In a message dated 9/23/1999 3:28:06 PM Pacific Daylight Time, lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net(none) writes:
<<
Once nanotech is cheap and common, I would image that 90% of what
is now done with above-ground construction will move underground.
Cool! Excellent image. I wonder about the psychology of that race. Will they become agoraphobic? Or will there be the illusion of air, water and vast skies above?
< <All you want above ground is parks, farms,
solar arrays, dams, and short-distance surface transportation.
Thank you (lee?) for this wonderful vision. We almost always think skyward, higher - floating, etc. but this is a perfect idea. I like to imagine Roger Dean style rootlike tunnels and mushroom structures - reaching into the earth through light delivering substances that make the "underground experience" more liike an underwater one, rather than like a mole-like or subway feel...
> A "city", then, would be mostly parks with recreation facilities, gardens, campsites, and a few open-air businesses like restaurants, airstrips (hangars, parking lots, and terminal facilities go under too), auditoriums, beach concessions, etc. No need for "downtown" with big buildings and crowded streets at all, because that's just under your feet, as deep as needed to support the population.
I imagine, then, that flying over a modern city in 2050 will be
like flying over a current wealthy suburb of golf courses and
stables and sparse glass-front houses on grassy hillsides. Only
the thriving metropolis will be below instead of 20 miles away.
>>
thanks man,
(awesome, i can't wait to go to sleep tonight and dream about this place ; - ) N
"The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction, not the need for simplicity and certainty, is the attribute of an explorer" ~~~~~~Heinz R. Pagels, Perfect Symmetry