Wayward thoughts

[acumenious]

Ive been reading Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Oath of Fealty which has got me curious about arcologies which essentially are huge superstructures that in theory could act as huge cities in a building (I'd actually seen these before in the game simcity 2000). It's funny to me that i find my self interested in such a thing, but at the same time hate the idea of identical soulless housing, such as most every building on a military base. There's something just depressing about everything being identically painted in the same gray and beige color scheme. I do like the idea of humanity more efficiently using its resources though. One of the major Benefits to making such a thing instead of a normal city would if done right be the great reduction of environmental impacts. Such as the 1 million inhabatant carbon-neutral super-structure to be built in Dubai Beside the fact that such a thing looks pretty freakin cool, it will apparently not use any fossil fuels. Maybe what interests me also as its been said in the book several times, making such a thing is practice for a starship. The book itself seams to have taken an almost negative stance on the idea, with the inhabitants creating an almost feudal society and consenting to 24 hour monitory in exchange for security. With the way technology is going we by no means have to build Arcologies to suddenly find ourselves being monitored constantly, every day we seam to be moving closer to that. So yes I have determined i find the idea of an Arcology promising and interesting, but can't figure out if id like to live in one...

On a side not the arcology wiki page lead me to the book titled "Neuromancer" which apparently if the wiki info is to be believed is the origin of both cyberpunk and the idea of cyberspace as a visual place you can go to. So i went out and bought it.

anyway, have a good weekend all
< end transmission >