Categories
Environment Future Sci-fi

[88] Of I dream of an utopia II

Two third of Earth surface is covered by water. Two third is such a large portion to be left unused and it goes unmentioned that human will scour for land in any way that is possible. They “reclaim” land for the sea and build skyscrapers to provide more space for their business. Between these two, land reclamation is the most destructive method. Not only it destroys the natural habitat of underwater creatures, it also diverts the natural flow of the ocean and in the end, causing great catastrophe to ecosystems such as swamp and beach.

This is why in the future, in the middle of the ocean, there will be great cities comparable to today’s major cities. The cities will stand under the sea level as well as floating in the middle of nowhere.

The underwater cities will be protected against the powerful water pressure by multiple great dome made out from some high pressure tolerance material. The cities might be built in ocean trenches or simply on shallow sea floor. Some of the cities, if it is huge enough and if the depth of the city is not so great, will reach the water surface and have the pleasure of sunlight to some extend. It will not be surprising to see the city of Singapore or Hong Kong to be both ground-based cities and underwater cities. The land problem there is so critical, in times to come, we might see of these cities’ structures to be built underwater, near its coast instead of seeing major land reclamation projects.

Between the underwater cities, transportation tubes will be constructed much as the same fashion as its ground counterpart plus a few technical details that enable it to survive the intense water pressure. Although there will be tubes, the main type of underwater vehicle will depend on rotor much as what is being use nowadays. These vehicles, submarine if you may, will be amphibious, allowing it to be operated on land (or in the tubes) and underwater.

Being under the water, the water pressure could be another method of producing clean energy and thus helping solving the problem of transporting the much needed electricity to the underwater world.

There will also be cities floating on the wave. It may well be exaggeration to call these Human’s habitat as city as the floating structure is just a large ship that are sailing all around the world. Like on land, almost everything is available for its residents. These ships will only come to shore to restock its supplies. This idea is not far fetch as even right now, the project of such magnitude is underway. Read all about it at www.freedomship.com. Perhaps, the only time when these ships need not to call a port is when they are out of fresh fish supply.

To be continued…

Categories
Environment Future Sci-fi

[87] Of I dream of an utopia

The future that I dream of, an utopian dream.

Once in a while during those times when I was younger than today, the days when I would look into the clouds and think of something that will not relate to my problem in life, the days when a sleep could solve all of my problem, I had always dreamed of an elaborate future society. With details so minute in a scale, I could be God of an advanced populace, managing their life.

The future of which I dreamed of will be a total triumph for the environmentalism movement. The waste management will be so efficient that almost none of the waste, whether it is solid or not, will be recycled. The phrase “want not, waste not” will extinct.

The future holds so many hope and dream. Nightmare could also come true with nuclear holocaust or widespread conventional war. But looking at the bright side, it could be a utopian dream. Described below is my utopia, a situation where environmentalism (rather than democracy) is the crux of Human society.

Pollution

First of the all, the cities of future time will be the main concentration of the Human society as it has for thousand of years. Since the cities contain ton of activities, pollution will be produced most there. To protect the global ecosystem, each city will have lofty towers that will function as supporting structures that will make sure that a city will be enclosed totally within a giant sphere. This sphere is not a physical object but rather, a shield, a cell’s wall that will function a lot like a plant’s membrane that will allow osmosis or more accurately, reverse-osmosis-styled process. The shield will have the ability to filter out any harmful gases or particles from crossing it. This will form an isolated system for a particular city.

All the pollution produced by the city will be recycled or at least being reprocessed locally. For instance, any gas produced by a plant will not be given the right to pass through the shield membrane. This in turn will make a waste build up in the city. For this reason, the processing ability must be both fast and efficient. The rate of the waste processing ability must be at least equal to the pollution that is being produced. It is essential to have a sure ability of pollution reprocessing before the shield is constructed. To ensure this, every polluting entity will have its own pollution eliminator.

In addition, having an enclosed environment for the city will allow the administration of the city to control the condition of the city. To obtain that capability, the shield should have the power to filter the amount of radiation that is allowed to pass through the shield. Having a shield that will sort out both particles and radiation could be hard. Therefore, the shield should have two layers of membrane; one layer will act as a radiation shield while the other as a particle shield. With the ability to sort of radiation, light pollution and in effect, the problem of reprocessing all kind of pollutions will be solved.

If the shield could be seen by naked eye, it will probably not be geometrically hemispherical but rather will have an almost flat surface at the top. A few strong towers will support the shield from within the shield.

Transportation

Secondly, the issue of transportation will be addressed. Ground transportation will mostly be based on magnetic technology, such as the current Maglev train in France. There will be magnetic track in tubes running in the city from one end to another. Tire will be placed by magnetic field generator that will allow vehicles to move forward, backward etc without friction on the track. The vehicles will need not to be fed with fuel but instead, it will run on electricity thus generating no byproduct with the likes of sulphur or carbon dioxide.

The power source of the vehicle will be produced from the movement of the vehicles relative to the track. Nevertheless, there will be some vehicles that will have hover capabilities. Hovering capabilities will allow the driver to travel off the track.

Most likely, the city will only depends on public transportation, not like the present time. The public transportation will be efficient, running 24 – 7. The need to have a personal vehicle will be eliminated although the production of such a vehicle will not be prohibited.
For inter-cities transportation, there will a huge tube connecting cities much like today’s highways. These tubes will also act as pipe lines, power lines and communication lines.

Power

As mentioned above, these tubes will produce electricity. So, while the tubes are serving the populace as a mean of clean transportation, it will also act as a clean, enormous power generator. This idea will make power failure almost unimaginable since these tubes are omnipresent in the city.

Tomorrow’s power plants will be clean-based plant, neither producing harmful gases and particles like coal power plant nor destroying to habitat of animals like hydroelectric power plants. Instead, fusion will play an important role in providing electricity. Solar panels will be placed in the hot blazing barren deserts and wind turbines will be placed in places where strong wind is prevalent, usually in the middle of the seas, like what is being plan somewhere in North Atlantic Sea near Europe. Some of the energy will also be produced in the orbit of Earth and beam down to a receptor on Earth. As a summary, clean energy will dominate the energy market.

To be continued…

Categories
Future Personal

[56] Of spring, a new place and the internet replacing the phone

Updated on May 16, 2006. See also [790] Of the death of telephone?

Spring is here. Nevertheless, the Sun does not come out too often as it should. It is cold here. From what I heard, France is having the same situation except that it is worse. They had four days of rain and no shine. However, the bright side is far brighter.

The trees are greening and the flowers are blooming excessively, thus making Ann Arbor, the Diag in particular back to what it is supposed to be – a great green open garden cum activity area where Humans lay down and play Frisbee, read book, having a chat with friends and a conversation to their significant other.

Near Mosher-Jordan Hall, there is a tree which has no leaf but red-pink-purple colored flowers. It simply has an extraordinary beauty in my opinion although a few dare to argue that with me.

I am really glad to move to the Hill Area instead of going to Baits Area and live with all of the other Malaysians. Here in Mary Butler Markley Hall, the people are nice. I meet a lot of new, American friends. They frequently say hi to me probably recognizing me by my freaking looking hair which is tied up in the back. Although I do enjoy having these new expected friends, I really thank God for there are a few Malaysians here which I can meet up if I miss some of my old friends. Having a lot of new friends doesn’t mean losing tail of old friends. If this idea doesn’t mean anything to you, I hope the word loyalty strike a chord in your head.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

The internet is a powerful tool. It is unnecessarily mentioned but I couldn’t imagine a life without an internet connection. Life without a computer is life in hell.

Here, with a very fast T1 speed, all the information is transferred without a noticeable delay.

In Malaysia, the mobile phones play the role of communicator but here, the computers, the terminal to the World Wide Web replace the obsolete phone. Although the telephone without doubt plays an important, it exists because some people still don’t make full use out of the internet. I suspect, once every Human learns how to use the internet to a respectable manner, the telephone will be incorporated into the internet terminal a.k.a. the computer. Even now, talking through the internet is a possibility. It is even cheaper.

I use the internet for things that I usually need to walk to a place to get it. I just order some stuff by filling in templates made out not of paper but out of html and Java. It’s more environmental-friendly. Wasting a little bit of electricity in order to reduce the usage of paper is certainly worthwhile the trouble. Plus, Michigan is one of the states the uses green energy a lot. As a result, I need not to worry about killing Gaia indirectly.

I, the CEO of __earth believe the internet will open up a new era for the Human race.

Wait. The internet has already opened up a new era for the Earth’s most intelligent dwelling.

Decades ago, Isaac Asimov, if my memory doesn’t fail me, suggested that a central mega-computer will administer day to day artificial intelligence activities. Star Trek’s creator, Gene Roddenberry suggested the same thing but they met up and gone to a wrong route. Instead, today individual computers that direct various unique artificial intelligence activities are connected with each other by the internet. With the internet, this new generation of communicators is able to transfer any kind of data to each other without the supervision of a single central administrator. But sure, these individual computers can be control through various methods such as the planting of trojan horse. Nevertheless, that is irrelevant for a while at least.

“Where do you want to go today?” is not owned by the super-giant Microsoft. It is own by the omnipresent World Wide Web.

So, where do you want to go today?

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

p/s – I am having trouble with people complaining that they hate my ways for constructing websites with secret paragraphs and links. Righto, I want no more complaints of these. Therefore, JUST HIGHLIGHT each and every page that is in existence in this virtual space. Next time, read the front page notice.

Categories
Future

[48] Of SDR-3X

Already we have turned all of our critical industries, all of our material resources, over to these . . . things . . . these lumps of silver and paste we call nanorobots. And now we propose to teach them intelligence? What, pray tell, will we do when these little homunculi awaken one day and announce that they have no further need of us?
– Sister Miriam Godwinson, “We Must Dissent” – Alpha Centauri

For the past few years, Sony, the Japanese transnational corporation has certainly been active in its industry, particularly in robotic technology. Aibo is one of its famous robotic products that are not alien to the society wide. In fact, society loves it because the dog robot has the ability to act almost exactly like a real pet dog. What is more astounding is the latest artificial life form humanoid called SDR-3X.

The idea of artificial life form probably came from the early 20th century when great science-fiction starts to flourish all the sudden. During this period, Isaac Asimov was born in Russia and migrated to the United States. Of all the visionaries, he certainly earns the title father of robotic. He wrote the influential Robot series and made the world wonders how the future will look like. Nevertheless, as people once ignored Jules Verne, his idea was shoved off as science-fiction.

However, science-fiction seems almost always turn into reality.

During the release of SDR-3X, a representative from Sony announced that the next challenge is not creating a more sophisticated mechanical humanoid but instead, the challenge is building a robot that can feels feelings as a human would.

Human for certain will live life with a new companion and that companion will not necessarily be carbon-based life forms. It could be something that is made of aluminium. Even now, some people have Aibo as their pet instead of Garfield or Lassie.

Human is truly an amazing creature. From stupidity, they rose to reach for the stars literally. Day by day, human knowledge expands and they start to become God themselves. God creates life but soon, human will be able to create life from nothingness too. Human is God in a sense.

In the end, when humanity finally will have the ability to create high-level artificial intelligence, they will have their own admirer but when their creation becomes human itself, human will have to secede from God’s throne and present it to their own toy, the A.I.

I believe if human wants to call themselves God, Asimov’s third law must be observed carefully.

The Original Three Laws of Robotic.

First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Second Law: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.