and we become these these
great benevolent creatures trying to um share our our robotic
(35:07):
wealth with the galaxy that we pine for yesteryear and
that we you know, even though we've got all these trips,
plan to go to Mars in the moon um and
those are super fantastic things that we still can't help
but look back and idealize the past. And so I
was thinking about, like this Thomas Kincaid like pictures, like
(35:28):
what would they look like of where we are in
would it would be like an office scene instead of
snow that you'd have the concrete like being all per lescented,
and the glow from the from our screens like you know,
like this candlelight glow and people in the future will
look back. It was just so much easier. Yeah, I
don't know. It's it's interesting too that you pointed out
(35:50):
because we're talking about idealized visions of the past and
this whole podcast has been about basically for the most
part idealized visions of the future. It's the same movement, uh,
in in a different direction. Um, don't get quantum ammy. No, No,
I'm just a you know, we're basically talking about the
same sort of thing where we're where. It's also I've
(36:10):
heard it compared like science fiction is is a you know,
it's a fantastic future and it's and then fantasy Uh
fiction is the same, the same movement but in reverse
looking into the past like a fantastic vision of the path. Anyway,
it's no, no, I know, I know what you're saying.
Like you're even bringing up the Frank Lloyd right earlier
of the Illinois the the um fictional skyscraper that Frank Lloyd,
(36:36):
And there's there's something nostalgic about looking at at that.
That's what like he designed that to be five thousand
ft tall or something. Yeah, it was gonna be yeah,
five thousand two feet tall like durn near a mile
high and uh and it's pretty visionary. Uh go to Uh.
In fact, if listening to this now, you can go
to the blogs. I'm going to post this awesome video.
(36:59):
But that someone did for um a Googenheim exhibit, and
it's like a three D model of what this would
have looked like had it been built and how it
rates with the other existing skyscrapers. Right. But yeah, it's
very if you look at it now and it's it's
this interesting, it's kind of like science fiction. It's where um,
you know, right, thought we might be in the future. Right,
(37:21):
he didn't think about all the elevators. It was going
to say, no, yeah, there were some three definite problems
with the engineering on that building. Yeah, that's why architects
and engineers they just it's always budding heads. I know,
look at falling Water that that needed a little help
from the engineers. So yeah, there you go. Nostalgia. That's
how it happens. To talk about the future and you
get all nostalgic. Speaking of past and future. We do
(37:42):
have some listener mail from the present for now. So
we have one listener by the name of Oscar, and
Oscar right in every now and then, and he just
really he's one of these these listeners who really shares
his his mind. Yeah, and he's got some really thought
provoking ideas. Yeah, and he knows that we cannot read everything.
He sends us because it's he gives us a lot
(38:03):
of data. But I wanted to read a little a bit.
He was a responding to our recent podcast Alien Etiquette
one oh one, in which we discuss um what kind
of information we're providing aliens within, what information we should
provide them with potentially and and how and what kind
of processes need to be involved in preparing to speak
to aliens, should their presence right? And how people are
(38:24):
trying to legislate that right now even though this is
just sort of this idea there in the ether. Yeah,
so Oscar shared some thoughts, he said regarding content. I
think lawyers and politicians should keep as far away from
that project as possible, mainly because they both based their
careers on twisting word, selfish use of information, and strong
personal greed not something to be shared. Really. I have
always thought that artists would not be a very good
(38:46):
choice either, since, as you mentioned, no matter how much
of the human essence they managed to capture, the information
only makes sense within our human context. Love, friendship, selfishness
are considered to be different things, even when in our
own communities, not to different cultures and or times. Until
a more objective you un abstractions can be obtained. We
should try to avoid those two, if only to avoid
(39:07):
confusion on first meetings. That would leave science. It is
the best way to make our first approach, and math
is the way to go here here Oscar, Yeah, talk
to the aliens with math. I think that makes the
most sense, though it also brings in share problems as
we discussed in that podcast. Yes, some logistical things going
on there, right, so hey, be sure to check out
(39:27):
Tom Harris's amazing article how Skyscrapers Work that goes into
all the engineering problems and solutions inherent in building something
that tall and uh and it's really it's really a
great article. This I think may have been one of
the first house stuff Works articles that I read personally,
uh Lena, way before I actually became employed here. And
(39:48):
then Jacob Silverman has an article called where will there
be Farms in New York City Skyscrapers which goes into
some of the vertical farming issues that we've been talking
about in the Hydroponica. Be sure check out our Facebook
and Twitter pages. You can find each as blow the Mind,
and we keep those updated with all sorts of cool
links to both the how stuff works related to content
(40:10):
and blogs, et cetera, as well as just really cool
stuff that we find on the web in our daily research.
And if you've got any thoughts, questions, or you want
to share your favorite Thomas Kincaid painting with us, please
email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(40:32):
visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about
the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper
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