Cold Constructs Blog

Environmentalists, hippies, tree-huggers, whatever you want to call them… they’re all selfish bastards just like you and me. The only difference is that they’re not stupid. They understand the whole “look before you leap” idiomatic expression. They know that the more damage we do to our planet the more damage the planet will do to us. That’s why they’re selfish–they don’t care about the planet, they just want to make sure the planet doesn’t kill us. As it is we’re killing ourselves directly, which is just fine, but to have an entire ecosystem turn on you is just begging for a painful death.

We have all these great ways to utilize natural kinetics that doesn’t damage our world, from the ocean to the wind to the sun… we have the technological capability, we’re just too retarded to use it. Well, you are. Apathy is indeed synonymous with stupidity. Ever heard of Kitty Genovese? Yeah, it’s like that.

So we’re in some pretty deep shit now. The severity of the danger of our ecosystem collapsing is pretty obvious–you simply have to look. Or smell. I can’t stand cities because I can’t breathe in cities. Or, have someone do the looking for you. That BBC series tales a look at the status of our planet, which was nice. I love the BBC. While I was in Cambridge, I enjoyed watching it all the time and reading their excellent articles. This series is an excellent example of their usefulness. America needs a BBC dammit. But then we’d have to pay ‘TV licenses’ and shit like that. Meh.

Anyway. The benefits of sustainable energy are immense and so powerful that it allows some nations to leapfrog past the industrial age into… the next one, whatever they’ll call it.

But for sure we can’t just sit on the sidelines, screaming “no don’t do that!“. Luckily, we’re getting more powerful, becoming smart mobs… and now we’re in, everywhere, and we’re actually going to do something about it. If things go the tree-huggers’ way, I’ll be able to take a nice full breath of sweet, natural air wherever I am. I’m in.

Only when we were able to represent information in all three spacial dimensions were we able to think with all three in mind, intuitively. Multi-story buildings were a natural progression, but we seemed to have stopped there. We need to take it a step further: transportation and the flow of traffic needs all three dimensions to work effectively. Things like crosswalks going under the street (it’d prevent a lot of deaths and never stop pedestrian movement) and multi-level roundabouts. Here’s the ones I designed, which never require vehicles or pedestrians to stop, much less wait: 3-way and a 4-way version. The 4-way roundabout requires a bit of space, but that isn’t a problem in my city–no vehicle traffic is allowed within the city center. Everyone uses public transportation, much like this thing, or personal vehicles such as the Segway. Supplies and general cargo will be delivered directly to buildings using a cargo distribution facility that uses underground passages to access the building’s ‘docks’ (also underground). There won’t be any residential buildings in the center, so residents will still get their mail the old-fashioned way.

Assuming the government has its shit together and only one flat tax is imposed on the people’s income (which is then separated according to set percentages and allocated to the proper government departments), the city imposes a second tax, which I’ll ingeniously call the City Tax. I know you’re at the edge of your seat wondering what the city will do with the money, so I’ll get right to it.

A city’s first priority is to provide its residents with a secure place to live, naturally. The City Tax thus pays for its own police force and local court of law.

Of course, the police are not able to defend everyone at all times. You know what would stop crime easily? Teach residents how to defend themselves. Besides allowing everyone to use the same weapons criminals use, such as guns, knives, and cryptography (among others), citizens should be taught the martial arts. Since almost everyone will be able to put up a good fight (with their fists or the weapons they’re carrying), criminals will decide it’s probably not worth the risk. Criminals are also citizens, which means they will also be taught how to fight, but then again, they always did. What makes the difference is that most citizens will now be able to fight back, without having to wait for the police to arrive.

Next, a city must be a nice place to live. By that I mean fantastic parks, breathable air, public transportation, stadiums and other entertainment centers (like public theaters), a decentralized network of water wells, and… wireless internet. What about electricity?! Nope.

UPDATE: I just found a good piece on slightly larger-scale projects for cities. Apparently they’re calling it distributed generation, which sounds nice. Here’s the article. On second though, I don’t want the city or anyone else selling me power. They could artificially stimulate supply. Remember the old rolling blackouts in California? Yeah, all lies and deceit. “Free market” my ass…

The city should hire a company to build a wireless mesh network that covers the entirety of the city’s property. Once a good contractor is picked out, the company will be allowed to build it and maintain it. If people start complaining about shitty service, it will be booted and another company will take over and take possession of the old company’s equipment. The companies will be paid by the City Tax.

For all that is sacred, broadcast towers should not look like trees, they should be trees. Pine trees can be transplanted into the city and antennae placed on top of them. If pine trees don’t grow there, well, there’s thousands of other kinds of trees that can do the job just fine. If not, genetically engineer one for fuck’s sake. If we can grow a human ear on a mouse we can engineer the perfect comm tree. Well, I guess this is a start.

And that reminds me. It’d be pretty sweet to engineer our own lifeforms that can do things like light the streets at night, keeps streets clean, and eat smokers. Read some good sci-fi for more ideas like this. And after 10 years of ridicule and laughter, it’ll happen and everyone will be like “whoa, hell yeah”.

So Homeland Security is above the law, cuz you know, it’s for our protection and all that jazz. And national ID cards, there’s a good time. Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, birth certificates, and credit cards just aren’t enough…

Another stroke of brilliance by our ever-so-useful Homeland Security: they hired a pro-spyware lawyer as their chief privacy adviser. Read the comments to get all the arguments and then decide for yourself what this means.

Dude. I’m getting sick of all this shit. I don’t know if I’ll keep this series up. It’s nice to let people know what’s going on, because, oh what was that quote… something like “[gov] doesn’t let the people know what’s going on, in fact it’s preferable–otherwise they might set themselves to change it.” Still, I think I can be doing better things than listing all the dumb shit we do. For instance, I could be doing things to improve our condition…

Next up in my new blog series of technology concepts is something that’s probably been around for as long as the concept of machines has existed. It’s come to the attention of the masses for as long as Japan has thought that giant robots were cool, which is a long time. These things are now technically feasible and incredibly useful.

The greatest impact mecha would make on a certain industry that I can think of is construction. This industry has a number of problems, such as high prices and difficult-to-manage human labor. Plus there are too many machines that are expensive to maintain and transport from site to site. Give a man the strength to carry around 10+ tonnes of materials, work in otherwise impossible environs and conditions, do more work in less time, and all the while protect the man, and you have an all-in-one solution. This can be made possible with robotic suits, aka exoskeletons, aka mecha (or mechs, to most Americans). We already have the technology to make these things, and in fact we already have made several variations of robotic suits, but it was usually just as a proof of concept. We’ve also been playing around with autonomous humanoid robots for quite a while now, mainly for show but sometimes to inadvertently create new tech to use for other applications (such as Honda’s ASIMO). Here’s how to make one that can be used in large construction projects and of course the military (what can’t be used as a weapon?).

Modeling after nature (commonly known as biomimiciry), mecha should take a humanoid form. Biomimiciry is used in every mechanical field, though, such as autonomous machines that can utilize evolution and learning, but since you want intelligent control of the mech, a pilot is needed. Imitate muscles with elctroactive polymers (EAP). As it is, EAPs are quite weak, but they’ll advance quickly, since the first (and hardest) hurdle has been jumped. String them around a carbon nanotube (CNT) or carbon fiber bone structure and you have a very strong human, which means interfacing with it is as easy as walking and smiling. The CNT bones should not be solid, but “holey”, just like organic bones. This increases structural integrity, and instead of having bone marrow in the center, that’s where the mech’s neural network will be stringed through. By neural network I mean an intelligent, distributed computing system, which is needed to coordinate movement–basically a decentralized brain, thus more effective–which means having processors at every joint. The Cell processor seems ideal for the task due to its parallel computing capabilities.

Control: The most amount of space in this mech would be where a human’s organs are held–the torso. The chest area is where the pilot would climb in, which makes the entire mech around 40 feet tall. Inside, straps would be placed around his joints so that the mech would detect every move he made, and so it will be able to move exactly how the pilot moves, as well as provide force feedback (eg, he’d “feel” his mech pushing against a wall, the uneven terrain, any objects it’s holding, etc). To perform additional tasks the pilot uses voice commands. Eventually, he’ll probably be able to program phrases into it, using only his voice. The pilot would wear a heads-up display that shows the pilot everything the cameras (the “head” of the mech) are seeing. The HUD would be like a pair of sunglasses and the displays should be large enough to allow the pilot use of his peripheral vision.

Power: In order to apply the right amount of power to the right area, a distributed power grid would be needed. Right now we could use batteries or fuel cells, since they’re scalable and power generation is sufficient. Nanotube capacitors seem the best choice though.

…to 6 hours a day. People will probably make use of the little time of work they have since they have plenty of time to mess around for the rest of the day.

…and not slack off 50% of the time.

“Enticing” (scamming) employees to get in earlier–meaning longer working hours–doesn’t mean higher productivity either. Salaries are flawed in that they don’t reward the worker the actual amount of work he’s done. I have a feeling that paying people the other way (by how much work they do) will for some reason make the employer pay less. Some state should try this 6 hour work day out…