[All images via freshome]
A sunny Wednesday in May 2096, the business types congregate in the Ecopolis: Breeze. A beautiful construct veined with green walls, a form of reinforced eco-glass, and an oasis of exotic trees, sea plankton and oceanic plant bedding. A kind of man-made sanctuary for the beauties of nature to coincide with human kind. The perfect setting to conduct business – the men are showing a meeting of minds over Nano-Polar Performance Wear. They want to start an outlet, micro implant components that optimize skin temperatures in certain locations of the body when living in the icy avenues of Antarctica. Big business, they say. The population of the Super-Alpha cities on the Poles are rapidly expanding.
While the North warms, the South Pole will remain glacial to the likes of us. Sea levels will be increasingly volatile causing huge natural hazard pressure on crowded coastlines. The price of living, on the South Pole especially, is much more cost ineffective than, say, Russia. It is only with extremely heavy subsidies imposed by The Earth Fund that allow life to even exist here. 4th world countries. 5,400,000 squares miles of uninterrupted Antarctica where nations’ borders are defined by their massive urban sprawl.
Related article: What’s in store for Technology in 2011?
Elsewhere on Planet Earth, leading world physicists, engineers and mechanics have gathered in the research quarter of Doha, Qatar [an optimistic invent of the mighty Syd Mead, of the Tron, Blade Runner and Aliens creed]. A breakthrough in the optic cabling for the inter-continental rapid transit trains will reduce energy consumption ten fold with all Vactrain courses conducted flawlessly with centralized computers. Even the advanced Maglev-propelled cargo transit tunneling will be overhauled for more efficient technologies. This notion of an unprecedented transport revolution, since breakthroughs in the middle of the century, propels alters the very makeup of global trade. No longer will enormous taxes be placed on mass freight export as the industry heads into a carbon zero future…
Source: Syd Mead
6 comments
parthuman says:
Jan 12, 2011
I need to live to see this
Urbanitis says:
Jan 12, 2011
Yes. It is almost upsetting to think that most of us will never see such a brilliant civilisation.
PAT-G says:
Jan 12, 2011
Awesome bedtime reading. Some interesting dreams ahead!
One personal addition to the story: The new cargo trains networking the globe are hitting speeds that cut travel times to near optimal lows. Global post is buttressed by frequent daily drops. An item manufactured in the Far East can reach Paris by lunch time.
Imagine ordering something from eBay and it is received from Malaysia within hours.
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